I’m opening this because the join Nato thread closed. đ
446 thoughts on “Open Thread: May 8”
Russell, we will see what we will see. But âŚthe Russian advances to close the pocket is clear looking at movement over time where the ISW continues to say no Russian gains of any consequence.
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The ISW made statements May 6 that are contrary to their own map.
May 6: â.. Ukrainian forces continued to repel #Russian attacks on the #Izyum axis in the last 24 hoursâŚ.â
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This is clearly wrong as the column moving south from Izyum has made substantial progress southward as shown on ISW maps from May 5 to May 6.
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I will go with the actual movement on the ground over ISW opinions that are clearly pro Ukraine.
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The rail lines are critical for both Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine is short of fuel for trucks as their refineries and storage tanks have been blown and Russia is very dependent on railroads as their supply system is mainly based on rail. Either getting farther than 100 miles from a railhead is a major problem, more so for Ukraine than Russia.
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For the east, Russia now has direct rail links leading from Russia to both Izyum and Rubinhiz where Ukraine rail is cut to the east past Sloviansk, just south of Izyum.
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Modern armies use supply in enormous amounts and lack of adequate supply is a major issue. Russia experienced supply issues it at Kiev and Ukraine experiences it in the east. Russia had a pathway to retreat itâs forces from Kiev where Ukraine has few to no options to retreat its forces in the east.
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In the circles area in the upper left, there is some additional territory taken by Russia to the SSW. That is not actually in the direction of Slovyansk. That may or may not be tactically significant. ISW apparently thinks not; I give more credence to their opinion over that of Ed Forbes.
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Ed’s map is ridiculous since it only shows a tiny fraction of road and rail lines.
Here is Friedman at the NYTâs today: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/opinion/biden-ukraine-leaks.html
âAs a journalist, I love a good leak story, and the reporters who broke those stories did powerful digging. At the same time, from everything I have been able to glean from senior U.S. officials, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, the leaks were not part of any thought-out strategy, and President Biden was livid about them. Iâm told that he called the director of national intelligence, the director of the C.I.A. and the secretary of defense to make clear in the strongest and most colorful language that this kind of loose talk is reckless and has got to stop immediately â before we end up in an unintended war with Russia.â
“It is doubly dangerous, senior U.S. officials say, because it is increasingly obvious to them that Putinâs behavior is not as predictable as it has been in the past. And Putin is running out of options for some kind of face-saving success on the ground â or even a face-saving off ramp.”
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I agree. This was level 10 stupid because it is dangerous when a single person (Putin) is making decisions who has a very bad case of wounded pride.
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The media beyond Friedman just doesnât seem to care about this. In my view this is the type of thing that the media shouldnât even print until after the conflict even if they know it to be true. Iâve had it with these anonymous leakers, both because they can do lots of damage without facing consequences and because they tend to produce false narratives based on their activist ideologies by releasing selective information (see every leak ever during the Trump era).
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There are some cases where anonymous leaks may be a good thing, to prove the government is committing crimes for example, but the vast majority of them are politically motivated and should be exposed so the public can judge their veracity. The scales lean too heavily to one side right now.
It would seem the Russians are now trying to go the route of massive artillery and slow incremental movement. Old school. This may also be because they have no other choice and their losses via direct attacks are unsustainable. From all the WWII books I read being under artillery barrages for weeks on end is psychologically extremely difficult. Both sides have got to be pretty worn out already. A meat grinder may be to NATO’s advantage but I do have sympathy for all the young people who got thrown into this, everyone leaves this with mental scar tissue even if they survive.
Ed Forbes (Comment #211811)
âRussell, we will see what we will see.â
That I agree with. I recently have learned the meaning of the phrase âThe Fog of Warâ so Iâm not sure I know what happened yesterday. You seem to know what happened yesterday,
âRussian advances are therefore slow, but continuous.â
And know what the Russians are planning and know how it will turn out.
âThe Russians are slowly, but continually, advancing to place a major portion of the best of the Ukraine army in a pocket and destroy it, mainly with artillery.â
Perhaps you got your training at a war college that teaches clairvoyance.
Tom Scharf (Comment #211814)
May 7th, 2022 at 8:16 am
“senior U.S. officials, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity
President Biden was livid about them. Iâm told that he called the director of national intelligence, the director of the C.I.A. and the secretary of defense to make clear in the strongest and most colorful language that this kind of loose talk is reckless and has got to stop immediately â before we end up in an unintended war with Russia.â
I guess if you trust Friedman. He does have an obvious agenda in most of his writings.
Tom Scharf (Comment #211815)
âIt would seem the Russians are now trying to go the route of massive artillery and slow incremental movement.â
Yes, maybe. Also maybe, thatâs what they want you to think and their real intentions are elsewhere. Remember when everybody thought their main objective was Kyiv. That sure changed in a hurry. I said early on that column attacking Kiev might be a feint.
Russell Klier,
I said early on that column attacking Kiev might be a feint.
And I think you’re still wrong. The advance forces attacking Kyiv were slaughtered, including elite Spetsnaz troops. Since those attacks failed, the rest failed too.
As far as I can tell, Ed Forbes is parroting Russian propaganda, not being analytical, so I don’t read his posts. If we had a mute function like in the WSJ comments, he would be on my mute list.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #211819)
You wrote: âAnd I think youâre still wrong.â
Yes, everything I write about war should be taken with a pinch of salt. I spent the 1960âs as an anti-war hippie. What I know about this stuff I learned in the last two months, in a La-Z-Boy, with an iPad.
Hereâs what happened:
The Russian primary objectives were the South and East. The main purpose of the Western attack was to draw the Ukrainian army in to protect Kyiv and away from the East. They led with crack troops to further frighten the Ukrainians. If the Ukrainian government or army had collapsed the Russians had a coup. If not, they planned an orderly retreat once they had obtained their objectives in the East.
What they didnât plan for was getting slaughtered.
Russian forces may be conducting a limited withdrawal in the face of successful Ukrainian attacks and reportedly destroyed three bridges to slow the Ukrainian advance. Armies generally only destroy bridges if they have largely decided they will not attempt to cross the river in the other direction anytime soon; Russian forces are therefore unlikely to launch operations to retake the northeast outskirts of Kharkiv liberated by Ukrainian forces in the near future.
Does Russia have the money to do a war of artillery and incremental gains?
Does Russia need “money” other than rubles? They make their own ammo, they don’t need to buy it. Missiles are likely more of a problem.
The Russian operation in the North is over; it was just a distraction; the assault on Karkhiv, distraction; Izyum, distraction. There was no pincer movement to trap the Ukrainian army in a pocket. It was Russian disinformationâŚand we all bought it. The Russian emphasis has been and remains elsewhere. [Where that is, I do not know.]
Russell Klier,
There was no pincer movement to trap the Ukrainian army in a pocket. It was Russian disinformationâŚand we all bought it.
Speak for yourself. I never thought that Ed Forbes posts about the encirclement were anything other than repeating Russian propaganda.
Uhm, yeah. I’m with DeWitt, think most of us are. I try these days to mostly ignore stuff I think is garbage. Sometimes when something is particularly egregious I open my mouth to say so.
I don’t think Kiev was a feint. I don’t think disinformation has much to do with anything either. I think events have been as much of a surprise to Russian planners as everyone else, and things haven’t gone as Putin hoped, and that Russia has been changing plans on the fly as events have played out.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #211829), mark bofill (Comment #211830)
The Russian pincer disinformation didn’t start with Ed ForbesâŚit was all over the media first. I think I remember Marco Rubio talking it up too
âIf Mariupol falls to Russian forces – which is expected to take place in the coming weeks – these troops are likely to begin pushing north to join up with the Izyum force in a pincer movement.â 19 April 2022 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10732907/MoD-says-Ukraine-repelling-numerous-attempted-advances-Russian-forces-Donbas.html
âRussian forces took control of the city of Izium on April 6, and bisected Ukrainian defences in the port city of Mariupol, reaching the Sea of Azov on April 10. Between these two locations, Russia was building up its forces in a crabâs claw around the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, in what Ukraine expects will be an attempt to join its northern and southern fronts in a pincer movement to isolate Ukrainian elite units in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in eastern Ukraine.â 13 Apr 2022 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/13/ukraine-prepares-for-a-russian-onslaught-in-the-east
mark bofill
I think events have been as much of a surprise to Russian planners as everyone else, and things havenât gone as Putin hoped, and that Russia has been changing plans on the fly as events have played out.
That’s my impression too. For whatever that’s worth.
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I’ve never been interested in military strategy and so on. So my ability to guess what tactics or strategies people would plan on, or what sorts of bluffs they do is , how shall I say it, “not well developed”?
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But it does look like things did not go the way the Russians expected. Way too many generals have died.
Too many ships sunk (by a country with no navy.) To many dead young Russians. (Putin might not care, but dying pawns is nevertheless not a good sign.)
Surprisingly, Ukrainians turn out to have massive balls. Oh, and no one is just throwing down their arms when Russia makes elliptic allusions to using nuclear arms.
(Why one should be surprised that the epi-center of Kossacks is populated by people with large balls is good question. But most outside Ukraine don’t know Ukrainians. And the Russian’s evidently stereotyped them as blundering bumpkins. Still, some movies fans will recall what Captain Renault said about blundering:
“We musn’t underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918.”
Ukraine blundering seems to rival American blundering. )
The ISW maps are leaving out some major areas of conflict. They may not think it important, but I would be interested in knowing why if so.
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One of these is the Russian assault on Lyman that has been ongoing for several days now.
A pro Ukraine post on this section https://twitter.com/InfoGeek17/status/1522341016539332609
âThey are tying to encircle Lyman, and force Ukrainian troops to pull back from the area. They are attacking Lyman from the south east and north axis.â
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Several position maps and comments on the post.
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The Ukraine loss of Popasna breaks through the original heavily dug in Ukraine defensive line. This will allow easier Russian advance here as the Ukraine defense in this area will now be less extensive. Russian supply to this area is directly supplied by rail, so logistics should not be an issue which allows for continuing heavy artillery attacks to further weaken Ukraine defenses.
Thanks Lucia.
Like you, I’m no military expert. I have an amateur interest in military stuff.
I sure get the same impression, that the Ukrainians are tougher than anyone realized. I certainly didn’t have an inkling. I wasn’t aware of the stereotype about blundering either. Truth is, I’ve quit paying close attention to the situation. I still hope they are at least largely victorious in the end, and I hope (although I do not expect) that Putin gives up the pointless killing and destruction sooner rather than later.
Only the Russians know what their original plans were. They would be incompetent to not have backup plans and secondary objectives. Hoping Ukraine would just surrender was worth a shot, but not obvious how realistic they thought this was.
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Clearly they are going to pretend everything is going to plan. It is not.
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2.5 months in to a 14 day war and we are still in active heavy fighting, the outcome is still in doubt, they have only gained marginal (but measurable) ground, lots of Russians have died, they have lost a lot of equipment, depleted their high tech precision weaponry, the west has united against them in sanctions, Finland and Sweden are going to join NATO, their arms export market has probably taken a massive hit, the brutal warfare against civilian areas they are executing is obvious to everyone, and the Europeans are running for the Russian fossil fuel exports exit. It’s fair to say they aren’t in the “hope for the best” category anymore.
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All of this, and even if Russia gains the ground they hope for they could still likely face a brutal insurgency fueled by western arms against a mighty pi**ed off foe in their Ukrainian homeland. I don’t want to be the Russian soldier doing patrols in captured villages where the Russians executed civilians. Flowers are not going to be passed out.
I will have to see if I can find a copy of the “art of war” Sun Tzu [or maybe just look it up on the internet.
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Things like know your enemy.
Don’t attack in Winter.
[Luckily summer is now coming on}
Tanks are so passe.
A bit like infantry charges into machine gun nests.
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Surely the Russians are getting enough background rumble to get rid of Putin by now.
angech,
“Surely the Russians are getting enough background rumble to get rid of Putin by now.”
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I suspect you are far too optimistic. Putin is going nowhere soon.
Regarding that, it’s not clear to me that removing Putin removes the problem. I mean, maybe it does. Maybe it solves the immediate problem of the war. Maybe somebody worse takes over though and the resulting problems next year are even worse. Maybe not.
Also what Steve said – I expect Putin isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, unless his abdominal cancer or Parkinsons complications kills him. If he actually has those things.
mark bofill,
Removing Putin gives the Russian government an off ramp from the war. They axe Putin, possibly literally, and then blame everything on him and apologize. As long as he is the head of government, I don’t think there is any way out except total victory, which is looking far less likely than it did at first.
Except you don’t stay in power in Russia by appearing weak. Admitting that Ukraine was able to hold off mighty Russia, isn’t going to sell well to the populace. If someone tries they will be quickly replaced. Kamil Galeev’s twitter feed is a good read on the internal politics of Russia. It’s not just Putin’s crew who believes that the eastern block belongs to Russia and that the native citizen’s are somewhat sub-human. Truthfully the only way I think this has a decent long term outcome is if the minority area’s in Russia that are providing a disproportionate percentage of RA canon fodder decides that enough is enough and throws off, or at least attempts to throw off, Russia’s rule.
WSJ: “Russian President Vladimir Putin used the annual commemoration of the countryâs victory over Nazi Germany in World War II to justify the Kremlinâs attack on Ukraine, saying it was the only way to prevent what he said was a planned assault on Russia.”
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Ha ha. The old preemptive attack on you to prevent you from attacking me story. The 200 lb. guy punched the 130 lb. weakling because he swears that the weakling was about to attack him. That won’t hold up in court. Ukraine was going to assault Russia? This is pure fantasy, most Russians have got to be questioning that one at least privately, it doesn’t pass the small test.
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The only charitable interpretation here is it is analogous to the Cuban Missile crisis, except NATO wasn’t secretly installing nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The US certainly seriously considered invading Cuba and tried a horrible 3rd party invasion (Bay of Pigs). NATO was training the Ukraine military and likely was covertly sending weapons for the ongoing Crimea standoff. Ukraine wasn’t trending to be friends with Russia, but being an a-hole bully doesn’t win you friends.
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A better interpretation I read is that Putin saw Ukraine becoming a success story after courting with the west could eventually threaten his power and the west would then covertly support turning Russia away from glorious communism. An existential threat of western decadence. While I don’t doubt the west would enjoy poking the bear for its own entertainment this is a bit of paranoia rooted in an ideology that isn’t winning the argument. Tyranny temper tantrum.
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Putin has managed this badly, it doesn’t look like it is going to improve for many years for Russia. They are stuck now, blocked by national pride, not sure how it can be resolved. A major miscalculation. The people won’t blame Putin for a while, it is a very slow burn to that endpoint. The Russians know how to suffer, but it is another thing entirely to choose that path willingly.
Thanks DeWitt. There is that.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #211839): “Removing Putin gives the Russian government an off ramp from the war. They axe Putin, possibly literally, and then blame everything on him and apologize.”
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No way does that happen.
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Andrew P (Comment #211840): “Except you donât stay in power in Russia by appearing weak.”
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Right. Putin or not Putin, the Russian government will need a “win”. It might well be that a replacement for Putin would have more flexibility in defining a win. And it might well be much easier for Ukraine and NATO to make some concessions if Putin is out. But there is no guarantee that either will happen.
The latest jobs report said that something like 400K jobs were created in the last month. Good news.
I have no idea how to reconcile those numbers and am wondering if someone can enlighten me.
Mike M,
Looks like two very different measures: a survey of employers (reported rising employment) versus a survey of households (reported falling employment). https://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/us/
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Nothing short of weird.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/04/europe/ukraine-drone-footage-popasna-intl/index.html
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Shows the effects of heavy artillery superiority backed by drones that are supporting Russian infantry attacks.
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A scorched earth approach that the US used to great effect in WWII. The US used the Piper L-4 light planes for spotting instead of unmanned drones, but the effect is the same. Directing massive artillery strikes on acquired targets that have minimal ability to respond is brutal.
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With the introduction of effective and long range antitank infantry weapons, infantry when backed with artillery and drones are regaining the leading role that had been taken over by tanks.
Mike M. (Comment #211845)
The 300k are workers on the sidelines and not working but now are no longer seeking work. That would not effect the jobs created as it did not cause any job loss. If enough workers on the sidelines quit looking the unemployment rate can decrease – every thing else being equal.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #211848): “The 300k are workers on the sidelines and not working but now are no longer seeking work. That would not effect the jobs created as it did not cause any job loss. If enough workers on the sidelines quit looking the unemployment rate can decrease â every thing else being equal.”
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Nope. That is not it. The 300K was a change in employed, not total labor force. And if 300K quit looking (Why, in this market?) while 400K found work, the unemployment rate would have dropped by 0.4 or 0.5 percent. It did not change.
So Biden is to give an address tomorrow on inflation. He says it will be “unifying”. How will he do that? By telling a bunch of lies about Republican so that he can paint them as unreasonable extremists. Interesting concept of “unifying”.
Yes, and here’s what happened today when the Russians tried to get in their vehicles and drive down the road after they think they have gained ground. It’s a meat grinder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mne__eoiopM&t=189s
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I think it’s the accuracy of artillery that has really changed here. Some of it is the drones and some is just better guns and ammo. Lots and lots and lots of artillery ammo. Some of the drone shots show hundreds of artillery strikes in the fields.
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Somebody better be working overtime on anti-drone technology. A low cost radio seeking missile of even a bully predator drone that just knocks them out of the sky kinetically. The drone arms race starts. I doubt off the shelf drones will work very long.
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This guy here has some long but interesting presentations on the economics of the war. TLDR is that Russia has very large reserves of weapons to endure the short term but a long term conflict (year or more) will be a big problem for Russia if NATO is even a little bit committed. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC3ehuUksTyQ7bbjGntmx3Q
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He also said the economics of the war to capture Ukraine’s fossil fuels isn’t justified because the war costs more than the profit they would get after the cost of extraction so that is unlikely why Putin did it.
So far political unity is what it has always been. If the other side changes their ways, accepts their views are both moronic and immoral, and meekly joins my side after publicly taking the knee, then we can have unity.
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Last time I checked Biden was trying to sell a plan for large increases in government spending to help inflation. Does not compute.
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DeSantis signed a bill to remove state gas taxes in October. I’m sure it is just a coincidence that the election is in November. Biden might have a similar plan.
Mike M. (Comment #211849)
The labor force was reduced by 0.2% in April 2022 and that comes to approximately the 300K you noted. If you have a direct source and quote for the 300K being lost jobs I would like to see that.
Tom Scharf (Comment #211851)
Damm you TomâŚ..that link just took over 4 hours of my life!!
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I wish most of my college professors had produced lectures even half a interesting. Sitting through 4 consecutive hr long PowerPoint lectures without needing a gun pressed to my head is a new experience.
. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC3ehuUksTyQ7bbjGntmx3Q
MikeM, not to belabor a point, but those numbers from your link look very much like labor force numbers. I saw 158,458,000 for March 2022 and 158,105,000 for April 2022 in the graph. That is a 0.2% decline.
Ed,
Ha ha. I was thinking those PowerPoint presentations were more informative than almost anything I read in the media over the past several months.
MikeM, I finally looked at the official numbers and you are correct about employed reduction from March to April. It was in excess of 300k as was the labor force. As SteveF posted there are 2 sources of employment statistics. The one you noted as losing workers is, I believe, the Houshold Survey. It has a much wider margin of error, but it is better to have more than a single source. p
Biden:
“I want us to be crystal clear about the problem,” Biden stated. “There are two leading causes of inflation weâre seeing today. The first cause of inflation is a once-in-a-century pandemic. Not only did it shut down our global economy, it threw the supply chains and the demand completely out of whack.”
“And this year we have a second cause, Mr. Putinâs war in Ukraine.” He added, “We saw in March that 60% of inflation that month was due to price increases at the pump for gasoline.”
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The president said his plan is “to lower and lower and lower everyday costs for hardworking Americans and lower the deficit by asking large corporations and the wealthiest Americans to not engage in price gouging and to pay their fair share in taxes.”
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And the unity part, ha ha:
âThe other path is the ultra-MAGA plan put forward by congressional Republicans to raise taxes on working families, lower the income of American workers, threaten sacred programs Americans count on like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and give break after break to big corporations and billionaires.â
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Yawn. Seen this movie already.
Tom Scharf,
Biden is a lying sack of dog-$hit…. and always has been. He has changed his opinion on every important question of public policy over the last three decades, always adopting whatever position is politically expedient at the moment. Now he is demented enough to not likely even remember what his past policy positions were; he just reads whatever tripe his handlers put on the teleprompter. He becomes an official lame duck after the November election….. and one Kamala will be desperate to get out of office. Count on “health issues” leading him to announce he will not run for re-election in 2024…. allowing a full-blown primary fight among Dems.
Biden is a sad joke.
COVID hit us in early 2020. Putin didn’t invade until 2022. Inflation took off in March of 2021, preceded immediately by a dramatic increase in the money supply right after Biden took office. Supporting data here for inflation by month and here for inflation and the money supply. I think that this coupled with the 1.9 trillion COVID giveaway in March of 2021 is what did it. Gas prices have also been up since Biden took office, although I will grant that they have spiked since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Still – gas prices have been bad for some time now, and that can’t be plausibly attributed to COVID or Russia either. More than half of the increase in gas prices happened since Biden took office and before the invasion.
I am curious how much the ISW will be updating their maps for May 10. There are multiple reports over the last several days that indicates Russian breakout through entrenched Ukraine lines are progressing in several critical areas.
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Here is one such, but there are others. This one is worth a full read as it goes into more detail than the bit I have posted. https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-9-may-2020-a1137caa3ed7
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â.. Yet more bad newsâŚ
Itâs the situation just some 20â30km further east thatâs making me growing concerns. South of Zarichne, a BTG each of the 15th Independent Motorised Rifle Brigade and the 74th Independent Guards Motor Rifle Brigade (supported by plenty of Spetsnaz) are pushing on and over the Siversky Donets.
Mind: contrary to the defenders â especially the 95th Airborne Brigade (Siversk) and 79th Airborne Brigade (Bilohorivka) â all of Russian units are âfreshâ: i.e. relatively new to the battlefield, and thus at near-full strength. And the Spetsnaz are causing lots of problems to the defenders, not only because they can use the local forest for good cover, but because they can fight the way the Ukrainians fight: in âde-centralisedâ fashion.
Now, on the western flank of this advance, they have reached Siversky Donets at Zakitne, and thus blocked the road connecting that place with Lyman..â
I understand everybody already knows – my post wasn’t news to anybody. I state the obvious sometimes because I think it helps keep me from going crazy. Well, any crazier than I already am.
I have it on the word of experts, * credentialed experts *, very serious people, that this inflation is going to be transitory. They have reminded us recently they meant transitory in geological timescales, so they weren’t really wrong. It was our fault for not asking the right questions.
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It is noted that nobody seems curious enough to ask the experts how long this inflation is going to last now. The media treats Biden like they feel sorry for him.
There’s no consequence for being wrong in the bureaucracy. On the contrary, Biden rewarded Powell for ignoring the warning signs and getting the inflation bonfire going. What was it Powell said back at the time? Oh yes. Here:
But the current Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, has dismissed claims that the Fedâs money-printing is fueling todayâs price spiral, emphasizing instead the disruptions associated with reopening the economy. Like his most recent predecessors, dating to Alan Greenspan, Powell says that financial innovations mean there no longer is a link between the amount of money circulating in the economy and rising prices.
âNow, we think more of just the imbalances between supply and demand in the real economy rather than monetary aggregates. ⌠Itâs been a different economy and a different financial system for some time,â Powell said in December.
mark bofill (Comment #211861): “Inflation took off in March of 2021, preceded immediately by a dramatic increase in the money supply right after Biden took office.”
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I don’t think that is right. If you look at monthly inflation rates, it started around the end of 2020 or start of 2021. The annual numbers are misleading because of the strong deflation in March/April of 2020. That depressed the annual rates until those months passed out of the analysis period causing the annual rate to jump. And inflation abated in Q3 2021 before taking off in Q4.
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The money supply mostly grew in 2020, with the rate of increase peaking right at the end of the year.
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The increase in money supply was irresponsible. But I am guessing that we’d have inflation even if Trump got re-elected. But probably not as bad since we would not have had Biden’s economy shackling policies.
Yeah. It’s quite the masterpiece in that regard, isn’t it.
Americans have two potential paths forward. The first is my plan, the Democratic plan. A plan put forward by congressional Republicans is a second alternative.
Hereâs how each of us would tackle inflation:
My plan is to lower employer [sic] â lower everyday costs for â everyday costs for hardworking families and lower the deficit by asking large corporations and the wealthiest Americans to not engage in price gouging and to pay their fair share in taxes.
The Republican plan is to increase taxes on the middle-class families and let billionaires and large companies off the hook as they raise profit and â raise prices and reap profits at record number â record amounts.
And itâs really that simple.
You here that everybody? Your plan, which is to raise taxes on the middle class and let the rich off the hook (it’s that simple) sucks.
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That really makes me want to get behind Biden. I’m all fired up now. Once I figure out what gender I’m going to be and what pronouns people ought to use and how to properly repent of my being white and male, I’m joining the darn Democratic Party!
[SARC]
Mike,
Here, hang on. I said this:
Inflation took off in March of 2021
I don’t think you dispute this?
, preceded immediately by a dramatic increase in the money supply right after Biden took office.
Perhaps I should have said a dramatic increase in the rate of increase of the money supply, does that fix it?
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[Edit: or are the graphs I linked wrong?]
Lucia,
“Was this supposed to be the unifying speech!!??!!”
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The left never apologizes for error, never admits even obvious error, and never compromises on substance. The Biden administration has made a series of terrible errors that have hurt the country.
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A ‘unifying’ speech like Biden’s latest is the inevitable result of those errors.
mark bofill (Comment #211869): “Inflation took off in March of 2021. I donât think you dispute this?”
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I dispute that. Using 12-month averages, you can not tell when something happened with a time resolution of less than one year. There are month-over-month rates, but I don’t have a link handy
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‘preceded immediately by a dramatic increase in the money supply right after Biden took office.”
“Perhaps I should have said a dramatic increase in the rate of increase of the money supply, does that fix it?”
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Nope. The big increase was before Biden took office.
Thanks Mike.
The huge expenditures in 2020 for covid related bills no doubt had already “baked in the cake” some increase in inflation. Biden’s policies just made everything worse. His war on fossil fuels, which artificially reduced domestic production, almost guaranteed an increase in fuel prices…. which was their intent, of course.
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None of Biden’s “unifying efforts” (AKA blatant lies) will save him from a reckoning in November 2022, after which he will face lots Congressional hearings on his destructive public policies and on his blatant personal and family corruption.
by asking large corporations and the wealthiest Americans to not engage in price gouging and to pay their fair share in taxes.
Asking producers not to price gouge? Oh.
Gas prices aren’t up because of price gouging. My dance lessons prices are up– not because of price gouging, but because Janna increased rates to pay the teachers more. The teachers are frittering some of it away on gas (to get to work) and groceries and, in the case of the ones competing (hoping to become US Rising Star champs– which is a very useful business thing), on expenses related to competing. (Some of those are defrayed, but some aren’t.)
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This rise isn’t “price gouging”. Obviously, since my lessons are discretionary, it’s not going to kill me. I would just take fewer private lessons. But businesses are going to pass on expenses to consumers.
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I also don’t know quite where he thinks large corporations get money to pay taxes. But generally speaking, the money to pay taxes doesn’t just “magically materialize”. It comes in when they sell products and services to consumers. If they pay more in taxes, that will affect prices. (That’s not necessarily a reason not to tax corporations. But it’s not going to keep inflation down.)
Lucia,
“I also donât know quite where he thinks large corporations get money to pay taxes.”
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You are giving Biden far more credit than he deserves. He is a demented old fool who reads what is on the teleprompter. He has no idea why claims of ‘price gouging’ causing inflation are pure nonsense, and likely didn’t even before he became obviously demented. The guy is a career politician who never really held a meaningful job. I prefer to think of Biden like a talking parrot who can read a teleprompter; the parrot hasn’t the slightest clue what he is saying; Biden is pretty much the same.
Shockingly economists were not able to see the future correctly. I’d be more forgiving if they didn’t pretend they were omnipotent while transparently pushing tired ideological agendas. All the economists lined up behind another massive BBB spending plan even as the current inflation was already in the books. They just don’t have much credibility at this point.
It’s not just gas, food, and auto prices. Rents are up 58% in Miami and 43% in Tampa over the past two years. That is an enormous hit.
Inflation is now an everywhere, everyone problem. It’s going to be hard to survive this politically, especially with lame attempts like Biden tried today. He would be much better off throwing the Fed and economists under the bus.
Poking the BearâŚ.
âDEFENDER-Europe 22 is a multinational, regular joint and combined exercise organized by the United States Armed Forces to build preparedness and interoperability between Allies and partners of the USA and NATO.â
âBetween 1 and 27 May the exercises DEFENDER EUROPE 2022 (DE22) and SWIFT RESPONSE 2022 (SR22) with participation of Polish soldiers will be conducted on the territory of Poland and 8 other countries. There will be approximately 18 000 participants from over 20 countries training together in both exercises.â https://www.gov.pl/web/national-defence/exercises-defender-europe-2022-and-swift-response-2022-begin
âTens of thousands of troops from NATO and its European allies are gearing up for a series of military exercises that the United Kingdom is calling one of the “largest shared deployments since the Cold War.”
âThe exercises, backed by aircraft, tanks, artillery and armored assault vehicles, will take place in Finland, Poland, North Macedonia and along the Estonian-Latvian border. They will include troops from NATO and the Joint Expeditionary Force, which includes non-NATO members Finland and Sweden.â https://www.foxnews.com/world/nato-military-exercises-europe-during-ukraine-russia-war
Oh what a difference two months can make!
Wall Street JournalâŚ. Feb. 1, 2022 11:33 am ET
âRussia Confronts Ukraine With Upgraded Military Rebuilt After Soviet Collapseâ
This is an in-depth article from February detailing the mighty Russian war machine. Some excerpts:
âIn the more than two decades since Vladimir Putin came to power, that has been transformed. Today, Russiaâs fighting forces include a large, well-trained class of soldiers, hypersonic strategic missiles and anti-aircraft missile systems that can detect stealth aircraft.
âThe situation has turned around,â President Putin told journalists in December 2020. âRussia has one of the most efficient armies in the world.â
âOpinion polls show that the army is now the most respected institution in Russian society, and Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu one the countryâs most popular senior government officials.â https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-confronts-ukraine-with-upgraded-military-rebuilt-after-soviet-collapse-11643733217
I tend to look at these economic developments like inflation, as I do most all government developments, as being caused by government actions that were in turn promulgated as ideas from the current intelligentsia and mainly the academic part of that group of individuals. In my mind it is better to trace these developments back to the sources and look at less intellectual endowed politicians and their agencies who put these ideas into effect as intermediaries.
In the case of inflation, it is a problem of the Federal Reserve. While the Federal Reserve is able to place the blame for inflation and the cycling of the business cycle away from its actions in changing the money supply with a large support from academia, the media, most politicians and an unknowing public, this problem will not be addressed, and we will continue to see causes and blames pointing to the items that Biden mentioned in yesterdayâs speech. Those items are mainly supported by the intelligentsia as causes of inflation.
There is some shared blame for inflation between the Federal Reserve and the congressional and administrative parts of government in that the latter two generate huge amounts of debt that can be sustained only with artificially lower interest rates. That is part of the reason that the Federal Reserve has been hesitant in raising interest rates.
While Biden shows signs of dementia, his progressive agenda would receive approval from much of the intelligentsia who are not demented. Biden is merely their conduit, or less politely, their useful idiot.
Kenneth makes sense. It is not government spending or even government borrowing that drives inflation. It is the increase in money supply that tends to accompany such actions.
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In 2020, governments foolishly forced large parts of the economy to shut down. That mistake forced handouts of huge amounts of borrowed money. Bad enough. But the Fed, in an apparently Pavlovian response, then recklessly expanded the money supply. There was no need for that. No need to support government borrowing since people were spending less, therefore saving more. No point in stimulating the economy since the economy was being held down by decree. All they did was to create an inflationary land mine.
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In 2021, with inflation starting, the Fed kept feeding fuel to the smoldering fire. Biden deserves at least some blame. His overspending no doubt encouraged the Fed and he was happy to reappoint Powell, thus giving his seal of approval to the Fed’s misguided policy. A lot of damage will be done before we get this under control.
Mike M,
The Fed is a politically accountable lap dog… in fact if not in theory. Yes, they foolishly expanded the money supply to allow crazy Federal borrowing (and crazy business borrowing) without a rapid increase in interest rates. Had they not done so, inflation would not have jumped, but interest rates would have sky-rocketed, asset bubbles in stocks and housing would have long ago burst, and the economy would long ago have entered a deep recession. Political lap dogs at the Fed, doing exactly what the politicians want, are not the problem. The problem is profligate politicians who are unwilling to make difficult choices and control expenditures. I doubt there is any way to avoid a recession in the next 12 to 24 months, with substantial drops in asset prices as well. But like drunken sailors, politicians can’t make themselves stop spending money the country does not have to support an over-reaching Federal government the country does not need.
SteveF (Comment #211882): “they foolishly expanded the money supply to allow crazy Federal borrowing (and crazy business borrowing) without a rapid increase in interest rates. Had they not done so, inflation would not have jumped, but interest rates would have sky-rocketed, asset bubbles in stocks and housing would have long ago burst”
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I do not believe that. They did not have to increase money supply near as much to keep interests rates reasonable. Corporate borrowing went flat and household savings went up so absent the big increase in government borrowing, interest rates would have gone down. The asset bubbles mostly occurred *after* the big increase in money supply, at least partly driven by that increase. The big increase in money supply was not needed to get us out of the Wuhan virus recession; recovery would have happened anyway.
Area to watch on possible Russian breakout as I posted earlier. Well worth a read. The maps attached show how serious this breach would be. https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-10-may-2022-e7598e3d0f57
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â..Canât help it: Iâm still not happy with developments along the Siversky Donets. Therefore, here another âquick and dirtyâ update, explaining the âwhyâ. The reason isâŚ. well, a mix of âtotal silence at the topâ and âusual bragging at the bottomâ on the Ukrainian side..â
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. â.Here itâs worth paying attention at the following:
Over a month ago, there was a similar situation south of Izium: the Russians attacked in a pincer movement around both flanks of the town. Breached through on the western side, threw two pontoon bridges over Siversky Donets, crossed the river and pushed forward.
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All the unofficial Ukrainian sources reacted with, âah, no problem, weâve destroyed themâ, followed by photos/videos of âdestroyed pontoon bridges & sunken tanks and other vehiclesâ.
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Now check the maps ever since: itâs obvious that was â at most â a temporary success. Actually, yes, they knocked out one bridge, but the Russians used the other to keep on crossing and then kept on steamrolling further south.
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By now we all know how the battle went on and where they are (i.e. the RFA is certainly not back to Izium).
â..
SteveF and Mike M.,
The big problem with the Fed was Quantitative Easing, which they just stopped last month. The last round of QE, which started in June 2020, was completely unnecessary. Purchasing bonds fed money directly to Wall Street, not Main Street because with low bond yields, investors were forced to chase yield. The Fed was buying $120 billion of treasury ($80 billion) and corporate ($40 billion) bonds per month for all of 2021 even though the inflation rate was already going up in early 2021. But Powell was afraid of tanking the stock market.
Biden’s speech was unifying if you’re a Democrat. Biden and the Democrats are only interested in unifying their party. Republicans are all deplorable so they don’t count.
DeWitt,
It was a very “My way or the highway” type speech. I get some people agree with his way. We’ll see how many people decide on the highway.
DeWitt,
“But Powell was afraid of tanking the stock market.”
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The Fed is a political lap dog. If they had not done quantitative easing, the asset bubble would not have blown up so much, interest rates would have gone up, and we would have long ago gone into a recession. And yes, the stock market would have suffered losses.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #211885): “The big problem with the Fed was Quantitative Easing, which they just stopped last month. The last round of QE, which started in June 2020, was completely unnecessary.”
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Indeed. They used that mechanism since they could not drop the discount rate below zero. Doing so increased the money supply too fast and for too long.
I don’t know if the main concern was the stock market or jobs. In any event, now we have inflation, a tanking stock market, and probably a recession. Triple threat Powell.
Looks like the Russian breakout river crossing at Bilohorivka is happening as I previously posted as likely. Ukraine does not confirm the breach of their line, but does confirm major combat at Bilohorivka where the Russian bridging was located. It is less than 45km down the road from here to the Russian breach at Popasna, the other side of the line, which will close the pocket on a major part of the Ukraine army.
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Russia is now behind the Ukraine main dug in defensive lines and into their supporting units and with militia being sent in to try and plug the breakout.
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ISW report for May 11
. https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-11
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Note that previous ISW reports expressed the view that they did not think it likely that Russia could close the pocket. ISW has removed this disclaimer in this latest update.
Ed Forbes (Comment #211890)
You Wrote: âLooks like the Russian breakout river crossing at Bilohorivka is happeningâ
That crossing has turned into a disaster for the Russians. The bridge was blown and the armored column was attacked. The Russians built another pontoon bridge and tried to retreat. That new bridge was also destroyed. The following Twitter thread has a collection of pictures and a running tally of 38 Russian armored vehicles destroyed so far: https://twitter.com/Danspiun/status/1524101694732255232?s=20&t=0NCIwvqNYq9TdzWcshvewg
From Ukraineâs Defense Ministry: Ukraine destroys bridges to stop advance of Russian troops in Luhansk Oblast.
The Defense Ministry published satellite imagery that reportedly shows two destroyed bridges crossing the Siversky Donets River near the village of Bilohorivka.â https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1524562362317033472?s=20&t=0NCIwvqNYq9TdzWcshvewg
Even CNN has the story:âUkrainians eliminate at least 2 pontoon bridges near Bilohorivka, satellite and drone images showâ
âThe Ukrainians have â twice in the last 24 hours â stopped Russians efforts to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in the Luhansk oblast, blowing up two pontoon bridges near Bilohorivkaâ https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-05-11-22/h_ec80e0cc3ecc3bc617414c159c824b5d
Russell, Ukraine said the same thing at Izium. They lied then and it looks like they are lying now. Both sides lie constantly. I pay more attention to where the action is on the ground than what either Ukraine or Russia high command has to say.
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On the bridges, reports I am seeking say 4 were thrown across. Destroy 2, leaves 2 active.
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If the Russians have broken through here, you will see movement down the highway toward Popasna to link with the Russian force that broke out from there. Should be obvious which situation is correct in the next day or so.
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Ed Forbes, Can you show any evidence of four bridges? I only can find the two the Ukrainians destroyed.
Russell
Geolocation now has 3 locations blown https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1523271692424204288
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So, if only 3, then the Russians may have got their butt kicked hard.
If there is a 4th, 1 is still moving troops. No hard data on how much of a Russian force got across before the bridges were blown.
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Heavy casualties are expected in these types of actions, but considered acceptable if it opens a road behind a fortified line.
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I donât have a hard, confirmable site for the 4th, so it might not exist.
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This was one site that located bridging locations, noting more bridging units in reserve. So the 4th, or more, might be rebuilt on 1 of the 3.
. https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-9-may-2020-a1137caa3ed7
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The next 2 days will tell the tale.
Nothing new for BIden. He declared the unvaccinated were standing in the way.
Before, he was a little more reasonable. When Harry Reid wouldn’t negotiate as the Bush tax cuts were expiring, McConnell called Biden saying he needed a dance partner, and they reached an agreement on some tax cuts.
Democrats stalled Fed moves until now, because they can claim their actions brought inflation under control.
Year over year inflation, starting around June, will be compared to the higher price level, and will be lower and look like things are under control.
However, the latest numbers were worse than expected, as they got to apply a large negative in gas prices for a 1% drop in Aprilm which gets weighted heavily.
Those pictures do look like the Russians took a beating.
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I think pontoon bridges are pretty easy to build, pretty easy to destroy. Obviously a risky move because the other side can destroy your bridges and trap you on the wrong side with no escape. One would think that they would let a certain number of advancing forces through on purpose, then blow it. Not likely to be be able to hide these temporary bridge efforts with all the eyes in the sky. You will need to accept that some losses are going to occur if you try it.
If Russia doesn’t make significant advances after a month of this offensive then they might need to go to Plan C, I’d be a bit nervous to find out what that is. If it stalls then that is the moment where this thing could be settled. Not sure that is possible because of the high emotional factor.
CNN gets security video of Russian soldiers shooting civilians in the back at close range, then looting their business. This is as bad as it gets. https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/europe/ukraine-video-russian-soldiers-shoot-civilians/index.html
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War gets messy, but this is beyond the line even for messy. The only valid response from Russia is to find these people and prosecute them, the standard “this is fake” response won’t cut it here. This stuff will happen on both sides, but it has to be prosecuted when it is this blatant and the perpetrators can be identified. Propaganda gold for Ukraine, this type of thing sticks.
Tom,
I’m sure this isn’t new to you; that looks relatively mild to me. I think ‘as bad as it gets’ is far too strong a term to use here. The atrocities of war can be much more barbaric, widespread, and severe, even in the 20’th century. See also, Rape of Najing.
[Edit: or My Lai, or others. I don’t keep a list handy and I don’t like to dwell on them.]
mark,
Yes, you are right, certainly there have been worse things even in this conflict. I guess I meant as âclearâ as it gets for a documented and undeniable crime that should be prosecutable.
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There wasnât any threat here, a key point here is the soldiers talking with them, then releasing them, then shooting them in the back. Many of the civilian shootings can come down to scared soldiers with itchy trigger fingers in the fog of war who canât really tell who is an enemy. At least there is some plausible deniability in many cases. Soldiers do drive in civilian cars, etc.
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Just for balance, you have to prosecute these cases.
U.S. Soldier convicted of killing Iraqi family hanged himself in prison https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steven-dale-green-soldier-convicted-of-killing-iraqi-family-dies-in-prison/
Tom,
I don’t mean to be obnoxious, really. But war is like that. Why should Russia care that civilians are dying? (my answer, I don’t think they do, I think they think that’s the point) They’ve been blasting cities with missiles and bombing them with airstrikes and smashing them with artillery; those civilians didn’t deserve to die any more or less than these, as far as I can tell. I don’t buy the fundamental concept of ‘war crime’. All war looks essentially criminal to me – murder and destruction sanctioned by a force external to the local state. What else to call it but criminal.
Shrug.
Tom,
This is not intended to be personally aimed at you. It’s just a general vent.
See, I personally suspect we in the US prosecute our soldiers for war crimes because we want to pretend that war is some sanitizable affair that can be conducted with clean hands — so we don’t have to feel guilty about the death and destruction our forces cause.
I don’t think that flies. Sometimes we deem it necessary to fight. It’s ugly and evil as all get out, but sometimes it’s still necessary. But I wish we didn’t have to pretend about it, so our politicians and noncombatant citizenry can wash their hands. If people can’t deal with the horror, maybe the cause isn’t really worth it and they should rethink it.
Anyways, that’s my rant for the month.
I’m not a big supporter of war crimes at all unless it is ordered from central command or there is repeated actions from a group. This one is simply a crime, it is outright murder, and the very long leash you give to soldiers in a war doesn’t apply * here * IMO. Note to soldiers: Don’t do this with security cameras rolling. We will see a a much higher incidence of this stuff now because the surveillance is so high, not because this war is special.
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I saw a European produced documentary about the eastern front in WWII and soldiers from both sides (USSR/Germany) openly admitted they routinely executed opposing soldiers. An example was they simply didn’t want to have to process them as prisoners of war.
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These Russians here were probably a bit worried these civilians were really Ukraine soldiers who were going to go get weapons or they were going to reveal their positions. Once a few fellow soldiers get killed in your unit then everything changes.
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I would randomly guess that the US prosecutes maybe 1% or less of things like this that happen. A bigger problem for the US is properly aiming at and properly hitting things it shouldn’t be targeting. One should not expect this to be perfect, just reasonable care taken to avoid civilians. That line is debatable.
The Ukraine line on the river has been breached per Ukraine General Staff. Breach acknowledged is to the west of the blown bridges from above posts, but the same general area.
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â The enemy forged the Siverskyi Donets River in the Limansky sector for the introduction of the main forces and an offensive. On the Siverskyi direction, the enemy launched an offensive towards Zelenaia Dolina and Novoselenivka. Combat operations continue.â
. https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/uo489n/ua_general_staff_update_in_the_lyman_direction/
OMG. The new Russian tank turret Olympic gymnastics champion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiybJ8UuHXA
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Looks like a triple twisting double back. I’m guessing that one is not survivable.
mark bofill (Comment #211904),
I think that is exactly right.
May 15, one small reprimand for one small lawyer.
Shame the judge will not allow evidence of Hilary purported malfeasance.
Expect the Democrats to throw up some last minute reason to save Sussman, but live in hope.
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Democrats now subpoenaing Republican house members.
Feels so South Americanisto.
Surely the US courts are robust enough to stand up to this new
McCarthyism?
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Go Ukraine and all Ukraine supporters.
Ed Forbes (Comment #211906)
You wrote â The enemy forged the Siverskyi Donets River in the Limansky sector for the introduction of the main forces and an offensive.â
The Russian strategy seems to be to keep providing targets until the Ukrainians run out of artillery shells. The Russians lost another pontoon bridge and about 30 more pieces of mechanized armor.
âOSINTtechnical@Osinttechnical, ¡2 hours ago
According to reports, yesterday, Russian forces attempted to recover some of the troops and equipment that crossed the Siverskyi Donets River a couple of days ago. It didnât go well. Destroyed and abandoned PMP bridging units, BTRs, and BREM ARVs.â https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1524962088774520833?s=20&t=ppSS-p4mBYa5AjZCOnNq9A
âEuromaidan Press@EuromaidanPress,¡1 hour ago
On May 12, the artillery destroyed another pontoon bridge and equipment. 4 days of unsuccessful attempts to cross the Siverskyi Donets river in Luhansk Oblast saw the losses of more than 70 units of equipment & 2 battalions of infantry & engineers.â https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1524974467146866690?s=20&t=ppSS-p4mBYa5AjZCOnNq9A
Finally, a tabulation of the NATO air assets required to provide surveillance of the Ukrainian battlefield. The link provides a snapshot of the operation on 1 April 2022. I canât imagine the cost of this operation⌠24 hours a day for months on end and up to 30 aircraft at a time. A side note, I had suspected that NATO was flying fighter aircraft but I could not see them. This confirms it⌠Fighter aircraft were a major component of the assets.
âNATO@NATO In response to Russiaâs invasion of #Ukraine, NATO has up to 30 aircraft on patrol at any moment. To deter any potential aggression against Allies, #NATO is deploying an unprecedented mix of fighter jets, reconnaissance aircraft and support planesâ https://twitter.com/NATO/status/1523978450901553159?s=20&t=3XYhOEJ1B5SIDV9dfcRzdQ
Russell, heavy losses in a defended river assault is expected.
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I am seeing reports of multiple breakouts through the main defensive lines on multiple sectors. If the lines can be turned, the Russian losses in the crossing will be less than breaking their teeth with frontal assaults against fortified positions.
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The biggest Russian advantage at this point is that Russia has been able to rotate fresh or rested units into the attack where Ukraine forces have been under constant artillery fire now for days, sometimes weeks. This is extremely hard on the defense.
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Again, the next 2 days will tell the story. Not enough hard data as both sides lie constantly so I will wait until movement on the ground tells us what is real.
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I wonder what she would have said if the numbers were similar but Trump had remained in office…
[Just to be clear, I don’t blame either Trump or Biden for the Covid deaths while they were/are in office.]
I should remind people that lots of burned out equipment can be from either side, it’s not always obvious. Ukrainian propaganda can include pictures of their own equipment they claim is from Russia. The one thing we know for sure is this war is an armor graveyard of a scale we haven’t seen since WWII.
The Jan 6th committee continues to only subpoena their political opponents, almost all of which were not present at the riot. A witch hunt. Nobody is paying attention to this except extreme partisans. It’s an embarrassment in my view, but will be solved if the right takes the house in November.
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I agree that people who participated in the riot (beyond the MAGA tourists) should be prosecuted, but object to the different standards of justice applied to Antifa protests. Nobody on the Jan 6th committee could possibly write a neutral standard to prosecute their political opponents without also sweeping up half of their own party who using the same fighting words continuously. I tuned this stuff out a year ago.
Tom Scharf,
People accused of misdemeanors (which is all or nearly all the January 6 rioters), seldom get put in solitary for months awaiting trial, with no possibility of bail….. especially if they have no criminal history. The process of selective prosecution is being used by the DOJ to dole out punishment that is wildly disconnected from the charges against those being held. It is indeed a political witch hunt, and has been from Jan. 7 on. That is not going to change at all until Democrats lose control of Congress. The politically motivated prosecutions will, unfortunately, continue for as long as the Biden administration is in office. Toss a Molotov cocktail into a Federal courthouse? Slap on the wrist. Assault a Federal officer defending a Federal courthouse? Charges dropped. Wander around the Capitol for 15 minutes, then leave…. damaging nothing? No bail, and years awaiting trial in prison for a crime that gets a sentence of not more than a couple of months. It is an ugly travesty.
Hypothesis: The current fanatical attempt by the Russians to bridge and occupy territory south of the Seversky Donets River [and the fanatical defense by the Ukrainians] is [mostly] about oil and gas reserves and infrastructure. This report from an energy consulting group seems to indicate that: âUkraine At Risk: An Oil and Gas Perspectiveâ http://www.energy-cg.com/UkraineAtRisk.html
What is actually going to happen if the Russian dog catches the car it’s chasing? Real question.
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Russia should still be able to achieve it’s military objectives through weight of force. Although the chances I think have fallen further IMO (95% at the start, to 90%, to 75% now). If they disperse the Ukrainian army … then what? What if Ukraine refuses any peace deal?
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The will to fight from Ukraine is indisputable at this point. Russia has committed enough atrocities large and small to properly motivate a long term fight that will be supported with advanced weapons from the west.
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Kill all the Ukrainians? No. Long term hostile occupation of Ukraine? Unlikely, requires too many soldiers. Where is the Russian army going to go? Home? No. Large bases outside of cities? That seems dangerously grouped. Disperse inside the cities? Even worse. Group inside of cities? No.
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My guess is the Russians will wall off eastern Ukraine like the Berlin wall because there is no hope of successfully occupying western Ukraine. Ukraine will keep attacking at this line for months and years. Can they suppress the population in eastern Ukraine to prevent an insurgency there? They better or they are in for a big hurt. My read is that the Russians aren’t so great at winning hearts and minds.
Jerome Powell was given an overwhelming and bipartisan confirmation by the Senate for a second term with the Federal Reserve. An outsider unfamiliar with the rationale behind a seeming accolade coming on the heels of failure by the Federal Reserve may need to be versed in those rationales and thus I will attempt to provide the usual ones from the Fed itself and all its supporters in academia, Wall Street and the media.
1. The counterfactual for any Fed failure is that an alternative end result would have always been worse than whatever the Fed did.
2. The Fed can change the economic results with their many tools but bad outcomes are always outside the Fedâs prevail.
3. While the Fed is reversing the actions that led to the recent outbreak of high price inflation with the intent of reducing inflation those actions being reversed did not cause the inflation. This may seem to be intuitively a contradiction but that is because only well-informed Fed people and their supporters are smart enough to understand how this can happen â and they are not telling you.
4. The Fed for some time was attempting to increase the price inflation rate above their normal target and by god they have accomplished that task. The fact that it is way beyond their expectation is no way their fault or doing.
5. The Fed can in modern times accommodate huge amounts of money printing without price inflation because they now have the tools to do it. If it were not for supply chain problems, Covid 19, greedy business people and the war in Ukraine that magic would have continued â just ask any informed economists and their supporters.
6. Keynesian economics says saving is bad and consumer spending is good for the economy so an increasing price inflation, which encourages spending today instead of tomorrow, must be good. Besides it is what often motivates the Fed policies – so it must be a good thing.
Ed,
Love how they refer to the Ukraine army as “Kyiv’s forces” as if Ukraine doesn’t exist. No use of “war” or “invasion”. Very Putin of them, ha ha.
This is [what happens] when political attack ad people listen too much to people who answer phone surveys the way Lucia does.
What were they thinking… I can hear Ian McKellen’s voice in my head saying ‘Authority is not given to the democrats to deny the return of the Great Maga King!’
These fools are going to get the orange man nominated and elected again. It’d be much better to ignore Trump and give the air time to DeSantis. Maybe that’s why they are doing it; Biden (at least used to) polls better against Trump.
Oh well.
Mark Bofill,
My understanding is Biden’s use of “Ultra-Maga” was developed by experts over a six month time frame.
Betting markets place the odds of Republicans taking control of the house at 85+%, and taking control of both chambers about 75%. The Biden administration can already hear the oncoming freight train.
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That won’t make them change any of their foolish and destructive policies… those changes will have to wait until 2024. But at least there won’t be any nutty new laws passed nor any crazy Federal judges confirmed, and there will be plenty of congressional investigations of the Biden family’s corruption. Invest in popcorn futures. Best of all: Nancy Pelosi will be gone for good.
Lucia,
My understanding as well. Maybe Biden just flubbed the delivery and ‘Great Maga King’ was as close as he could articulate to ‘Ultra-Maga’ in that moment.
As far as the Ultra-Maga strategy goes in general.. Well, good luck with that.
[Edit: I should have added; I was only joking above when I referred to political attack ad people listening to people who answer phone surveys the way you do. đ ]
mark bofill,
No doubt Democrats prefer Trump to any other plausible Republican. His permanent (never-going-to-change) negatives are right around 50%, and Dems could not ask for a better get-out-the-vote motivation than Trump running again. IMHO, Trump as the Republican candidate is the most likely path to Democrats controlling the White House in 2025. Lots of people recognize that, probably even Trump, but Trump, being Trump, would never allow a more electable candidate to get the nomination… that would be acting in the county’s best interest instead of Trump’s best interest. Short of a serious health issue, I don’t see how anyone but Trump gets the nomination. I am horrified.
I couldn’t agree more Steve.
Lots of people recognize that, probably even Trump, but Trump, being Trump, would never allow a more electable candidate to get the nomination⌠that would be acting in the countyâs best interest instead of Trumpâs best interest.
That’s Trump in a nutshell.
Well, so the more I think about it, the more I think this: It’s not ‘Trump’s best interest’ exactly I don’t think. I think it’s that Trump honestly believes he and he alone and above all others is the best choice for the job, regardless of his obvious pitfalls. It’s a blind arrogance or narcissism or something that looks a lot like blind arrogance or narcissism. That’s what I honestly think anyway.
Russell,
Pretty funny picture.
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Most modern tanks can snorkel and cross rivers. This is partially a side effect of them having chemical and biological warfare capability so their turrets can be made air tight. You also have to provide air to the engine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI_Myjk9xf4
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Unfortunately you canât just do that anywhere, it tends to be pretty slippery on the bottom of a river. My guess is these tanks got stuck. Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all Russian tank losses are breakdowns, out of gas, stuck in the mud type of abandonment problems.
.
Itâs also possible they just drove them into the water so they couldnât be used by Ukraine.
A slight drawback of the Ultra-MAGA strategy is Trump isn’t on the ballot.
.
I think there is a lot of Trump fatigue in the electorate and this won’t be very effective. It’s also a bit psychotic that on one hand they want Trump banned from all media and social media and on the other hand they want to talk about him 24/7.
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They thought it was such a great thing to give Trump lots of coverage and assumed he was easily beatable in 2016 and it backfired spectacularly. In my view there was an inflection point in 2016 where they stopped attacking Trump and started attacking Trump supporters with a shame campaign. That is what turned a lot of people against them (media, partisans). I don’t think they learned that lesson.
The left consolidated to get Sanders off the ticket in 2020, the right may need to do that with Trump in 2024. Trump wins the nomination if he allows a bunch of others to split the non-Trump vote. The RNC should be able to see this coming and plan for it. We shall see.
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Trump can still wreck everything by running as an independent. I don’t wish him ill outcomes, but that would solve some problems.
Tom Scharf,
“Itâs also possible they just drove them into the water so they couldnât be used by Ukraine.”
.
That’s my guess. Once the bridge was gone, the soldiers could either sit in the tanks and wait to die or abandon the tanks, swim the river, and live. Surrender would mean some Ukrainian soldier would likely shoot them. They probably wanted to live.
.
Tank: an expensive, over-weight, mainly useless, mobile coffin….. with a big gun. Nobody is going to think tanks are effective assets in the future. The US Marine Corps has already dropped tanks from their equipment list.
donât wish him ill outcomes
Lightning bolts… Thor hasn’t helped us yet, I guess he’s not going to.
Tom Scharf,
“I donât think they learned that lesson.”
.
Paraphrasing Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-PĂŠrigord, the left learns nothing and forgets nothing. Theirs is a peculiar religion, without a god that commands them. Still, they are prohibited by their religion from allowing factual reality to change their views. I find the left a very odd religion indeed…. a bit like Islam in its arrogance, rigidity, and stupidity, but without the beheading of apostates (at least in our era).
I marvel at the seeming confidence with which people read Trump’s mind.
There is exactly zero probability that Trump runs as an independent in 2024.
Maybe Trump runs, maybe he doesn’t. If he runs, maybe he wins the nomination, maybe he doesn’t. If he is the nominee, maybe he wins the election, maybe he doesn’t.
What I am sure of is that the 2024 nominee will be a Trump Republican or somebody who has successfully masqueraded as one. I think the latter is very unlikely. I am also sure that the press will claim that the Republican nominee is no different than Trump.
Mike,
What I am sure of is that the 2024 nominee will be a Trump Republican
What is a Trump Republican? Real question.
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[Edit: and who do you think is reading Trump’s mind?]
Mike M,
No mind reading is needed.
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Trump has consistently acted like an arrogant a$$hole for decades, and the rational conclusion to draw is that he is in fact an arrogant a$$hole. Seriously, who would want to play a round of golf with the guy? Not me!
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He will run again unless he suffers a serious health issue; anything else would be a complete reversal of his life-long behaviors.
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I agree that the Nikki Haley’s of the Republican party (AKA Obama Lite folks) are not going to get the nomination, independent of what Trump does. Only a candidate that is willing to bring about real policy change, reversing all the destructive woke policies, is likely to get the nomination.
The scenario where Trump runs as an independent is him losing the nomination because the RNC “steals” the election from him by getting everyone but DeSantis out of the race early. Then he runs as an independent for vengeance.
Mike,
I also want to know what a ‘Trump Republican’ is. Do you consider DeSantis a Trump Republican? Or Dr. Oz?
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I agree with SteveF that we can expect Trump to continue to act like Trump. No mind readign required.m\
You guys can’t tell the difference between Trump and Romney? Really?
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A big part of the difference is attitude: Being willing to fight for America and its people. As opposed to those who are more concerned with protecting the “principled conservativeâ brand: mild-mannered, respectable, and unwilling to rock the boat. Attack Disney? Are you kidding me?
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The simplest distinction is recognizing that left/right is not the big issue; the real divide is between the patriots and the globalists.
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Or just listen to Trump:
“Many people have asked what is Trumpism, a new term being used more and more. Iâm hearing that term more and more. I didnât come up with it”
“what it means is great deals, great trade deals, great ones, not deals where we give away everything, our jobs, money.”
“It means low taxes and eliminated job killing regulations”
“It means strong borders, but people coming into our country based on a system of merit. So they come in and they can help us as opposed to coming here and not being good for us”
“It means law enforcement. It means very strong protection for the second amendment and the right to keep and bear arms. It means support for the forgotten men and women who have been taken advantage of for so many years.”
“it means a strong military and taking care of our vets”
Mike,
Not knowing what the term ‘Trump Republican’ means is not indicative of an inability to tell the difference between Trump and Romney. Not knowing what the term ‘Trump Republican’ means is indicative of nothing more than not knowing what the term means.
It sounds like a Trump Republican is a Republican populist, roughly speaking?
What they say about San Fran is quite true. First day, hotel off Union Square, guy sprawled on the floor shooting up in broad daylight.
A Trumpist, coined by the media, is basically not a RINO and isn’t afraid of saying so.
DaveJR,
I’m mildly curious what MikeM meant, whether he meant a politician Trump supports, or whether he meant a politician with a political agenda similar to Trump’s, or whether he meant more broadly a Republican populist, or whether he meant most broadly anybody who is not a RINO.
It’s not of any particular importance, just me trying to understand what MikeM meant when he said this:
What I am sure of is that the 2024 nominee will be a Trump Republican or somebody who has successfully masqueraded as one.
MikeM
You guys canât tell the difference between Trump and Romney? Really?
Of course. That doesn’t tell me what a “Trump Republican” is.
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A big part of the difference is attitude: Being willing to fight for America and its people.
As far as I can tell Romney fights for America and its people.
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You could really clarify if you gave a list of 20 “Trump Republicans”. Then I’d know. But your schpiel tells me nothing.
DaveJR,
I also don’t know what a RINO is. Can you give me a list of 20 or so RINOs?
Not much wrong with Trump policies, the problem is with Trump behavior. There is a lot of room for a sane Trump. DeSantis is an example. One has to wonder what Trump would do with Ukraine.
markBofill,
I want to know what he means because as it stands, his claim is unfalsifiable. If he had a list of people he thinks are Trump Republicans (and DaveJR thinks are not Rinos) I could tell whether he is right in the end.
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Trump Supports Dr. Oz. Presumably Oz is a “Trump Republican”. I don’t think Dr. Oz is going to get the GOP nomination for President.
Lucia,
Fair enough. For my part, I just wanted to understand what Mike was saying and why — what his claim is.
But it’s not terribly important to me.
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[Edit: Oh. You were talking about RINOs. I think I could come up with a list of those, I’m going to go try.]
Mark,
I can see how it’s not important to you. It’s impossible for either of us to understand and so amounts to a non-claim. But I think he intends to make a claim and I’m a bit curious what that claim actually means. If he clarifies, I’ll know. So I ask.
mark bofill (Comment #211943): “It sounds like a Trump Republican is a Republican populist, roughly speaking?”
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Yes.
Sorry, I took that as understood. A Trump Republican supports policies that roughly align with Trump’s policies. As opposed to those Republicans of the Bush/McCain/Romney sort.
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In context, what I meant is obvious. But I failed to provide the context.
———-
Hmm. Maybe the missing context is that I assume that Trump is not irrational.
lucia (Comment #211947): “As far as I can tell Romney fights for America and its people.”
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No. Romney has no fight in him. He rolls over whenever the establishment pushes even a little.
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lucia: “You could really clarify if you gave a list of 20 âTrump Republicansâ. Then Iâd know. But your schpiel tells me nothing.”
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I don’t see how you can expect me to be able to do that or how it would enable you to tell what a Trump Republican is. I would be basing my judgement on a subset of what that politician does or says and you would be interpreting using a likely different subset.
lucia (Comment #211950): “Trump Supports Dr. Oz. Presumably Oz is a âTrump Republicanâ. I donât think Dr. Oz is going to get the GOP nomination for President.”
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I do not know that Oz is really a Trump Republican. I don’t know what he is. He seems to be a quack, but maybe he just plays one on TV. Might be similar with politics.
I think that McCormack is very much NOT a Trump Republican. I may have been misinformed, but my understanding is that as CEO or Bridgewater he pretty much aligned with the woke corporatism and pro-China policies of Blackrock.
Mike M,
“Maybe the missing context is that I assume that Trump is not irrational.”
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Trump is clearly rational, unlike president Biden de imbeciles, who wanders around in his personal fog of dementia, constantly risking WWIII with his demented rantings about invading Ukraine and getting rid of Putin.
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But that doesn’t mean Tump is able to effectively advance a sensible policy agenda; he clearly can’t. Trump embarrasses wildly out of control people, because puts them to shame with his lack of control.
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He has zero self-dicipline, and apparently, zero self-awareness, so he presents a ‘target-rich’ environment to his political opponents. He is the Republican’s worst possible option to win in 2024, and probably the only nationally known Republican that would likely lose in 2024. A lightening bolt from Zeus would sure help the Republicans, but that is unlikely.
MikeM
I do not know that Oz is really a Trump Republican. I donât know what he is. He seems to be a quack, but maybe he just plays one on TV.
I also suspect he is the modern day equivalent of the peddler of patent medicines. So of those were real– but that was incidental the the hawking of the goods.
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I do know Trump backs him.
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Mentinioning 1 or 2 people who are not Trump republicans doesn’t help me recognize what who you think is one. I want a list of 20 Trump republicans so I know how to recognize who is a Trump republican. You can add who is not to your list. But I really need a list of who is (other than Trump himself.)
MikeM
I donât see how you can expect me to be able to do that or how it would enable you to tell what a Trump Republican is.
Ok. Maybe you can’t. Well, if you can’t identify which politicians are “Trump Republicans”, I suspect the term has no meaning. I think it’s pretty obvious I won’t be able to tell who you think qualifies as a Trump Repubican if you can’t or won’t do so.
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I have to admit, this is what I suspected. It’s a word. Sort of like “Super-mega-Maga” or something. It’s made up for effect and means nothing.
Lucia,
DeSantis is a ‘Trump Republican’.
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I don’t think it is hard to identify ‘Trump Republicans’: If they utterly and loudly reject the woke rubbish, open boarders, the refusal to prosecute violent criminals…. while simultaneously punishing the Jan. 6 rioters without limit, they are Trump Republicans.
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I think it is a bit like Scott Adams pointed out: multiple people are looking at the same factual reality, but seeing two diametrically opposed ‘movies’ of what that reality means. Trump Republicans utterly reject the movie that leftists see.
SteveF,
Does MikeM agree DeSantis is a “Trump Republican”? I asked specifically
May 14th, 2022 at 12:58 pm Edit This
Mike,
I also want to know what a âTrump Republicanâ is. Do you consider DeSantis a Trump Republican? Or Dr. Oz?
But Mike didn’t say. So I don’t know a single Republican MikeM thinks is a “Trump Republican”.
Steve,
So, we are all Trump Republicans here, even though many or most of us don’t want Trump nominated or re-elected. It seems an unfortunate turn of phrase. I’d prefer to avoid it, myself.
The people Trump endorsed should probably be considered Trump Republicans. They have embraced the idea that Trump won in 2020 and it was stolen from him. Without saying this, candidates do not get Trump’s endorsement, is my understanding. That gives us at least 50 candidates for ‘Trump Republican.’
People who support Trump policies is another way of defining ‘Trump Republican.’ Or it could be Republicans who like to attack Democrats in a Trumpy style.
Here are some names, that Mike can say yes or no:
Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Madison Cawthorn, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Elsie Stefanik, Kevin McCarthy, Kathy Barnette, Dr Oz, Mo Brooks, Tommy Tuberville, David Perdue, Hershel Walker, Sarah Palin, John James, Kelli Ward, Joe Arpaio, Glenn Youngkin, Doug Mastriano, Jason Chaffetz, Rand Paul, Josh Mandel, JD Vance.
Mike,
Thanks for your response (211953). I get the misunderstanding now. But no, I don’t think Trump is irrational either. I have aired my grievance with Trump many times here, I don’t see a need to do so again unless you specifically want me to for some reason. But it’s not that I think he’s irrational; I don’t.
See – MikeN’s comment. That is a good reason I’d prefer not to identify as a ‘Trump Republican’. It’s got too fuzzy a meaning; people can assign whatever they think. ‘Trump Republican’ might as well mean ‘Trump Supporter’.
No way.
[Edit: … Of course, I still identify as a Climate Denier, so what the heck do I care… hmm.. I need to think that through.]
SteveF (Comment #211959): “I donât think it is hard to identify âTrump Republicansâ: If they utterly and loudly reject the woke rubbish, open boarders, the refusal to prosecute violent criminals …”
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Right. And I gave more details above. I suppose I was defining “Trumpism” rather than “Trump Republicans”, but is there a difference?
——–
mark bofill (Comment #211961): “It seems an unfortunate turn of phrase. Iâd prefer to avoid it, myself.”
.
All that is needed is a better term. Do you have one?
——
DeSantis is the most obvious example of a Trump Republican since he has done so much to establish his cred. Cotton and Hawley typically sound like they are. But so does Lindsey Graham, and he is just an opportunistic windbag. J.D. Vance for sure.
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It is not like you can draw a clean boundary. The important thing is standing up for America (both the nation and the idea) and the common people. That does not require that a politician agree with Trump on everything or think that Trump walks on water.
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Hmm. I think that Bill Barr is pretty much a Trump Republican. So, yeah; it is a bad label.
I would be very careful about the term Trump Republican.
I think some philosophical conservatives think of the term as meaning policies that they agreed with that made it through congress and the President (Trump). A number of Trump Republican politicians, and doing what politicians do, use the term because they feel there are a goodly number of Republican voters who identify with that term. Trump, on the other hand, is not a Trump Republican. He is politically for whatever benefits Trump and that well might be something more in line with the Democrat party. He would turn on the Republican party in a heartbeat and most likely as a matter of revenge for like losing a primary. I have never trusted Trump and never will.
My advice to the Republican party and their voters is that they should distance themselves from Trump as quickly as possible. I know that most will not and I see that as problematic for the Republicans in 2024 and maybe 2022, depending on how involved Trump becomes.
Rand Paul, no. I’d say he is 90% libertarian. I like that guy, if just because he has some of the most entertaining question/answer fun during Senate hearings. He’s also pretty smart, unlike the Marjorie Taylor Greene tribe.
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Classic: “… frankly my toilets don’t work in my house and I blame you and people like you …” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELDHaeEsNF0
I won’t vote for anyone who endorses the “stop the steal” madness. That I cannot take. If they ever come up with some actual evidence then perhaps I will see it another way.
MikeM
If they utterly and loudly reject the woke rubbish, open boarders, the refusal to prosecute violent criminals âŚâ
Much of that has nothing to do with Trump. If that alone were to make you a “Trump” republican, it would sweep in lots of “never Trumpers”. So I think it’s odd to call that Trump Republican. I also reject “Trumpism” for it.
,
All that is needed is a better term. Do you have one?
Just “Republican”.
I can’t think of a worse term than labeling pretty much normal Republican’s “Trump” ones.
DeSantis is the most obvious example of a Trump Republican since he has done so much to establish his cred.
I bet he doesn’t consider him a “Trump” republican. I think he considers himself “DeSantis”. Beyond that “cred” is not something many people associate with Trump.
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Honestly, I don’t know why anyone who hopes the GOP can win the presidency in 2024 could want to call the nominee a “Trump” republican.
The ‘Trump Republican’ is an unfortunate label, since it ties a lot of perfectly sensible policies to a very disagreeable and offensive person, discrediting those policies by association. Sort of like ‘sky dragon slayers’, who reject basic radiation physics, discrediting those who rationally argue that global warming from CO2 will not bring about the rapid end of humanity.
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‘Rational Nationalist’ might be a better label than ‘Trump Republican’. đ
Lucia,
Just âRepublicanâ.
I canât think of a worse term than labeling pretty much normal Republicanâs âTrumpâ ones.
I agree. I was tempted to say that but hesitated, but I agree. Trump has pulled quite the branding trick if the ‘Trump Republicans’ comes to stand for all the things Steve identified, and ‘Republican’ comes to mean RINO. I don’t intend to cooperate or participate in that.
I should try it at work though. All the best and brightest software engineers that work really hard can henceforth be known as ‘Bofill Engineers’. Everyone says they’re the best, maybe the best ever… Bofill Engineers have done more for embedded DOD systems than the inventor of the transistor.
SteveF,
Rational Nationalist would be a much better label. Trump Republican makes someone sound like the puppet of the head of a junta in a bannana republic. It also takes away any individual identity. I’m sure DeSantis would not want to be thought of as some sort of Trump satellite when (a) DeSantis is important in and of himself, (b) his views are his own, (c) Trump slammed Desantis because he has his own views. He doesn’t just kowtow to Trump.
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Why any politician who is independently important would want to be talked about as a “Trump-anything” would be a real mystery. I could see where some voter might want to call himself a “Trump republican” — it means he likes Trump a lot. I could also see where some person hoping for a start in politics might (e.g. Dr. Oz). That’s to curry favor with Trump.
.
But it’s both an inaccurate and counter-productive label for anyone who has their own spine.
Tom, I like the issues that Rand Paul raises, but he leans too much, in my view, towards a political and emotional approach. I think a more intellectual and less personality directed approach would work better.
Of course, what Paul does is much in line with almost all politicians in Washington. What continues to puzzle me is that these politicians’ constituents do not in great numbers express disdain for being patronized. I think part of this disconnect has to do with the two party system and voters acting more like fans of “their” party and ignoring the weaknesses in their party’s arguments.
As already noted, “Trump Republican” is a poor term. I used it only to distinguish those Republicans who generally agree with Trump’s policies from those of the Bush/McCain/Romney ilk. There are still many of the latter in positions of power and influence in the Republican Party and they hope to regain ascendance. So “Republican” fails to recognize an important distinction.
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“Rational Nationalist” is little better. Nobody knows what that means. Maybe “Populist Republican”? Most people would likely recognize that label as fitting Trump, DeSantis, and Vance but not Romney, Bush, or McCain.
Well finally some good newsâŚ. âNBC News poll asks Republicans: ‘Do you consider yourself to be more of a supporter of Donald Trump or more of a supporter of the Republican Party? Result: 34 percent Trump, 58 percent GOP. 34 is lowest ever; 58 is highest ever.â https://twitter.com/byronyork/status/1525842434919485440?s=21&t=NDnC6UNCv-PmPVtgfLFKsA
Given that you use “ilk” for the others, and other reasons, I take it you approve of Trump. That may well be why you felt ok labeling people who are not Trump supporters as “Trump Republicans”. But it’s worse than just a poor term. It is counter productive, likely insulting to those you so label and alienating to many Republicans.
.
Whatever that distinction is “Trump” is not a useful descriptive word. “Trump-X” should be reserved for those who actually align with Trump”.
Is DeSantist a populist? I’m not sure that even fits.
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One thing is certainly true: Rational Nationalist will generally not be seen to fit Trump. đ
Here is a series of simple questions which would separate the RINOS from the rest:
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1. Do you believe transgender males (AKA males ‘transitioning’ to be ‘females’) should be 100% prohibited from competing in women’s sports at all levels?
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2. Do you believe all non-citizens who enter the USA illegally should be immediately deported?
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3. Do you believe that crimes of all kinds, including shoplifting, assault, car theft, burglary, robbery, and all more serious crimes, should be uniformly and vigorously prosecuted?
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4. Do you believe judges should be always allowed to evaluate the risk an individual arrested for a crime poses to society and either set bail (or refuse to) while the accused is awaiting trial?
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5. Do you believe that differences in average life achievement (educational, professional, income, etc) between identifiable groups are due mostly to widespread prejudice against any identifiable group that achieves less?
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RINOS will hem and haw at each of these questions, with few straight answers. Rational Nationalist Republicans will answer: yes, yes, yes, yes, and no, without delay or hesitation.
You could probably add a question on free speech as well.
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Funnily enough, yesterday in san fran, across from a BLM money raising wheeze was a black religious group. Abortion is KKK parenthood and kill all the homosexuals! Seems some people already have all the free speech they could ask for!
I am wondering how to get lucia to realize that I agree that “Trump Republican” was a poor choice.
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It is good that Trump supporters are now saying they are primarily Republicans. That is not a result of rejecting Trump’s policies, it is a recognition that populsm now dominates the party. But vigilance is needed, or the Old Guard will make a comeback. Likely by the time honored method of saying one thing to get elected and doing something very different once in office.
———
For the record, if Trump is the nominee in 2024 I will vote for him without hesitation. But I hope they choose someone better. At present, that list consists of DeSantis and maybe Pompeo.
Just as an FYI, it was Trump’s endorsement of DeSantis in 2018 that proved instrumental in getting him elected as governor. He was losing the race before that happened. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-trump-backs-desantis-20180622-story.html
“The additional Trump tweet comes a day after a Fox News poll was released showing Putnam with a 32 percent to 17 percent advantage over DeSantis.”
Trump has redeeming characteristics, it was really him alone taking on the woke dogma with an unvarnished and rebel yell attitude. The same for the increasingly monolithic legacy media. All the “cool kids” literally laughed at him coming down that escalator. Who can forget Obama’s public humiliation of Trump at DC’s yearly press gala? As with a lot of trailblazers of this type, those very same impulses eventually brought him down. So … thank you Trump, now please go away, ha ha.
MikeM
That is not a result of rejecting Trumpâs policies, it is a recognition that populsm now dominates the party.
Not sure of that.
Anyway, I think a lot of people have rejected Trump himself. That may not be a rejection of his policies. It’s the Tweeting – egomanaical- Trump-comes-first -including all americans– self indulgence that many people don’t like. Many know they can get many of those policies in a package that is not Trump.
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Tom,
Sure. But Trump reviled DeSantis later from not just doing whatever Trump wants.
…thank you Trump, now please go away, ha ha.
Many people know they don’t need Trump to get those parts of Trump they like (whether few or numerous.) I definitely wish he would go away and let others who don’t share his many flaws be seen.
I am puzzled by the claim that “Trump reviled DeSantis”. I am not aware of that other than a media-manufactured “rift” between the two. Maybe I missed something.
Trump republican, Trumpist etc, were primarily coined by the media. It’s supposed to not be a good choice, from their POV.
Mike
I am not aware of that other than a media-manufactured âriftâ between the two.
Media manufactured? Trump volleyed shots. That’s not manufactured. Trump claiming it was manufactured after people aren’t on Trump’s side doesn’t make it “media manufactured”.
Now we should attempt to define Populism and Republican Populism. Going back to the early 20th Century I would see Populism as being for a bigger role for government and outdoing the Progressives in that area.
What differentiates the Republican and Democrat parties for me is that in more areas the Republicans are for smaller government and I think that difference has become greater given the greater lean to the left of the Democrat party. Both parties are for way more government than I want. MikeM’s talk of Populism in the Republican party from evidently Trump’s influence is something to be considered and what it means in terms of the size of government.
I suspect that a number of Trump supporters and voters who might claim to be Populists are not necessarily in favor of smaller government. They might well be considered the new RINOs.
Trump is a man of no known consistent principles or intellectual bearings and thus is probably more suited for a Populist movement than a small government Republican.
The Progressives believed government should be more active in promoting the welfare of the people. However, although they agreed with some of the ideas of the Populists, the Progressives were generally much more conservative. They were often alarmed at the radicalism of the Populists and believed in reforming society and government rather than proposing sweeping changes to the Capitalist system. For example, they rejected the Populist idea of direct government control or ownership of railroads. They also rejected major changes to the monetary system, such as using both gold and silver to back the dollar. Instead, the Progressives believed that government should use its powers to more actively regulate the financial system and prevent the growth of monopolies. They also hoped the government would be more active in promoting social justice and human welfare.
Kenneth,
“I suspect that a number of Trump supporters and voters who might claim to be Populists are not necessarily in favor of smaller government.”
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Sure, there are lots of people suffering the consequences of horrible government policies who will accept most any policies which give them leave.
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Still, there are many who just want to be left alone.
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The left will never leave them alone.
“I bet he doesnât consider him a âTrumpâ republican. I think he considers himself âDeSantisâ. ”
Before he became governor DeSantis won the primary with ads about how much he supported Trump, like building Trump’s wall with his kid from blocks.
NeverTrumpers never forgave him for it.
MikeN,
That doesn’t make him a “Trump Republican”. Nor does it suggest he thinks of himself as a “Trump-anything”.
lucia (Comment #211983 May 15th, 2022 at 11:24 am
“Anyway, I think a lot of people have rejected Trump himself. That may not be a rejection of his policies. Itâs the Tweeting â egomanaical- Trump-comes-first -including all americansâ self indulgence that many people donât like. Many know they can get many of those policies in a package that is not Trump.”
–
While many of those policies are potentially obtainable in a package that is not Trump it is a fact that no one was offering his policies without Trump before Trump and no one is really offering them now.
–
If the Trump policies could be obtained by a leader who was not Trump then, due to your comment [I think a lot of people have rejected Trump himself] it is obvious another leader before Trump would have been chosen.
Also that currently another leader with those policies would be visible and Trump would have disappeared.
–
I understand that a lot of people here have expressed a dislike for Trump personally.
But a lot of people do espouse many of the Trump principles.
While I look on with bemusement at overtly over nationalistic people
there is a lot to say about the idea of making America a great place again.
We could do with making Australia a great place again.
–
Looking after one’s people’s jobs first.
Building on the American principle of free speech [not free violence or action I note].
Respect for the law.
Ethical values even if honored in the breach by said redhead.
Defending America and the world.
Building up a responsible United Nations and NATO and, dare I say it, a responsible Russia, China and North Korea and France and Germany.
–
So.
–
Where were the Republicans pushing this agenda 2016?
Bush?
The Mario brother?
Dr Kit?
Cruz? well possibly the best of that brigade.
Trump won because he promised good policies [not wacky tea party politics] was honest in his pursuit of them, and was anti the pocket lining establishment on both sides.
Democrats posing as Republicans like Mitch McConnell and the husband of the new Supreme Court Judge.
Incestuous Washington?
not much.
–
Where are these policies now and who is offering them?
Redhead?
Who has alternatives for the Republican Party?
Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney and crickets.
–
De Santis is offering Trump lite.
Will get in if the Democrats succeed in their McCarthyist trials.
–
But to get Trump policies which half of America wants one has to elect Trump acolytes who will support?
Trump.
–
What the Democrats have failed to realize in their hatred is that their actions are making Trump a martyr and rallying point.
He might get ill, indicted or suffer Russian Billionaire disease.
Biden might get the credit for the Russians disposing of Putin.
but otherwise?
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Sorry for the rant.
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angech,
If by ‘Trump lite’ you mean DeSantis wouldn’t have his VP overturn a legitimate election so DeSantis could rule a paltry four more years, but otherwise similar to Trump policy-wise, then I certainly hope so. Trump lite would be much better than Trump.
Mark bofill,
Agreed.
Angech isn’t voting in the US elections.
As an Australian, I Angech doesn’t grasph how really horrible Trumps vain, egostistical and fortunately failed attempt to overturn the electoral college vote is really, truly a horrible thing.
He should never be president again. I shudder at the thought he might be nominated. I wish we could deport him to Australia where he could live nextdoor to Angech.
I don’t at all think it unfair to state shenanigans occurred in the 2020 election. Evidence was presented and ignored. The establishment turned a blind eye because of the ramifications and the acceptable result. You only need compare the exhaustive investigations into the entirely fraudulent 2016 election interference claims to similar claims in 2020 to realize every stone was left officially unturned. That reassures me of nothing.
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I’ve seen it claimed that Trump won 2016 with something like 30,000 votes? Probably ridiculous, but the point is, you don’t need “wide spread fraud” (the mantra everyone repeated) to win an election, but highly targeted fraud in a few key places.
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Still, I hope vigilance will be at paranoia levels moving forwards and any such irregularities will be carefully documented and pursued.
DaveJR,
I donât at all think it unfair to state shenanigans occurred in the 2020 election.
Trump, made a few things better but he made other things worse. His trade policies hurt US consumers and more businesses than it helped. His border and immigration policy was no more than a holding action and like a lot of the programs that he favored he hurt getting items approved by exaggerations and lies. He did not reduce the size of government and further threw the Georgia race up for grabs by telling Republicans to spend big on Covid 19. His unsupported election victory claim lost Republican control of the Senate and if he insists that his support (and he gets it) from Republicans running for Congress depends on claiming a stolen election, he will hurt their chances in 2022. His claim that Pence could overturn the counting of the electoral vote was insane, unconstitutional and beyond the pale for a US president.
He has publicly turned on many of the members of his administration including Pence who was a constitutional hero in this matter. Compare the debate performances of Trump versus Biden. Trump’s idiotic strategy was to keep interrupting Biden instead of presenting his plans and ideas and then letting doddering old Biden have the floor and reveal his circumstances. Pence handled his debate in excellent form.
I personally think that there were and are many Republicans that could have done much better than Trump as President since they would not have had the impediments that he brought to the office as an egotistical buffoon with no ideas and initiatives of his own other than exaggerating his own abilities and performance.
Dave,
There were shenanigans. There are always some shenanigans. COVID and mail in probably increased them.
Still. Having your VP overturn the election is not the answer. It was inexcusable and remains inexcusable in my view. Trump would have severely damaged or destroyed our system if he had his way.
Just imagine it. Biden is going to lose 2024, what happens when Kamala overturns the election? And so on and so on forever. It can not work that way, because that doesn’t work. At all.
Trump was fine with that. Think that through. Either the man is way stupider than we all think, or he doesn’t give two shits, or he thinks he’d do so much good in four years that it’s worth it, or .. take your pick. I can think of no acceptable explanation for Trump’s willingness to do this. He is unfit for the office, unless you want our election system demolished.
Lucia wrote: “Trump tried to get Pence to delay certification of electoral college votes!”
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And democrats tried to overturn the 2016 election by pressuring the electoral college to vote in favor of Clinton. It’s smelly all round.
We all remember the Resistance BS right? If Pence had done what Trump wanted it would have destabilized our country to the point where anything might have happened. There might have been a military coup, or a civil war. I promise you, Trump’s opposition wouldn’t have meekly accepted Pence overturning the election and quietly gone away. It would have torn the country apart and been a complete disaster. There is no way I can see anybody thinking this through and concluding it was a good idea. It wasn’t. And it’s what Trump wanted. He still bitches about it today; he still thinks Pence should have done this.
Maybe it’s smelly all around, but I thought it was the progressives who placed no stock in our traditions or constitution and wanted to destroy and replace our system, I mean they’re the ones who say that. I didn’t think conservatives supported burning everything down to try to win the scrimmage for an electoral cycle. I don’t.
Yes, Mark, that’s a conundrum indeed. Giving unchallenged power to those who want to burn the system down to preserve the system because they claim they played by the rules but have made it abundantly clear that the rules are for suckers and the ends justify the means.
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Anyway, I get it. I hope Trump gets it as well. Sometimes you have to lose to win. I think he might pass the baton at the last moment. I’ll wait and see who’s right!
Trump had to overturn multiple states, didnât have an evidence backed story in any of them, he had no path. He should have conceded. Let the crazy partisan true believers try to find some evidence later, but * he * should have done the right thing. Unforgivable.
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There is plenty of election uncertainty. 2000 was basically a tie. Gore conceded after the SC ruled. Trump would have done the usual Trump thing in that scenario. We canât have that.
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If anybody would have overturned the election a large segment on the right would not have accepted that either. That was never going to work, ever.
That Russian river crossing was a complete disaster. Over 80 vehicles destroyed and likely 400+ dead or injured. Even the Russian bloggers are calling it out. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/world/europe/pro-russian-war-bloggers-kremlin.html
“The destruction wreaked on a Russian battalion as it tried to cross a river in northeastern Ukraine last week is emerging as among the deadliest engagements of the war, with estimates based on publicly available evidence now suggesting that well over 400 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded.”
“The last straw that overwhelmed my patience was the events around Bilohorivka, where due to stupidity â I emphasize, because of the stupidity of the Russian command â at least one battalion tactical group was burned, possibly two.”
. https://twitter.com/i/status/1525887492876079104
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I think at least one Russian commander will be missing a promotion cycle here. Artillery is once again a major factor in this war. It’s not sexy, but it does the job.
“Angech doesnât grasp how really horrible Trumps vain, egotistical and fortunately failed attempt to overturn the electoral college vote is really, truly a horrible thing.”
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I sort of tuned out for 2 months after he lost and agree I did not get how badly you perceived it over there.
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Trump lost the election.
He lost the election.
He was entitled to call for a recount in areas.
The shift from winning to losing is always hard to take.
The reasons why in one election the late votes consolidated Trump and in the second went against him are psephologically challenging and do suggest possible voter fraud as a mechanism in one or the other or both.
There are a number of means to overturn a close election and Trump explored those possibilities.
Legally.
It is legal to explore them.
Not nice but legal.
Legality also depends on how far you go and how far you are enabled to go by those in charge of the various constitutional offices.
He was still in charge.
Not by the public’s perceptions.
If Pence had the power to abrogate the election and the Supreme court ratified it then it would have been legal.
Not nice.
Not proper.
Not sportsmanlike.
Trump was entitled to ask?
Yes.
Or No?
Of course Pence did not follow that step so we do not know.
angech
If Pence had the power to abrogate the election and the Supreme court ratified it then it would have been legal.
The Vice President (who was a candidate himself, btw) does not have the power to abrogate the election.
Trump was entitled to ask?
Yes.
Or No?
For Pence to abrogate the election? No. He’s not entitled to ask. The President is sworn to uphold the constitution and it’s his duty to do so. He doesn’t have the right to ask for clearly unconstitutional acts just because he wants to continue to be president.
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Had Pence done want Trump was pestering him to do it would have been utterly illegal. It would have been a serious hit to our system of government and if success had followed for Trump, it would be bad enough it would likely trigger a civil war! You can’t violate the rule of law around elections that badly and that transparently and get away with it. It would have been a coup!
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You can’t make a list of all the other things that can be legal and ignore this YUGE thing and succeeded in whitewashing Trump.
Angech,
There is nothing in the constitution to suggest the vice president can overturn an election; Trump insisting on that was crazy….. and dangerous to the social fabric, just as claims electors in the 2016 election could just vote for Hillary instead of Trump. Both sides of the political divide have acted badly for a while.
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There were plenty of dubious changes in voting rules in 2020, mainly justified by covid panic. Widespread use of mail-in ballots was plainly contrary to multiple state laws, but neither state nor Federal courts wanted to get involved to block their use. Because COVID!!!! Some states (like Georgia) have now formally changed voting laws to limit the future use of mail-in ballots, since the most common election fraud is via mail-in ballots. It really only matters in swing states, not in states dominated by one party or the other. Swing states with Republican legislatures and a Democrat governor have not restricted future use of mail-in ballots because those governors have vetoed the legislation. That pretty well defines how the two parties view the impact of mail-in ballots.
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Alzheimer’s patients in nursing homes, who hadn’t voted in a decade, suddenly became mentally aware enough to vote by mail, and ~100% for Biden…. assisted by unidentified persons, of course. Democrats think this is a good idea, Republicans don’t.
“SF
There is nothing in the constitution to suggest the vice president can overturn an election; Trump insisting on that was crazy.
Lucia
Had Pence done want Trump was pestering him to do it would have been utterly illegal.””
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OK
I guess there is no “Constitutional Crisis”
Congress passed the Electoral Count Act in 1887 in response to a contentious presidential contest in which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes defeated Democrat Samuel Tilden. After the 1876 election, several states submitted competing slates of electors. Legislators went weeks before resolving the conflict, partly because there were no rules for how Congress should handle such a crisis.
The Electoral Count Act provided those rules, but in language that is vague and archaic and doesnât translate well into the modern world. Some Trump allies used ambiguities in the law to bolster their efforts to block Congress from formally certifying Joe Bidenâs election victory on Jan. 6, 2021. One of the architects of the scheme, law professor John Eastman, argued that the statute gave Vice President Mike Pence the authority to refuse to certify Biden as the winner, a view not shared by the vast majority of legal experts. Trumpâs team also tried to use other provisions in the law to toss out Electoral College votes for Biden.
âThey knew that, under the 12th Amendment, if nobody collected a majority in the Electoral College, that the contest would shift immediately over to the House for a so-called contingent election,â Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, tells TIME.
Raskin is on the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, which has also discussed overhauling the Electoral Count Act. The panel is preparing to host a series of hearings in June, and then release a report that will include recommendations for changing the arcane law.”
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No need to overhaul any arcane act.
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Anyway enough of that.
He lost the election.
Finis.
angech,
‘Nice’ doesn’t come into it, I don’t care if the President is nice. I don’t particularly want a priest or a boy-scout troop leader running the country. If a President wants my support rather than my opposition then s/he needs to uphold the Constitution and protect and serve the country, at minimum.
angech,
Anyway enough of that.
He lost the election.
Finis.
Except it’s not ‘Finis’ if he runs for office in 2024, as he will probably do. The issue remains alive and pertinent in my book so long as Trump is active in politics.
I do not believe this business about Trump asking Pence to “overturn the election”. Doing that would be so obviously wrong that the claim sounds like a TDS driven fantasy. Not the first one.
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Here is a more rational description of the issue:
During the controversy over the 2020 presidential election, the Trump campaign, and in particular its counsel, professor John Eastman, argued that the vice president could postpone the electoral vote count for a few days to allow investigations in disputed states to proceed. Eastman and other Trump advocates have been criticized widely for this. One reason is that their proposal meant skirting the terms of the Electoral Count Act. (Incidentally, you wouldnât know this from how the media treat him, but Eastmanâunlike nearly all his criticsâis a respected constitutional scholar.)
As we have seen, however, the Trump people were on solid ground in assuming the Electoral Count Act did not bind Congress. Their error lay in assuming that the vice president could act alone: In fact, any ruling he made could, and would, be reversed by a simple congressional majority
At the time, I was expecting Trump to exhaust all possible ways to challenge the result (as he is entitled to do) and then concede. He never got the chance, so we will never know if he would have. His subsequent behavior may well indicate that he would not have conceded or it may have been the result of digging in his heels in response to the new round of attacks. Either way, I think it was both wrong and a big mistake politically.
The election was stolen.
There was the suppression of news about the Hunter Biden laptop. That alone might have changed the outcome.
There was the Zuckerbucks private take over of election management in key states.
There were the illegal voting rules used in many states.
In Maricopa county, 56K votes were cast be people who did not reside at the address on their registrations. Biden carried Arizona by about 10K votes.
In many cases, voting results by precinct show huge difference between adjacent precincts in different counties, even in the absence of any significant demographic difference between those precincts.
Cell phone tracking data shows individuals making repeated trips between Democrat offices and drop boxes. Where video is available, it shows those persons illegally putting multiple ballots in the boxes at one time.
There were absentee ballots counted in Georgia in spite of never having been folded, meaning they were never put in an envelope.
Criminal charges have been filed against election officials in Wisconsin.
No evidence? What a crock.
Mike,
I don’t think it’s TDS. Fox reported on this:
Responding, Trump claimed that because Pence could have overturned the election, Democrats and “RINOs” were now working “feverishly together” to take away that power from the vice president “because they now say they donât want the Vice President to have the right to ensure an honest vote.”
…
“In other words, I was right and everyone knows it,” Trump added, saying if there was evidence of large-scale fraud or irregularities, “it would have been appropriate to send those votes back to the legislatures to figure it out ⌠in the meantime our Country is going to hell!”
Here is Trump talking about it at the rally on Jan 6’th:
I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do. This is from the number one or certainly one of the top constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. Weâre supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our constitution, and protect our constitution. States want to revote. The States got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people.
Whether or not Democrats stole the election is an entirely different and separate question in my book from whether or not the Vice President can overturn elections.
If we think the opposition did something illegal, that’s a problem. If we do something we know perfectly well is illegal in response.. That’s a real problem. Iterate that a few times and we don’t have a country anymore.
I don’t know what the answer is to election fraud, but I don’t think Trump’s proposed solution was the correct one.
Mike M. (Comment #212013)
You need evidence that will hold up in court and none of the Trump supporters promoting stolen election have done that. This attempt to delegitimize the 2020 elections is very much inline with what the Democrats attempted to do with the 2016 election.
Gore also tried to “steal” the election in 2000. His lawyers tried to only recount heavily Democratic counties in Florida in the hopes there would be more missed votes in those counties. Turns out that was a bad assumption as the recounts in those counties favored Bush but it was still the basis why the recount was stopped. When it looked like this plan was going to be a legal loser, he switched tactics late to a full state recount.
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If he had succeeded with a partial recount then the same type of enormous backlash would have happened by the electorate and he would never have been accepted as legitimate.
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It is perfectly OK to challenge elections, it is not OK to come up with almost nothing, have very long odds to winning more than one state, and never concede. Gore conceded, then reversed, then eventually accepted the SC ruling.
mark bofill (Comment #212015): “Whether or not Democrats stole the election is an entirely different and separate question in my book from whether or not the Vice President can overturn elections.
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Definitely true.
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Trump: “it would have been appropriate to send those votes back to the legislatures to figure it out”.
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That is arguably true. Doing that is not “overturning the election”. Doing so would, it seems be constitutional. The question is who has the power to do that. It can be argued that the Electoral College Act gives the VP that power, but even if that is so it can be argued that the Act is unconstitutional and that only Congress has that power. Arguing that case is not an insurrection.
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IMO, it is obvious that the VP alone does not have that power and that if the Act gives him that power then the Act is unconstitutional. But it is not treasonous to argue otherwise.
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But what if the results had been sent back to states? Most likely, legislatures would have concluded that the only practical course would have been to recertify the results. So no change. My guess is that with the last option exhausted, Trump would have finally accepted the result, at least nominally.
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Once again, I think that Trump blundered badly, both legally and politically. But I don’t buy that it was an attempt at “insurrection”.
“The election was stolen.”
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No. The margins were small enough that everything was the cause of Trump losing. Had Trump not been a narcissistic a-hole that would have been enough for him to win as well.
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In all the states that had bad addresses and so forth, you can’t assume all those votes are for Trump, or even a majority of them are. Recounts have never resulted in 10K’s of vote changes. You are lucky to get a couple hundred votes changed state wide.
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The votes are public record. Keep looking. The media all banded together, got all the ballots, and recounted Florida in 2000. It took about 10 months and millions of dollars. Bush still won in most scenarios and that was a margin of a few hundred votes in one state.
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What is definitely true is that the media isn’t interested in investigating this Trump election closely because of their bias, they liked the outcome. They spent all their time relegating complaints to conspiracy theory. Trump lost, and until he can prove differently, he will remain the loser.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #212016): “You need evidence that will hold up in court and none of the Trump supporters promoting stolen election have done that.”
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The courts have mostly not allowed evidence to be presented in court. And they have not allowed the discovery process that might turn up such evidence.
Tom Scharf (Comment #212019): “In all the states that had bad addresses and so forth, you canât assume all those votes are for Trump, or even a majority of them are.”
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Technically true. As long as the bad addresses were just technical errors (the voter moved and forgot to update their registration), there is no reason to assume bias. But with votes from people who moved to a different state or were not entitled to vote or died, there might well be systematic fraud. And there is evidence for that.
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Tom Scharf: “Recounts have never resulted in 10Kâs of vote changes.”
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So what? Recounts treat illegally cast ballots identical to legally cast ballots.
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Tom Scharf: “What is definitely true is that the media isnât interested in investigating this Trump election closely because of their bias, they liked the outcome.”
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Indeed. But they go further than that. They suppress info that goes against the preferred narrative.
Mike M, close enough.
I use the ‘overturn’ term because I’m under the impression Trump used the term, but I haven’t had time to substantiate that, so maybe I got that wrong. If Trump didn’t use the term / in talking about having Pence ‘overturn’ the election then I’d be happier rethinking my use of the term. I’ll follow up on that in my copious spare time.
I agree that there is a difference between an argument and an insurrection, but it’s a hell of an inappropriate argument for a sitting US President to make in my view. It’s not treasonous to argue otherwise, but again in my opinion it demonstrates reckless disregard for the continued health and wellbeing of our system and is wildly inappropriate for a President to make if he wants my continued support. To put this more plainly with an example: it’s would not be treasonous or insurrection for Trump to argue that we should install him as a permanent dictator either. It would be wildly inappropriate and would certainly cost him support.
Maybe there would have been no change in the results, but it would set a precedent. I don’t know that we can easily foresee all the ways this sort of precedent could cause problems in the future. Maybe it would be benign. Maybe not.
BTW – I’ve appreciated the discussion Mike.
It was reported back in early 2021 that Trump said this:
âActually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didnât exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!â Trump wrote.
Unfortunately I have been unable to find the source document where Trump wrote this. Apparently it was a ‘Save America’ PAC statement and it does not appear on the Save America PAC website anymore. So I don’t know yet.
[Edit: Oh! Maybe I mixed up the year! I think he said this in January of this year!]
If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had âabsolutely no rightâ to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and many other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election? Actually, what they are saying, is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didnât exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!
If Trump uses the phrase ‘he could have overturned the Election’ I think it’s fair game. It’s not my spin, that’s Trump’s spin.
“If he had succeeded with a partial recount then the same type of enormous backlash would have happened by the electorate and he would never have been accepted as legitimate.”
While it was in the legal case, I don’t remember ‘only recounting in some counties’ ever being an issue. It was more that they were cheating in the recounts and votes were being cast not counted.
Also, that the media announced the polls were closed and people didn’t show up to vote in the panhandle where the polls were still open.
MikeN,
Yes, the TV shows called the vote in Florida in 2000 before the polls in the panhandle closed. Of course they claim that didn’t make a difference. But a small, compared to the overall advertising budget of the two parties, Russian presence on social media absolutely for certain caused Hillary to lose in 2016. Can you say confirmation bias?
I thought the different recount methods was a large part of the issue, but that was over twenty years ago. According to the later analysis, both sides first picked the method that was most damaging to them. Bush wanted a full state recount, which under one recount scenario would have cost him the election. Gore wanted only a few counties recounted. That tactic definitely would have increased Bush’s margin.
mark bofill (Comment #212022): “itâs would not be treasonous or insurrection for Trump to argue that we should install him as a permanent dictator either.”
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I think that would be both treasonous and insurrection since it is plainly against the Constitution and would amount to overthrowing the government.
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It does not help that Trump uses careless language, exaggerates wildly, and often way overstates his case.
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I fully understand why Trump’s behavior re the election has cost him support. If not for that, he’d be my choice for 2024. As it is, I sure hope that the Republicans can find someone else who is dedicated to similar policies and is tough enough and capable enough to make progress against the Establishment and the Deep State. That is a tall order. But I will vote for whoever gets the nomination since the alternative will be far worse.
Thanks Mike.
I may be confused.
IMO, it is obvious that the VP alone does not have that power and that if the Act gives him that power then the Act is unconstitutional. But it is not treasonous to argue otherwise.
It’s not treasonous to argue otherwise. So:
It’s not treasonous to argue this where this is:
…that the VP alone has that power orthat if the Act gives him that power then the Act is constitutional.
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So – would it be treasonous for a person to argue that something which is not constitutional is constitutional? To fix my example, would it be treasonous for Trump to argue that it’s constitutional for him to be installed as a permanent dictator?
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See, I don’t like the idea that making an argument that turns out to be wrong is treasonous. How do you know until after the argument is articulated and discussed and evaluated? It’s like thought crime.
Anyways.
[Edit: my formulation wasn’t exactly right..
Not treasonous to argue NOT( that the VP alone does not have that power) OR NOT(that if the Act gives him that power then the Act is unconstitutional) ought to be closer]
Is the argument treasonous or the act of making the argument treasonous? I’m OK with the argument being treasonous, it’s the idea that the act of making a treasonous argument is treasonous that I have a problem with.
Artillery is regaining its status as âQueen of the Battlefieldâ. As far as I can tell, almost all tactical advances on the battlefield by both sides in the last month has been due to winning the artillery duels.
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The below post is a pro Ukraine site, but rational in its logic. Well worth a read. One of the few sites that give a detailed and technical analysis of whatâs happening on the ground. I highly recommend reading his prior posts if you are interested in getting into the âweedsâ of the Ukraine battlefield.
. https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-14-and-15-may-2022-9e9a89f694be
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Tomâs basic premise in his latest post is that the NATO artillery fire control supplied to Ukraine is MUCH more effective than the Russian artillery fire control. This superiority was directly responsible for stopping the Russian bridging attempts cold. Incompetent Russian local command helped.
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Russia is using tactics and equipment that would not be out of place in the Soviet Union of the 1980âs and the current use of Russian artillery would not be out of place in the Soviet drive across Poland in WWII. Soviet, and contemporary Russia, still follow âQuantity has a Quality All of Its Ownâ tactics.
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If Ukraine can continue to supply the huge amounts of heavy artillery shells to the front needed for a modern battlefield, Russia is in trouble. If Russia can even somewhat interdict Ukraine supply of artillery shells, the Russian huge advantage in heavy artillery and 122mm mortar tubes will win out.
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Ukraine supply to the front rests entirely on its railroads as Ukraine lacks both the trucks and the fuel to run supply from the far western border. Ukraine rail has a limited amount of non electric engines and Russia has heavily targeted the electrical substations supplying power to its electric engines.
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Russia supply is also highly contingent on rail as its main source of supply but has direct rail to all of its front line positions.
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The Ukraine defensive lines in the east have now been under constant artillery fire for over 1 month and are starting to crack. Over the short term, I expect Russia to envelop and destroy the Ukraine front line positions from Popasna to Severodonetsk to Lyman, and Avidiivka at Donetsk.
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Long term, if Russia does not get its act together by drastically improving its artillery fire control, it will likely lose the artillery duels as Ukraine supply lines get shorter, making resupply easier. Russia losing the artillery duels will cost it the war. There are a number of actions that Russia can do to improve fire control, but we will see if Russian command is flexible enough to follow through.
We are sort of abusing the term ‘treason’ anyway I think. I read that the Constitution narrowly defines treason as one of two things:
(1) âlevying warâ against the United States; or (2) âadhering to [the] enemies [of the United States], giving them aid and comfort.â
Insurrection might be better:
a violent uprising against an authority or government.
or it might not..
‘Illegal and unconstitutional’ might be all we mean here when we speak of treason or insurrection [in this thread]. I don’t think it’s illegal or unconstitutional to make dumb arguments. Some arguments might be for things that are illegal or unconstitutional though.
That’s my take anyway.
Mark Bofill,
We are sort of abusing the term âtreasonâ anyway I think. I read that the
Well, word search indicates MikeM introduced the term “treason” for some mysterious reason. Like this
Mike M. (Comment #212018)
May 16th, 2022 at 10:24 am Edit This
IMO, it is obvious that the VP alone does not have that power and that if the Act gives him that power then the Act is unconstitutional. But it is not treasonous to argue otherwise.
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It seems he wanted to post a counter argument to an argument advanced by no one.
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It appears we all agree that the VP alone does not have the power to not accept the electoral ballots. That’s what Trump was trying to pressure him to do.
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And for those who want to allude to past historical cases where some states sent two sets of ballots and people didn’t quite know what to do and which to accept: That is nothing like what happened when Trump didn’t like being faced with the fact he lost. Whether Trump (or Trump – afficianados) like it or not, 50 states all certified their ballots and all of then only certified one set. There was no dispute at the state level that those were certified and they were the only certified set.
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Trump was pressuring Pence to turn away ballots– a whole anti-democratic move.
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Arguig about whether “some” people airing the opinion that Pence could or could not do it is amounts to ‘treason’ is neither here nor there.
It’s pretty obvious that candidates for the offices in question taking it upon themselves — all totally on their own– is utterly anti-democratic. And it’s also not constitutional for the VP to turn them back merely because the president (a candidate in the election he is setting to overturn) want the election overturned!
mark,
I think we are having a problem with parsing words, quite possibly because I have been unclear.
Merely arguing that Trump should be made dictator would not in itself be insurrection. Trying to bring that about it would be insurrection, because it is obviously against the constitution. I read your statement about “Trump arguing” as actually seeking to make it happen.
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On the other hand, Pence ruling that electoral returns should be sent back to the states would not be insurrection if there is an act of Congress giving him that power. Even if that Act is unconstitutional, it is reasonable to rely on it being valid until it is ruled unconstitutional.
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OK, I am confused by your confusion.
MikeM
Trying to bring that about it would be insurrection, because it is obviously against the constitution. I read your statement about âTrump arguingâ as actually seeking to make it happen.
Trump wasn’t merely arguing. He was pressuring Pence to turn back the electoral ballots. Not accepting/opening the clearly certified ballots would be step to turn back the election.
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Pence ruling that electoral returns should be sent back to the states would not be insurrection if there is an act of Congress giving him that power.
The act doesn’t give him that power. The Veep has a ceremonial role. He can’t just turn back certified ballots sent by the state for no good reason. The only reason to turn those back was “Trump didn’t like the outcome”.
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Pence, fortunately, understood he didn’t have the power to just reject certified ballots even if some others do not.
Mike,
I get what you’re saying now. Thanks. I’m sorry if I’ve been beating a dead horse. I do get my panties in a wad over phrasing sometimes.
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Lucia,
Yup, as far as I can tell it’s both illegal and undemocratic for Pence to have done anything — the law doesn’t permit him to, and it would be contrary to the obvious intended functioning of the system as well — anti-democratic, as you say. Certainly I think it takes an imbecile to think that it’s OK for one of the parties running for re-election to have the power to disrupt the results when they aren’t going his way!
âI wish we could deport him to Australia where he could live nextdoor to Angech.â
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Wife says NO. NO. NO. NO.
She suffers from TDS.
–
It would be like sending Napoleon to the island of Elba.
Fitting but so cruel.
Are you guys familiar with this story and this memo?
Disturbing.
If I knew about this, I’d cheerfully forgotten.
mark,
I have no idea. The links seem to not work.
My apologies, for that and for not providing some summary of what they are and why I was linking them. I meant to, my wife interrupted me. Some interrupts are non maskable high priority!
So – the story is that John Eastman was the lawyer behind this scheme involving Pence in the first place, and that he issued this memo detailing a plan by which Pence could overturn the results. They (Trump and Pence presumably) would have to organize a group of alternative electors to submit the alternate slate; that’d put the country into playable position.
CNN reporting, probably why I missed the story the first time around, so it starts from a place of low credibility in my view. I will research it as time permits.
new links: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/politics/trump-pence-election-memo/index.html http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/21/privileged.and.confidential.–.jan.3.memo.on.jan.6.scenario.pdf
The ISW maps are inadequate to show what is happening on the ground in Ukraine to the point of almost being disinformation.
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Compare the situation maps of ISW to, for example, South front
. https://understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Kharkiv%20Battle%20Map%20Draft%20May%2016%2C2022.png
. https://southfront.org/military-situation-in-eastern-ukraine-izyum-severodonetsk-on-may-16-2022-map-update/.
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ISW doesnât show the major road net and local towns that give a strategic rationale for why actions are being conducted in specific areas. With South front, and others, one can do internet search on specific towns of interest by date to get information from both Ukraine and Russian sources on these specific locations.
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The amount of disinformation produced by both sides is staggering and it takes quite a bit of digging to get some semblance of truth.
Interesting bit of candour on Russian State TV today. This link provides subtitles.
National review covered this as well here and here, and did interviews with NR as well. It does not appear to be disputed that he authored these memos, or that he was advising Trump at the time.
Ah well. I’ll shut up about it now. Maybe it was just news to me. đ
MikeM
Mark’s links work for me. Here they documents are again.
Truly, there was a plot to overthrow the election and give the victory to Trump– by thinking through scenarios throwing out votes clearly sent by the states.
Lucia,
It sure looks that way. I blush to admit that I’d become accustomed to ignoring negative stories about Trump and I didn’t investigate this properly when the story was fresh.
I’ll sort through my thoughts over the next few days, but I gotta say, I didn’t realize how bad this situation actually was. This was a nonviolent coup attempt — and I’m pretty sure Trump knew how crooked it was. Thank God Pence didn’t play along.
Lucia, when I first posted that I messed up the links and fixed them in a subsequent edit; that’s probably why Mike was unable to access them. Timing issue I expect.
Itâs not illegal (specifical criminal) for Trump to ask Pence to do something Trump believes is legal (but eventually turns out it is not legal).
Itâs not criminal for Pence to do something he believes is legal, even if it is not.
So a lot of this discussion infers Trumpâs request to Pence is somehow insurrection or criminal. I donât think it is, and you would need to prove Trump and Pence did this thing knowing it was illegal to get to some kind of conspiracy charge or insurrection. What we seem to have here is politicians doing things that are arguably legal (even if the argument is weak). This happens all the time, such as Biden using alleged CDC power to extend eviction moratoriums. This just happens to be an extremely high profile and moronic political stunt that would have been quickly overturned by the SC. I donât think there would have been any civil war or anything and the legal system would have ironed it out.
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The charitable view is the âplotâ to overthrow the election was to use every legal means necessary to delay certification until all those ⌠ahem ⌠missing votes ⌠could be found. This assumption of innocence would need to be overcome which is why Trump is not being charged.
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In most contested elections the legal strategy is to keep counting and contesting votes indefinitely until you get the right answer and then immediately declare the election over. The courts have to eventually stop the process.
Itâs not criminal for Pence to do something he believes is legal, even if it is not.
I don’t think that’s so. Is it? I can’t commit a crime and get away with it just because I didn’t realize I was breaking the law!? I didn’t think it worked that way.
It’s not criminal for elected officials to do something legal that later gets deemed unconstitutional by the SC, for sure. But there are limits to that — they can’t do stuff that is clearly illegal, regardless, I think anyways.
The Hogwarts incantations for this are Ignorantia Juris non-excusat and ignorantia legis neminem excusat. Book of legal incantations, grade 7.
Besides Tom, how do the President and Vice President not know this is election fraud? I mean, as Lucia has mentioned above (212032 : ” And itâs also not constitutional for the VP to turn them back merely because the president (a candidate in the election he is setting to overturn) want the election overturned!”)– what could possibly be going on in Pence’s head that might permit him to rationalize rejecting state election results, given that he’d been briefed on some lawyers memo about how to overturn Biden’s win? I can’t understand how that could be anything besides election fraud.
https://www.rt.com/russia/555591-azovstal-captives-surrender-ukraine/
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Ukraine orders Azovstal fighters to surrender
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The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has confirmed in its social networks, on Tuesday evening, that its servicemen holed up at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol have been ordered to surrender.
With Sweden and Finland joining NATO this war’s higher level political aims are a smoking crater hole now.
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You aren’t paranoid if the rest of the world is really out to get you. Invading your neighbors and weekly nuclear saber rattling tend to make that happen.
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Very curious: “President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that there was no threat to Russia if Sweden and Finland joined NATO”.
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This is pretty bizarre given the last few months of rhetoric. My interpretation is that this is aimed at his domestic audience to try and cover his a** because things aren’t going so well. Could be the first crack in the foundation.
Itâs not * criminal * even though it is deemed illegal later on. Politicians donât get thrown in jail for passing laws they know are likely illegal. Today:
.
Judge Strikes Down California Law Mandating Women on Boards
Decision follows a similar ruling last month on a separate law requiring racial or ethnic diversity on boards
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At a minimum you need a legal argument to support your actions. Pence can do whatever he wants and the justice system will prevent him from doing things that are illegal, it is not prevented by Penceâs incomplete knowledge of the law.
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I see it as a very dumb thing to do, but not criminal if they had an argument to back them up. What would have really happened if Pence refused to certify? A messy legal fight that would end up forcing Pence to certify or overruling him. If there was no obvious legal path then we know our laws need updated.
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Iâd also consider the reverse case of if there was actual election fraud in a state and the state refused to correct it and sent in fraudulent results. Say Illinois for example, ha ha. How is that going to be handled? Iâm no expert but there needs to be a process for this to be challenged.
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For the most part the system worked fine. Politicians tried to do idiotic things and were prevented from doing so. If Pence had attempted dumb things the voters can sort it out in subsequent elections.
Tom,
I disagree with you, but I don’t think I’m going to invest the energy to argue much. Pence and Trump are not legislators, they weren’t passing laws. If they were part of a scheme to:
(2)knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, byâ
…
(B)the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held,
It’s the “knowingly” and “known” part that is very hard to prove to get you to a criminal conspiracy. I don’t find it that much of a stretch to believe Trump really believes the election was stolen and that there were missing votes out there. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. If there was a case then Trump would have been charged by now by a rather hostile political opponent and justice system.
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Being a stupid clown is perfectly legal. Of course there are situations where this turns into a criminal process, I just don’t see it here but I really didn’t pay very close attention to this.
Tom,
If Trump really believes his attempt to disenfranchise entire states to keep himself in office was legal, then he certainly does not deserve to be president. If he knows it was illegal, he also does not deserve to be president.
mark bofill (Comment #212047): “I canât commit a crime and get away with it just because I didnât realize I was breaking the law!? I didnât think it worked that way.”
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It does normally work that way. The key being that you must have a *reasonable* belief that you are acting within the law.
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You can not kill someone and try to argue that you did not know that was illegal. That would not be a reasonable belief. If you kill someone in self defense, you must have a reasonable belief that your life was in danger. So you can’t argue that you dreamed he was going to kill you or that you were afraid just because he happened to be big and scary looking.
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Trump was taking advice from a distinguished constitutional attorney. It seems that the people criticizing that opinion have a hard time agreeing on why the opinion was wrong. I would think that is enough for a reasonable belief. So I agree with Tom.
MikeM,
I think you are wrong that it generally works that way.
Some crimes require mens rea. For example: bigamy is a strict liability crime. You are guilty if you are married to two people even if you thought you were divorced from the first.
Also, some crimes require you to know something is a crime, other’s don’t. You could be guilty of murder if you intentionally kill someone even if you think murder is legal (for whatever reason.) Maybe you thought it was legal provided it was done in a religious ceremony. Maybe you thought it was legal because you were raised by wolves. To you that seemed “reasonable”. But you thinking it’s reasonable is not a criterion.
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Your mens rea springs from intending the act, not from whether or not you know it’s legal. It also doesn’t spring from whether or not you had a “reasonable belief” it was legal. You can’t even get out of a jay walking ticket like that! Or trespasssing because you “didn’t seen the sign”.
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Many crimes do require mens rea. But that doesn’t mean you need to know the act is a crime. It only means you intended to do whatever it was that turned out to be illegal.
Bigamy is not a crime.
Being caught is the crime.
Male chauvinist view I guess
Not many women could be bothered having two husbands!
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Similar to the Trump situation.
It is not treason or insurrection in at least 2 situations.
One if you are not caught but more importantly if you win.
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Guy Fawkes was caught – treason.
French Revolutionaries won – heroic not traitorous.
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All elections can result in a change of government.
All parties push for a change.
So it is not treasonous for a political party to do as much as is possible to change the government or keep it.
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Trump was a duly elected President for 4 years and took these steps while he was still in power.
Blatantly therefore not a traitor or treasonous.
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Remember if Pence ratified the step.
If the states put in the electors.
If the ScCOTUS had no choice but to ratify it
All steps being considered legal.
Then he would be an elected, untraitorous politician.
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What is unseemly, despicable, treasonous and traitorous is Hilary hatching a plot against the President of the day the way that her organisation did.
As the evidence clearly shows.
As the FBI CIA and all of the previous Presidents men and the press contrived to push.
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Of course, when you win, Cromwell, French Revolutionists and Pelosi, you have to label people as traitors and off with their heads.
Winners write the history.
Obviously they have already won the hearts and minds of 51% of the American people when the mere act of disputing a hanging chad is treason.
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lucia,
The requirement for mens rea is the norm, strict liability is the exception.
Mark
52 U.S. Code § 20511 – Criminal penalties
A person, who in any election for Federal officeâ
(1) coerces, or attempts to coerce, any person forâ
(A) registering to vote, or voting, or attempting to register or vote;
(B) urging or aiding any person to register to vote, to vote, or to attempt to register or vote;
–
As you see all politicians break this law every election.
Except possibly one.
As I recall, although an elected official, the Code does not apply to a President of the United States who can commit almost any crime while in office and not be held accountable to it by the courts, only by due process of the house of Reps and the Senate taking action to impeach him.
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Hence the current tawdry, misbegotten and totally embarrassing procedure (January 6th) by which the Democrats hope to impeach him a 3rd time.
NB the only legal way to get him for Jan 6th.
He is immune to his actions by dint of law.
Only by throwing a whole lot of people in Prison can they justify this third attempt.
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Kangaroo courts seem to have bounded from Australia to America, or are they Star Courts or McCarthy courts?
In 5-10 years anyone looking back at this sorry mess will see how bad the Democrat actions are.
They have to do this because they have already gone too far too turn back.
Lucia & Mike, thanks for that on mea rens. Tom, thanks for your thoughts as well.
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angech, that’s all very well and good, except that I actually am a conservative. I’m not a progressive with a different colored jersey / from a different team. I do not want to fundamentally change our system, I do not want coups — even if ‘my’ guy wins. If somebody wants to take radical steps of dubious legality in defiance of the legal customs and traditions of our country, generally speaking they will not enjoy my support, but will instead incur my opposition. Further, I’ll argue the case with other conservatives (as I’m doing here) to try to persuade them that this is not what we are all about.
angech, also — I think there is a difference between getting away with something illegal and something being legal. This distinction actually does matter to me. The President is in a great position to get away with all sorts of illegal acts – that doesn’t make it OK for the President to do so.
Gah. I said ‘mea rens’. I meant ‘mens rea’. oops.
MikeM
The requirement for mens rea is the norm, strict liability is the exception.
Perhaps, but mens rea only means you intended to do what you did. It does not mean you knew what you intended to do was illegal. The legality or illegality of your action and intended action has nothing to do with mens rea.
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For example:
(1) Suppose you ordinarily stock sugar on your shelf, inspecting only the outside of the bag (as delivered by the distributor). Then, unbeknownst to you, someone sneaks in substitutes cocaine for one of the bags. A customer comes in. You grab that bag– believing it to be sugar– and you sell the bag of concain believing it was sugar.
Then you do not have the “mens rea” of selling cocaine. Your mens rea was to sell sugar.
But now:
(2) Suppose you sell a bag of cocaine knowing it is cocaine. But you didn’t know selling cocaine is illegal. You do have mens rea for selling the cocaine. Because you intended to sell cocaine. This would also apply to any substance that it turns out to be illegal to sell, some of which many people might have no idea are illegal to sell. (Hemp used to be illegal to sell. It would not be “unreasonable” for a person who’d heard hemp is terrific for ropes to not know it was illegal and intentionally sell a hemp rope back in the day. Of course, this assumed they got some somehow, but if it was hemp, they knew it was hemp and the sold it intending to sell a hemp rope, that would have been illegal. And they’d have met the burden of “mens rea”.)
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Trump intended to be doing what he as doing. He had mens rea. We can debate whether it was or was not actually illegal to try to pressure Pence into turning away ballot for no reason at all. But Trump definitely had mens rea: he knew that he was trying to get Pence to turn away those ballots.
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It is not generally the case that “not knowing it is illegal” makes it ok to do some illegal. That has nothing to do with mens rea.
It is often the case that not intending to do that thing that is illegal (as in the first sugar/cocaine) mixup is not illegal owing to lack of mens rea.
lucia (Comment #212067): “It is not generally the case that ânot knowing it is illegalâ makes it ok to do some illegal. That has nothing to do with mens rea.”
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From a legal dictionary:
Definition of Mens Rea
Noun
(1) A personâs knowledge that his conduct is criminal.
(2) A criminal intent.
(3) Wrongful purpose or guilty knowledge.
https://legaldictionary.net/mens-rea/
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So obviously knowing that something is a crime is an element of mens rea.
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What you are ignoring is that the law *assumes* that you should know certain things. You can not successfully argue that you did not know that selling cocaine is illegal because it is common knowledge that is illegal.
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Here is another source:
The mens rea requirement is premised upon the idea that one must possess a guilty state of mind and be aware of his or her misconduct;
however, a defendant need not know that their conduct is illegal to be guilty of a crime. Rather, the defendant must be conscious of the âfacts that make his conduct fit the definition of the offense.â
But if you look at the link, which is a SCOTUS ruling from 1994, when the District Court charged the jury it said:
The Government need not prove the defendant knows he’s dealing with a weapon possessing every last characteristic [which subjects it] [n.2] to the regulation. It would be enough to prove he knows that he is dealing with a dangerous device of a type as would alert one to the likelihood of regulation.”
In other words, the defendant should have realized that he needed to check the law. The Court of Appeals upheld that. SCOTUS *overturned* it in a 7-2 decision. I only skimmed the opinion, but it makes it pretty clear that knowledge of illegality is the norm, but that there are exceptions.
I google ‘is ignorance of the law a defense’. I read overwhelmingly that the general opinion is ‘generally, nope’.
Good enough for me.
Shrug.
Mike, from your first link:
A mistake in law refers to a person who acts not knowing that the act was a crime. For example, Grandma Joanne sees one of her outdoor cats behaving strangely. Because the area has a problem with rabies, Grandma goes into the house, comes back with her handgun, and puts the cat out of its misery. A neighbor who hears the single gun shot calls the police who come to investigate, and Grandma tells them what happened. Grandma is surprised to receive a citation, and a criminal charge of discharging a firearm within the city limits. She had no idea that her act of putting down a rabid animal was technically illegal. In this case, Joanne was not mistaken about what she was actually doing, but only about the fact that it was against the law. Unfortunately, the legal system embraces the idea that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
From your second link,
The mens rea requirement is premised upon the idea that one must possess a guilty state of mind and be aware of his or her misconduct; however, a defendant need not know that their conduct is illegal to be guilty of a crime. Rather, the defendant must be conscious of the âfacts that make his conduct fit the definition of the offense.”
[Edit: You cited that and went on to say SCOTUS says ‘ but it makes it pretty clear that knowledge of illegality is the norm, but that there are exceptions.’
Could you link something to support that?]
Mike
guilty state of mind and be aware of his or her misconduct;
Neither of these require you to know the act is illegal. It means have to act purposefully, knowingly, recklessly or negligently.
What is meant by the concept of mens rea, however, varies widely. In 2016, the US Supreme Court issued a decision that backed the American Law Instituteâs definition of the term in their Modern Penal Code (MPC). In the MPC, it states that guilt can be contributed to an individual if they have acted purposely, knowingly, recklessly or negligently.
Ignorantia juris non excusat[1] or ignorantia legis neminem excusat[2] (Latin for “ignorance of the law excuses not”[1] and “ignorance of law excuses no one”[2] respectively) is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely by being unaware of its content.
…
Exceptions
In some jurisdictions, there are exceptions to the general rule that ignorance of the law is not a valid defense. For example,…
Mark
Worth nothing: cases where ignorance of the law make something not criminal are the exception and very rare ones at that.
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The examples of exceptions were tax law. Thank heavens, since the tax code is complicated and it is plausible to not know something! Of course, ignorance doesn’t absolve you of the taxes or interest.
There is a large gap between the executive attempting to do something that is against the law which is later simply disallowed and the executive doing something against the law which is deemed criminal and subject to personal punishment.
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The executive overstepping their power is a daily event in US politics. Someone needs to explain how this is different and special in a legal sense.
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I think there is a zero case against Trump now, mostly because nothing actually happened past the bad idea stage, secondly he is the highest law officer in the land and is given the most authority, thirdly the supposed charges require mind reading Trump’s knowing malicious intent when all the available evidence is he believed the election was stolen, in fact he still apparently believes this. He was using all the available legal tools to overturn a fraudulent election. Being wrong about that is * not a crime *.
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HRC still believes Russia did it. We had endless “not my President” protests. Remember the push for faithless electors? The left has tried to get Republicans thrown off the ballot because they are “insurrectionists” this election cycle. https://www.npr.org/2022/02/05/1078416631/saying-hes-an-insurrectionist-challengers-aim-to-keep-rep-cawthorn-off-the-ballo
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The argument above is idiotic, the lawyers should “know” this. They do it anyway as a political stunt. Nobody goes to jail for bad ideas.
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The fevered dreams of partisans is that Trump would have somehow just kept being President through clever lawyering and legal technicalities. The US system is more robust than that. I put that theory up there with the Viking King was this close to taking over the US government because he managed to breach the Capital on Jan 6th. The end result is that this was political suicide by Trump.
Lucia,
Yeah. Good thing! Although I usually just rely on Turbo Tax. My taxes aren’t that complicated.
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Tom,
thirdly the supposed charges require mind reading Trumpâs knowing malicious intent when all the available evidence is he believed the election was stolen, in fact he still apparently believes this. He was using all the available legal tools to overturn a fraudulent election. Being wrong about that is * not a crime *.
I’m thinking this through out loud here. I think you are mistaking the importance of motive rather than intent. I agree with you — I’m sure Trump absolutely believes the election was stolen, and that [was] his motive. His intent is what matters though. What was he intending to do? I think his intent was to persuade Pence to:
(2)knowingly and willfully deprive, defraud, or attempt to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, byâ
âŚ
(B)the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held,
with this alternative electors scheme.
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Maybe I got this wrong though, god knows law is complicated and I’m not good at it.
He will never face charges for this, fine; I don’t care. I hope he doesn’t get nominated, and if he gets nominated I hope he doesn’t win, because he ‘attempted to deprive the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process by the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that were known by Trump to be fictitious under the laws of the State of Michigan’, if nowhere else. He committed election fraud when he tried to persuade Pence to do this. He got away with it, fine. Let’s not nominate or re-elect him though.
Somehow the Buffalo shooting is Tucker Carlson’s fault. I have seen this across multiple media outlets now. I’m a bit confused on the chain of logic here.
“Grandma is surprised to receive a citation, and a criminal charge of discharging a firearm within the city limits. … In this case, Joanne was not mistaken about what she was actually doing, but only about the fact that it was against the law”.
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Because gun owners are supposed to know the laws pertaining to legal use of firearms. But the example is made up and I have my doubts that it is legit. If it is, then the law is screwed up.
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Ignorance is not an excuse in itself. It is only an excuse if it is reasonable to claim ignorance. It would not be reasonable to claim that you did not know that you can not fire a gun wherever or whenever you like. Or that you did not know that it is illegal to go around shooting random animals. But it would be quite reasonable to believe it legal to kill a dangerous animal in order to protect yourself and others.
mark bofill (Comment #212073),
Those exceptions seem to be exactly what I was arguing. They are rare since it is rare to have circumstances where ignorance is reasonable.
The Supreme Court reversed Lambert’s conviction, holding that knowledge or probability of knowledge of a statute is required to convict someone of a notice offense.
On that we can agree. I have often thought the same thing. Your example is a good one; how on earth can it be illegal to kill a dangerous animal to protect yourself and others?
In fact you may be right that that is a poor example. I suspect that if the animal in question posed an immediate threat self defense law would apply. I think (I might be wrong) that one can use a gun in self defense regardless of city limits. Maybe I’m wrong and legitimate self defense people can still be fined for discharging firearms within city limits — in which case, yes. The law is screwed up.
Here’s an Arizona example. It has exceptions for various things, including the dangerous animal situation:
A. A person who with criminal negligence discharges a firearm within or into the limits of any municipality is guilty of a class 6 felony.
B. Notwithstanding the fact that the offense involves the discharge of a deadly weapon, unless a dangerous offense is alleged and proven pursuant to section 13-704, subsection L, section 13-604 applies to this offense.
C. This section does not apply if the firearm is discharged:
1. As allowed pursuant to chapter 4 of this title.
2. On a properly supervised range.
3. To lawfully take wildlife during an open season established by the Arizona game and fish commission and subject to the limitations prescribed by title 17 and Arizona game and fish commission rules and orders. This paragraph does not prevent a city, town or county from adopting an ordinance or rule restricting the discharge of a firearm within one-fourth mile of an occupied structure without the consent of the owner or occupant of the structure. For the purposes of this paragraph:
(a) “Occupied structure” means any building in which, at the time of the firearm’s discharge, a reasonable person from the location where a firearm is discharged would expect a person to be present.
(b) “Take” has the same meaning prescribed in section 17-101.
4. For the control of nuisance wildlife by permit from the Arizona game and fish department or the United States fish and wildlife service.
5. By special permit of the chief of police of the municipality.
6. As required by an animal control officer in the performance of duties as specified in section 9-499.04.
7. Using blanks.
8. More than one mile from any occupied structure as defined in section 13-3101.
9. In self-defense or defense of another person against an animal attack if a reasonable person would believe that deadly physical force against the animal is immediately necessary and reasonable under the circumstances to protect oneself or the other person.
D. For the purposes of this section:
1. “Municipality” means any city or town and includes any property that is fully enclosed within the city or town.
2. “Properly supervised range” means a range that is any of the following:
(a) Operated by a club affiliated with the national rifle association of America, the amateur trapshooting association, the national skeet association or any other nationally recognized shooting organization, or by any public or private school.
(b) Approved by any agency of the federal government, this state or a county or city within which the range is located.
(c) Operated with adult supervision for shooting air or carbon dioxide gas operated guns, or for shooting in underground ranges on private or public property.
Trump did not attempt to disenfranchise any states. The Constitution says that:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors …
It can be reasonably argued that is some states the electors were *not* chosen in that manner. Trump wanted those votes sent to the state legislatures so that they could decide what to do. No disenfranchisement. Nothing facially illegal in that attempt. It can certainly be argued that the method, having Pence do it on his own authority, was wrong. But even on that there is a plausible counterargument. Certainly the whole exercise was misguided if only because there was no realistic chance of changing the outcome; nobody but Trump would be willing to kick that hornets’ nest. And Trump’s subsequent behavior has, to put it mildly, not reflected well on him.
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Trump is guilty of poor judgement and poor manners. But there was no crime.
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors âŚ
It can be reasonably argued that is some states the electors were not chosen in that manner. Trump wanted those votes sent to the state legislatures so that they could decide what to do.
Each state has laws governing the selection of the electors. Regardless of whether or not it can be reasonable argued that some electors were not chosen in that manner, it is certainly the case that the Trump alternates were not legally selected. Therefore Trump was attempting to deprive the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.
Please don’t ask me to believe Trump didn’t know that the alternate electors were not the ones selected under the laws of the State. Well, you can ask, but I don’t believe it’s reasonable to think that, and I don’t.
The best I’ve been able to do is this — apparently this Eastman guy did not want to rely on the alternate electors part of the scheme. He wanted Pence to just reject the ballots. Maybe that is enough to get around “(B)the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held,”. Pence rejecting ballots is not procurement, casting, or tabulating ballots, so it doesn’t satisfy the conditions of the election fraud law.
[Edit: Maybe that’s what saves them, that they had a variety of options open to them & identified by the memo, and that not all of the options were directly election fraud.]
Maybe not.
apparently this Eastman guy did not want to rely on the alternate electors part of the scheme.
Did I make that up? I’m not sure where I got that impression from now.
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Look – it’s fine to quote ‘The Electoral Count Act of 1887’. But deliberately setting a situation up with fake electors to exploit it constitutes election fraud, if it fits the definitions provided by the federal election fraud law. Pence can both adhere to the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and be guilty of election fraud if he set the situation up to disenfranchise voters of the states he rejects.
Put another way, nothing in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 empowers Pence and Trump to setup fake electors. That’s fraud.
No, I didn’t get that quite right about Eastman. But at any rate what I was trying to get at still stands — the memo outlines a variety of options and possible scenarios. But I think in all of them the fake electors have to be there to create the situation where Pence can act according to the Electoral Count Act of 1887. But maybe not all the endgames are election fraud.
I don’t know how the courts might sort that out. Personally, I would prefer little leniency to be shown for such dangerous and harebrained scheming. These fools were playing with dynamite around one of our most critical institution’s legitimacy.
I realize my response is a little disorganized; I was thinking out loud again. If you want to ask or comment further maybe we can sort out the jagged edges.
I’ve organized my thoughts. My conclusions are these:
Whether or not there was election fraud might depend on what we think the plan actually was. It’s not clear to me if Pence was ultimately intended to disregard electors and declare Trump the winner, or if Pence was intended to have States recertify electors. Maybe that matters, I’m not sure.
So — maybe it was election fraud, is where I ended up.
mark bofill (Comment #212091): “Itâs not clear to me if Pence was ultimately intended to disregard electors and declare Trump the winner, or if Pence was intended to have States recertify electors. Maybe that matters, Iâm not sure.”
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It matters hugely. The former would clearly illegal, unconstitutional, anti-democratic, the lost goes on. And I would pretty much agree with mark. It is my understanding that it was the latter.
Trouble is, I read that Eastman might have been involved in trying to fix things for Trump at the State level too, in Pennsylvania I think. I don’t know how persuasive or conclusive that evidence is. Some of his emails apparently got released last week.
Shrug. It’s pretty bad if they were shooting fire recertifying *and* they were working with the recertifiers. Don’t know yet.
Now I know why we have lawyers.
Avere o essere.
To have or to be [Fromm],
To be or not to be [Shakespeare].
To act or to think [me].
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The law generally takes the action the be the defining moment for a crime to be potentially committed.
Wisely so given the various thoughts we all have had over many years.
Thought, speech and action are three offshoots.
The latter two being action.
Speech being both an action and a medium for action.
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Laws are written by the winners.
Rules and regulations apply to all sustainable societies.
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Hence guilt is purely subjective even when it seems objective,
as witness Presidential pardons.
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Here we have a course of action taken by desperate people subject, as far as I can see by a reading of the comments, to guilty or not guilt by our own personal biases based on our own personal assessment of the few facts that we know.
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My personal outsider biased view on the situation is that Trump lost. He first asked people to look for missing ballots [10,000 was it?] believing that they must be there.
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Not for someone to make them up because if they could [elector fraud] do that and he could ask for that to be done then he would not need to have done so.
This is so obvious.
Why would people who can rig an election have to rig an election?
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Faced with the crumbling edifice he both looked for and was offered other solutions.
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Elections can be suspended [in case of fraud] and reheld.
I do not “know” this other than it is intuitive and obvious.
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Elections can be suspended in times of national disaster, eg war until it is safe and wise to proceed.
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Re the different states sending their electoral college representatives.
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Is it true that you guys do not vote for your President after all?
I recall that some Republican electoral college representatives did not vote for Trump at all [was it 6] and some did not vote for Hilary.
What a quaint system!
Theoretically Hilary could have been elected democratically by enough electoral college representatives changing sides.
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Since this is obviously the case there is nothing wrong with asking those states whose laws allow them to nominate electoral college representatives to nominate whoever they so desire to be the electoral college representatives.
If legal.
Other than they follow the law which means nominating them on time.
So as not to be fraudulent!
The US election laws were changed in some states due to the pandemic, a lot of it related to absentee ballots and in person voting. More mail in ballots, then extended periods of days after in person voting to count mail in ballots where the results of the count become politically vital inviting possible corruption.
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This was very controversial because it was effectively decided by the courts, not the normal legislative process. It’s almost impossible to change laws at the last minute like this without one of the sides having the perception that the change disadvantages them. This was a big mistake. As far as I can tell it very likely didn’t affect the national outcome but it’s impossible to know for sure.
Germany is so screwed with its energy dependence on Russia. The WSJ has a really good article today on what they are trying to do. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-germany-is-curing-its-dependence-on-russian-energy-11652801958
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“But transportation was a problem, and the key Schwedt refinery in eastern Germany, which supplies most of the regionâs car, airplane and heating fuel, was controlled by Rosneft. Berlin officials said the Russian company had no interest in refining non-Russian oil.”
“German officials have said that for now they donât have the legal authority to nationalize Schwedt. A new law is expected to pass this month allowing the government to seize assets such as the Schwedt refinery, and the EUâs adoption of oil sanctions against Russia could also change their position.”
“Gazprom had left its German gas storage facility largely empty ahead of last winter. An aide to Mr. Scholz said Berlin had begun contemplating taking over the facility because it suspected the empty tanks were designed to give Mr. Putin extra diplomatic leverage as he prepared to attack Ukraine.”
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Germany is going to seize the Russian owned refinery in east Germany. Wow. That’s probably going to get a reaction. Germany has to seriously consider that Russia might just cut them off.
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Germany let this happen over decades. The answer is going to end up costing them by paying higher energy costs and disadvantaging German industry. What a mess. Buy your German manufactured BMW’s soon!
Off topic, sorry but I can’t force myself to think about Trump.
These two videos are Ukrainian artillery and mortars lighting off two Russian ammo dumps. They are very dramatic and best viewed on a big screen TV, but small screens are good too. Sometimes they seem to move in slow motion and sometimes they just go BOOM. https://youtu.be/KWhOXip6L4I https://youtu.be/YASEtyhWs84
Hopefully we are done talking about Trump. Depressing subject.
Tom Scharf (Comment #212096)
âGermany is so screwed with its energy dependence on Russia.â
Before Merkle messed it all up Germany was in good shape. They had an ample domestic coal industry and a large nuclear power sector. First they prematurely closed the coal generating plants and left the coal industry to die because of the Global Warming nonsense. Then after Fukushima they decided to prematurely close the nuclear plants. Maybe itâs not too late to reverse those decisions.
Another issue is that Biden has not marshaled the US energy industry to gear up to help rescue the Germans. We have gas, oil and coal reserves waiting to be unleashed. We need a President who is not petrified of the Loony Left.
Russell Klier,
From what I’ve read, the decision to close the nuclear power plants was largely based on the perceived effect on the German elections. Merkel was afraid that if she didn’t change perceptions, the Greens were going to increase their share of seats enough to change the balance of power and she wouldn’t be Chancellor any more.
I heard the same about Merkel’s political decision as DeWitt notes above. I do, however, believe that the many in German populace have a somewhat self-righteous view of climate change mitigation in that everything will turn out splendidly as long as they adhere to the platitudes of ridding themselves of GHG emissions.
A policy consistent with that view would be to allow the current energy crisis with higher prices to push them to get to alternative energy faster than planned. It will be interesting to see how the Germans will handle this problem.
The Biden administration does not appear to be changing their policy of hurriedly getting to alternative sources. They are in line with German thinking on the energy front.
DeWitt Payne
âthe decision to close the nuclear power plants was largely based on the perceived effect on the German electionsâ
Yes but it was all political BS before the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Fukushima caused it to actually happen.
âThe Fukushima disaster shook the belief in safe nuclear power to its core. For Germany, it marked a historic turning point for environmentalism.â
âHow Fukushima triggered Germany’s nuclear phaseoutâ https://www.dw.com/en/how-fukushima-triggered-germanys-nuclear-phaseout/a-56829217
âA coalition government formed after the 1998 federal elections had the phasing out of nuclear energy as a feature of its policy. With a new government in 2009, the phase-out was canceled, but then reintroduced in 2011 following the Fukushima accident in Japan, with eight reactors shut down immediately.â
âNuclear Power in Germanyâ https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/germany.aspx
“Sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the disinformation board was being put on hold and director Nina Jankowicz will resign.”
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Ha ha. That thing was the worst idea ever.
Yeah. The Bee had a thoughtful piece on it:
“All of my life, I’ve been searching for disinformation, only to find out that everything I’ve been looking for was within me from the very beginning. So ironic!” said former Disinformation Czar Nina Jankowicz. “At last, my long journey has brought me full circle, right back to the source of disinformation that was under my nose this entire time. I was the one I was looking for!” Jankowicz then turned and wiped away a single tear.
Sources say the Disinformation Board is being shut down, having completed its 3-week mission to find the source of disinformation. The government will now return to censoring and silencing opposition in secret as they’ve always done.
The Washington Post as an article worth reading on Ukraine.
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The maps are superb showing lines of attack and supply and topography with rivers and road nets. The maps give a very good overview of why combat is occurring where it is.
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Itâs missing railway lines that are the main line of supply for both sides, but the article does address the issue which almost no other MSM does.
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Iâve been skimming Russian sites to get their take on the Ukraine war. Most of their user comments match western comments, ie useless.
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I did find several that were interesting. One such was on the use of tanks in support of urban assaults.
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One tactical change said to being used in some areas was for tanks to carry a max of 5 rounds. As they use up these rounds, they cycle back to reload and other tanks cycle forward.
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As catastrophic destruction of a tank comes from the detonation of ready ammunition storage in the main compartment, getting rid of the ready rounds stops the main line of attack from shaped charged rounds, such as the Javelin.
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These shaped charges focus a thin stream of hot gas through very thick armor, but cause little direct damage themselves. Itâs the detonation of the ready ammo that causes the destruction.
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Crew casualties by being directly hit with the gas stream or hull fragments still occur, and critical components can be damaged, but the catastrophic destruction of the tank is stopped and allows for the tank to be quickly repaired and returned to duty.
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Something to look into further.
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For reference on Russian Auto loaders http://fofanov.armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/EQP/al-72.
I imagine that a single shell detonating inside a tank would destroy the tank and kill everyone inside. It would just make for less impressive video.
Mike, âŚtrue, but decreasing the number of rounds from 39 to 5 vastly decrease the odds of a narrow stream of gas from the shaped charge hitting a round. This should also work for assaulting dug in infantry positions also. Allows a force to take hits and recover repairable tanks afterwards.
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The WWII Sherman tank had the same problem early with ready rounds. They were called âRonsonsâ or âzippoâ the name of popular lighters. The fix was going to wet storage. The Sherman would take a hit, be knocked out of action, then repair crew would steam clean the inside to remove the remains, weld up the holes, put in a new crew, and then put the tank back on the line.
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Fixing ammo storage fixes most of the issues with shaped charges
Current armor tactics tend to be as tanks for infantry support, not breakthrough assault by tanks with infantry support following behind due to enemy infantry shaped charge weapons.
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If reducing T-72 main gun ammunition to 1 round loaded and 4 in reserve generally keeps the tank from being totally destroyed when hit with shaped charges, then mass use of tanks following behind a rolling artillery barrage with mech infantry following the tanks should allow an attack to overwhelm and run over a defensive line without suffering a catastrophic permanent loss of armor.
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The Russians will be forced to redesign their tanks to protect their ready ammo, but for the war in Ukraine, the above should work.
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The age of the tank is not yet over
Coal! Itâs in Europeâs future. It only took a Russian invasion for them to see the light. â Brussels has given the green light for the EU to burn more coal over the next decade as it tries to end the use of Russian gas and oil.â. https://www.ft.com/content/5d95b294-280f-4b38-9d23-70035e077392
Russell Klier,
Germany burned a lot more coal after they shut down the nuclear power plants. Worse, it was lignite, or braunkohle auf deutsch, which has a significantly lower energy content than anthracite, bituminous or subbituminous coals. Hence the carbon emission per kWh is higher than for coals with higher energy content. IIRC, carbon emissions from Germany increased a lot.
The nuclear power plant at Fukushima was an accident waiting to happen based on location and design, not a fundamental problem with nuclear power plants in general. sarc What a good idea to put your diesel backup generators as close to the shore as possible in an area subject to tsunamis! /sarc
NBC news was in close to full panic mode this morning about the recent increase in case rate. We may need to mask up again according to the usual suspects. Cases went up from a low level by a whole 26% in a week! That’s a pretty low Reff, especially compared to doubling in a couple of days for omicron. I doubt that public health measures would make much difference and I suspect the public wouldn’t pay any attention.
No mention, of course, that the same thing has happened in Europe with case rates having peaked weeks ago. But we need to get children not merely vaccinated but boosted. *sigh*
Ed,
The Russians have far more tanks than trained tank crews. They also have a huge morale problem among their troops. Tactics that sacrifice tank crews while preserving the tanks would be counterproductive.
In US pro soccer the women are screwing the men, and the men are not enjoying it:
âU.S. Womenâs and Menâs Soccer Teams Will Receive Equal Pay Under New Labor Dealsâ WSJ
The menâs team brings in the lionâs share of the revenue but the women have been bitching because the men were getting paid more than they were. Next I think the men should fund payment to fans to go watch the women’s games because no one is going to the games now.
Free link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/us-soccer-women-men-equal-pay-11652840505?st=5bxlzo0h4oj8sm2&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I doubt that the Elon Musk recent political conversion has an intellectual basis. When he says, âIn the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness partyâ, I have to doubt there is any serious thinking about party differences.
Musk owes much of his wealth to the fact that US governments subsidizes his Tesla operation through tax credits to purchasers of his automobiles. That might have been a reason for voting for Democrats in the past.
Interesting with his recent actions and words how the left and the right have changed positions on him.
One factor helping make the labor deals work is that most of the U.S. men earn far more for their club play than they do playing with the national team. Star forward Christian Pulisic, for instance, earns nearly $10 million a year playing for Chelsea in the English Premier League, according to salary-tracking site Spotrac. Heâs earned a fraction of that playing for the U.S. in recent years.
Conversely, most U.S. womenâs players earn most of their playing income from the national team rather than from still-developing womenâs professional leaguesâalthough top salaries are rising.
I doubt that the men soccer players involved are that unhappy. There is the free market pay and the national team pay. On a relative basis in international soccer play, the US women have been far above the US men – even though it appears that women in other national teams are quickly catching up and in some instances surpassing the US women.
Soccer audiences worldwide prefer watching men over women.
I think the main purpose of anti-tank missiles is to disable the tank, especially if it can be recovered. Weight of the missile is very important, so they will use minimal necessary munitions to disable the tank reliably. The design defect in many Russian tanks than does the jack-in-the-box blow the turret off effect is superfluous but makes for good video. I doubt the designer of missiles really care that much if they kill the crew but that is a bonus as they are expensive to train. A single round exploding inside the tank turret is going to be … messy.
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Causing the tank to stop and be disabled is actually superior to it blowing up if it can be recovered by friendly forces and reused. It’s unclear but a lot of destroyed tanks in this war may have actually been scuttled.
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It’s quite unclear what the extent of the damage inside a tank typically is from a shaped charge hit is or how repairable that is. They should have some good data now though, ha ha.
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I have seen almost no video of actually Javelin hits. Part of this is because the Javelin doesn’t record it. Almost no data on what engaged all the destroyed tanks. The Ukraine made Stugna-P missile system has quite a few kills, it records the engagements.
Is this a new variant? Have they used up all the greek letters?
MikeN,
My understanding is the current variant causing the increase in cases is a sub-variant of omicron, .BA2 or something like that.
I’ve also seen them make a big deal about re-infections. But, like vaccination, when nearly everyone has been infected ( or vaccinated), then one would expect that the percentage of new cases from reinfection (or vaccination) would approach 100% as time goes by.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #212119): “I doubt that the Elon Musk recent political conversion has an intellectual basis. When he says, âIn the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness partyâ, I have to doubt there is any serious thinking about party differences.”
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Or maybe Twitter is not a good place for nuanced intellectual discussions.
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When I saw that, I assumed that Musk was simply needling Democrats about how their party has changed.
The media continues to pretend they are surprised, shocked even, when another covid wave hits. The BA.x variants are going around. As DeWitt mentioned the doubling times are pretty slow, well at least relative to omicron v1.0 rates. So far serious infections are looking lower but the lag has to be accounted for.
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95% of the US has antibodies from infection or vaccination.
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Natural immunity … don’t get me started, ha ha. Inquiring minds would be curious if infection from omicron is more protective than delta, vaccines, etc. Forbidden topic, the disinformation board is shutting me down.
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Taiwan finally broke from near zero and is under a massive siege but looks to be nearing peak in a few weeks. Their infection rates now are higher than the peak USA rates ever were. And North Korea … what a mess. Apparently they never vaccinated.
I should add that there are lots and lots of videos of tanks surviving missile hits. Almost every (propaganda) video that stops immediately after the tank is hit by a missile almost certainly survived the hit.
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Here’s a propaganda video with some subtitles, rather dark humor. The crew didn’t fair well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJg2mhwVpWI
Elon voted Democrat because Democrats were the ones eager to send government money to his companies.
I’m surprised they haven’t now started an investigation into the fraud he committed on California to the tune of hundreds of millions, pretending to demo a fast battery swap system.
So I’m reading a financial newsletter, The 10th Man “…It’s the duty of the 10th man to disagree.” (it’s free). The title of this particular email is How the Sausage is Made. In the second paragraph is this gem:
Eighty percent of USDA chicken inspectors no longer eat chicken. I feel pretty much the same way about the stock market, having worked in it for nine years.
The author, Jared Dillian, writes well and seems to have his head on straight. You can find it on line easily. I have a link in the newsletter that I could embed, but it’s one of those bazillion seemingly random characters thing that I don’t entirely trust.
Change of topic.
Going to do a bread and butter pudding tonight with a stale Panettone from Xmas.
Never realized pudding was custard.
reports about Putin taking overall command on the battlefield are coming in. And the entire strategic focus is changing.
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Reports are major advances are ongoing by bypassing the fortified towns with the main assault groups, using following 2nd line troops to encircle and besige, and concentrate on envelopment of major sections of the line.
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Russia is moving to a war of maneuver.
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This will be confirmed as working or not in the next several days
One interesting take on this https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-19-20-may-2022-58432b03f40?source=user_profile———0—————————-
Ed Forbes
âreports of Putin taking over command of the battlefieldâ
I remember the same kind of reports about HitlerâŚ.. particularly after his generals tried to kill him.
I think the “Russia is going to encircle Ukrainian troops very soon” prediction is growing a bit thin now, ha ha. It may eventually happen, but I doubt it will happen fast unless Russia is willing to risk very large losses.
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Putin running the battlefield would be a blessing for obvious reasons. All armchair generals fantasize they would be good battlefield commanders, almost all of them are seriously wrong. If Putin did take over it would signal he is very dissatisfied with progress and also this is indeed a vanity project for him. Russia starting to perceptually lose this war is dangerous because of Putin’s vanity. It’s not an existential threat to Russia, but it is an existential threat to Putin’s rule.
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So strangely enough the best outcome may be to allow Russia to barely “win” the war but suffer mightily along the way. That’s a tough needle to thread. I really don’t want to see the actions of a humiliated Putin and the west have become class A shamers lately.
Russia has freed up about twenty percent of its troops by taking Mariupol. Holding out that long gave Ukraine the edge elsewhere to the point where the front has shrunk to only Russian advances in the east. Even the encirclement line coming south has not advanced.
Ukraine will be bringing in more troops to the east soon, while Russia is focused on small gains all along its front. Ukraine has also replaced a top general, with no reason given.
Update, the link above shows Russians have been making advances on what looked like stalled areas before.
I saw an 80 day gif that shrank the red area down considerably.
Finland and Sweden joining NATO is being vetoed by Turkey.
So now in addition to bankrolling defense of Finland and Sweden, Turkey must be paid off as well.
I think Turkey is just looking for some short term political payoff. They want some “terrorists” sent to Turkey for prosecution apparently. I think Finland and Sweden have competent armed forces already. It’s a plus for NATO overall.
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Russia says they are going to cutoff Finland’s gas. That may be emotionally satisfying for them but sends a really bad message to other Russian gas customers. Not wise. Russia just can’t be trusted.
MikeN,
Turkey must be paid off as well.
If it were only that simple. At this point I don’t think we can trust Erdogan to stay bought. I suspect Erdogan, like Putin, has imperial dreams.
Sports is not a popular topic here, but college sports is undergoing a major transition: âWithout most realizing it, college sports have moved from Communism to capitalism. This is the dynamic undergirding virtually everything youâre seeing happen in college sports right now. Weâve seen a fundamental paradigm shift in college athletic governance, moving from Communism to nearly unfettered capitalism. That has massive consequences for all the stakeholders in college sports â the players, the coaches, the fans, and the schools.âFox Sports: College football moves from communism to capitalism overnight, chaos ensues https://www.foxnews.com/sports/college-football-communism-capitalism-chaos.amp
It came to a head with a public feud between Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher over football recruiting and BIG money going to players:
âAlabama coach Nick Saban set the college football world abuzz Wednesday night when he told a gathering of business leaders in the state that Texas A&M assembled the top-ranked recruiting class in the country because it “bought every player” with name, image and likeness deals.â
ESPN Nick Saban-Jimbo Fisher feud — Coaches, ADs on what happened and what’s next https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/33946571/nick-saban-jimbo-fisher-feud-coaches-ads-happened-next
College football players can now be paid for their jersey numbers and so forth. This just started. What has happened in the offseason is that players are switching teams / local areas that will give them higher “contracts”. This is fairer to the player for reasons we have discussed previously, it is not good for the sport.
The remaining troops holed up in Mariupol have now surrendered (been evacuated? ha) including three top commanders who say only the dead remain. Looks to be about 2500 in custody.
!/2 Hour of news on the hour about 16 hours per day. Remaining time is documentarys about 2014-2021 and occasional talk shows.
College football will become more like professional football with the college players having more free reign.
I somehow have never seen why college sports should become an important part of institutions that purport to exist for academic teaching and learning.
Colleges provide the fans and rivalry interest for these players to earn a scholarship and now perhaps a healthy reimbursement. Very few college players become professional players but the college system does operate somewhat like a minor league in baseball.
I have often thought about what would happen if colleges that currently are big into sports and particularly football deemphasized it in favor of academics. How would the feeder system for professional sports handle the situation? How would the college sport fans react? I suspect that the attending fans would remain the same as it did before the great emphasis on sports, but would the media stay as interested as they are currently.
Now the above is all hypothetical and not likely to happen anytime soon, but I am curious how colleges will handle the new pay for play given that they will tend to look at it differently than professional sport owners. What if the college players unionized and how would college administrations react to it?
Oliver Stone, a Putin sympathizer, is interviewed on the war. He also has a 4 hour interview series with Putin from 2017. https://youtu.be/Ov567pDEMEM
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It’s interesting, a different perspective we rarely get, but a bit incoherent at times. “Russia had to attack because Ukraine was about to invade Donbass”. Ummmmm … no. Evidence – Ukraine started firing artillery in Donbass the day before the war (officially) started.
Kenneth,
Baseball has a complicated farm system that feeds the best players to the majors. College football and basketball serve the same purpose. If colleges did not offer scholarships and did not emphasize sports, then professional football and basketball would have to adopt something like the baseball model.
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I note that nearly all top prospects in baseball sign with a team long before they would have graduated from college (often in high school), and ‘signing bonuses’ can reach a couple million dollars. Of course, most minor league players don’t get a hefty signing bonus, make a pittance in the minors, and are never promoted to the majors.
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Minor league football and basketball would likely be much the same. The difference is that top pro baseball prospects are generously compensated, while top pro prospects in college football and basketball make nothing (outside rare endorsements). The colleges that have big sports programs make a fortune from ticket sales and TV rights…. IMO it is the colleges that are taking advantage of the kids.
A Russian site on the Russian advance. As usual, a bit over the top, but worth reading. The numbers of Ukraine troops trapped in the several encirclements feels about right and the maps look to agree somewhat with the ISW version of events.
. https://seemorerocks.is/rout-of-the-ukrainian-army-in-donbass/
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This action will take several days to play out before we see how accurate this is.
Tom Scharf (Comment #212139)
âThis is fairer to the player for reasons we have discussed previously, it is not good for the sport.â
I disagree. Sports is entertainment and I am being thoroughly entertainedâŚâŚ and itâs not even football season yet. Watching Texas A&M steal talent from Alabama, and the resulting feud between Sabin and Fisher, was priceless.
Iâm not sure where this will end up but I have my hope: Two college football leagues develop. One, schools with money have a league more like the NFL where the players are getting rich [aka the big black kids league] and one for schools with no money more like a traditional amateur league [aka the little white kids league].
The NCAA has a monopoly on the farm system to the NFL. There is no reason for this, and if you created an independent (and highly compensated) team it will not be allowed to compete against college teams for reasons valid and invalid. The actual connection now between academia and the NFL farm league is frivolous.
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I should add that I love college football and have been a big fan for 30+ years. I really like the tradition, the rivalries, the great enthusiasm, the meaningfulness of the games, and so on. I hate to see this broken but the players are getting screwed. Everyone else makes actual money except them, it’s indefensible.
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The irony never failed to amaze me that the rampant exploitation of college sports players in a hugely profitable sports league happened right under the noses of wokest people on earth, academia. Because this was never a high profile issue for them it indicates their wokeness is more of a tribal performance against their out group to impress their peers. Big surprise.
For the record, I’ll trade Turkey for Finland and Sweden and I suspect the rest of NATO will as well. Erdogan probably needs to tread carefully here. He will get a few bones thrown his way but shouldn’t press that advantage too far.
Russel
I disagree. Sports is entertainment and I am being thoroughly entertainedâŚâŚ and itâs not even football season yet.
Same here! Besides that, I’m not sure what “good for the sport” really means. I do know what “good for the players” means.
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So what if teams start ‘stealing’ talent? I don’t see how that will make the sport less competitive. Talent will move from school to school and each school figures out how to lure kids.
Tom,
Because this was never a high profile issue for them it indicates their wokeness is more of a tribal performance against their out group to impress their peers. Big surprise.
Well, yes.
lucia,
Baseball used to have the players as effectively indentured servants and they were paid accordingly. The advantage to the fans was that tickets to games were cheap. Now we have free agency and multi-year contracts in the hundreds of millions. Cheap tickets are a thing of the past. The games also last twice as long and it’s not just TV commercial breaks.
When I was in college we used to go to Dodger games and sit in the nosebleed section for a few bucks. But then again, I also went to a few NBA championship games between the Lakers and the Celtics and it didn’t break the bank. Bob Cousy (end of career) and Bill Russell (early career) were playing for the Celtics and Jerry West and Elgin Baylor for the Lakers.
In my mind there is something missing in these discussions of college sports and that is that several big-name sports colleges are sponsoring the activity of sports which is far afield from academics. With the recent increased recruitment of college athletes which will now become much larger with pay for play, it becomes obvious that many athletes are only connected to the college through an enrollment process and in many cases attending classes with lower academic standing to retain eligibility for their sport teams.
Would not it be more honest simply to hire promising athletes to play under the college name with enrollment academically and attending classes being optional? Such arrangements could be made in other fields of endeavor, and particularly where there is the entertainment orientation, e.g., to the extent of producing TV shows and movies.
DeWitt,
I know there have been changes. I’m not sure if that is supposed to describe how the changes have been “bad” for baseball.
You can still go to watch minor league game for cheap. I want with my Dad in Sarasota. We’ve gone to the minor league games in the West Suburbs too. So cheap baseball is still available.
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People prefer watching more competitive games. So they pay more. I’m not seeing how people paying for more competitive games hurts “the game” of baseball.
Besides which, the owners might have charged whatever the market would bear even if players were still indentured servants. People tend to assume the changes are because players are paid. But owners would be motivated to sell tv advertising and put the extra money in their pockets regardless.
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As for other non-advertising factors making games long, I don’t know what they are. But unless someone tells me what they are I won’t assume that was because players are paid. It could easily be something else. Other than breaks for advertising I don’t see any connection between games being longer and players getting paid!
Kenneth
it becomes obvious that many athletes are only connected to the college through an enrollment process and in many cases attending classes with lower academic standing to retain eligibility for their sport teams.
Yes. The truth becomes obvious. But it was already true.
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Honestly, if the NCAA and schools wanted to keep sports and academic connected, they could make rules to force the connection. They liked to pretend not paying players was the connection. But that’s a farce.
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Nothing about the courts ruling prevents the NCAA from making rules to enforce the “being a real student” part of rules. They didn’t really do so in the past likely because the NCAA, the schools and the coaches made big money and they liked it that way. So they all colluded to be really lax about making kids be “real scholars” which let them make more money by admitting some kids who couldn’t remotely participate in the academic programs on in any normal way.
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If much of the money is now going straight to students, the NCAA may suddenly be motivated to actually create and enforce rules about majors, grades, progress to graduation, admission standards being comparable for athletes and non-athletic student and so on.
Lucia,
“If much of the money is now going straight to students, the NCAA may suddenly be motivated to actually create and enforce rules about majors, grades, progress to graduation, admission standards being comparable for athletes and non-athletic student and so on.”
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My understanding is that it is not the colleges themselves that can compensate star athletes, but “alumni boosters”, donors, etc. The only impact on the college is that some wealthy alumni may choose to support star athletes rather than donate to the school. Any school that requires the star athletes *actually* be scholars as well as athletes is going to find itself with terrible teams very quickly. I doubt that will happen. There is far too much money to be made by top tier athletic programs for colleges to shoot themselves in the foot that way. Academic programs in “sports administration” and the like will continue…. as a fig leaf. I expect the NCAA will ultimately accept hefty compensation of star athletes without much disruption. Will there be grumbling? Sure, plenty, because schools with lots of rich alumni who support sports are going to dominate schools that don’t have so many rich alumni.
A lot of colleges are really just sports teams that teach some classes.
Some of them also operate a hedge fund.
Several of these conferences have started their own TV networks to get even more money.
Lucia, paying the players will not subtract from the pot of money available to the NCAA or TV contracts and there will be less motivation for scholarship for the athletes. There are many supporters of college sports out there who cannot wait to provide more funds and now do it without bending or ignoring the rules.
Actually , it is the college administration who can impose any academic standards they might chose. They are not going to do it because of alumni resistance and fear it might appear to be discrimination against minorities.
The college sport enterprise with a large labor component will become more like a business than it currently is and I doubt very much that college administrations are prepared to handle it. I look for colleges and government to get involved in unhelpful ways.
So million dollar college football players run into Title IX. That is not going to be pretty. Will the Supreme Court get involved and demand the alumni also make millionaires of the girls on the softball team? Itâs the law isnât it?
A corollary, assuming college football is a zero sum game [I know itâs not] but assuming it is. If some of the big bucks going to the players is coming out of the school’s share of the pie are they gonna cut back on some of the money that goes to women’s scholarships and facilities? No, that would be illegal. They might have a problem.
College football and basketball in many cases provide all, or nearly all, funding for the entire athletic department, including scholarships for participants (both men and women) who participate in sports that will never generate profits from TV rights and gate ticket sales. Colleges will want to preserve that arrangement by keeping “name, image, likeness” compensation for star athletes outside college expenditures (funded by outside ‘investors’ who happen to be wealthy alumni boosters, and who will temporarily own the NIL rights of the stars). A bit like ‘independent’ political action committees that exist to fund preferred candidates, but are not ‘controlled’ by the candidates they support. Colleges could demand that scholarship players sign over their NIL rights to the college…. but that would just mean star athletes go elsewhere.
Colleges could demand that scholarship players sign over their NIL rights to the collegeâŚ. but that would just mean star athletes go elsewhere.
Could they? I think I’d have to read the legal ruling to see if that would be permitted.
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But if they can, then students might just turn away the scholarship once they get enough based on NIL.
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And the ruling also allows the students outside jobs that were often blocked. (On human interest story discussed a young man in some sports who was working toward a business degree that required an internship. But the sports team was blocking many internships on the claim that if they had any aspect of sales of any sort they were just “cush jobs” he would be getting because he was on the team. But many jobs in “business” have some aspect of sale. (And yes, sometimes businesses hire people who are in some way a celebrity because it does help sales.) But these were internships other non-athlete students took and valued. It was certainly wrong to actually bar the athletes who needed an internship both for future employment and to fulfill their degree!!
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The “real jobs” aren’t something people are worrying about. But some NIL money could end up disguised as a “real job”. And if the schools start taking the NIL money, they might want to get their grubby little hands on money from a “real job”.
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It’s going to be interesting to see what schools do.
Russel,
Yeah. There’s a law. But some of this things are ‘so what?’ It shouldn’t be any more difficult to comply that before. (Admittedly, schools often did their best to argue interpretation of rules or failing that, skirt them, to get money earned in football to stay in football. But that’s not new.)
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I also think the article is written with excessive certainty about things courts have probably not ruled on.
The stakes are high; the potential for making money is huge. Here is the issue: As soon as a university, its employees, or its booster clubs play any role in helping athletes earn money or make deals, the school is necessarily providing a benefit to them. And Title IX requires that male and female athletes be treated equally. If the university arranges or offers deals for men and not women, or vice versa, it has trouble under the law.
I’m pretty sure it’s true the universities themselves will need to treat males and females equally. I don’t think they should have any trouble doing so.
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I’m not sure that the schools will have trouble if a booster club helps the athletes provided the booster club is distinct from the university. So booster clubs who want to help students will need to make sure they aren’t in anyway “part” of the university. Until some case is adjudicated we don’t know how the courts would interpret help from booster clubs. Whether there is any title VIII problem may be fact specific based on the degree of legal association with a booster club and the school.
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Booster clubs are clubs. It should be easy enough for booster clubs to make themselves entirely independent of the university.
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These are sort of just “of course, yawn”. Needing to treat men and women equally under title VII is not new and I don’t think any schools that want to comply should have any trouble here.
The university trains its menâs basketball team on how to navigate the world of contracts and agents, but does not similarly train any womenâs team.
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Easy: just train both. Or neither.
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The university allows the football team members to use its trademarked logo in an ad for a sports apparel brand, but not any womenâs team members.
Easy peasy. Let the women’s teams use the brand too. A school would have to have rocks in their heads to not let women’s gymnastics use the logo!
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The menâs baseball team members are paid by the universityâs apparel partner to have jerseys sold with their names on the back, but no female athletes are offered similar deals.
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Tell the apparel partner to offer names of female athletes too. Some for women’s gynmastics will sell.
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Manufacturing is nimble enough the manufacturer won’t be stuck with many unsellable items.
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The moment a sponsor or agent talks with a coach about a deal with a player on the schoolâs team, the university is involved.
Tell the sponsor or agent talk the to the player directly. The coach doesn’t need to be involved. Train the coach to turn away any sponsor or agent and say “I can’t be involved in that.”
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Lucia,
I envision a pack of hairy feminist attorneys chasing the NIL money like a pack of hyenas chasing a wounded gazelle. They are not interested in the girls having equal âopportunityâ to make money; they want equal results. The girls softball team had equal opportunity to bring in revenues from gate receipts, TV contracts and jersey sales as boys football. But the results were not the same and Title IX was passed to change that. I am not predicting the outcome of the coming legal battles, but if the hairy feminist attorneys do not win I expect Title IX.5 to be enacted. This should be fun to watch.
The hyenas smell money in the air.
Lucia, I believe that the judicial view will be that the college will always be involved. That the college provides enrollment, facilities, training, scholarships, a supporting fan base and brand, would be a high hurdle for claiming non involvement.
Government will get more involved through the college involvement. Colleges will acquiesce and, in effect, it will be government calling the shots in these matters through legislation and judicial review.
I would look for players unions, minimum pay levels and other college student areas of interest, starting with those related to entertainment, looking for similar arrangements.
In my view it is good that colleges might be forced to change their business models and concepts of education in preparing students for life after college. The problem I see is government involvement in shaping these changes and primarily with its one size fits all approach and discouraging creative thinking.
Russell, I get the hyena reference since in the hyena world it is the female that rules and outward genetilia differences between male and female are difficult to make, but all hyenas are hairy.
US soccer players reached a deal where the men and women are paid equally. Essentially the men were bullied in the name of equality to hand over some of their money to the women. In certain years, I think the men would have made more money like 2018, but most likely it is the other way around, with the current FIFA payouts.
Kenneth, you give me far to much credit. I think hyenas are ugly and hairy feminist attorneys are ugly, so I put them together.
My guess is Title IX will be struck down before it is used to regulate the earnings of star college athletes. This law never made sense legally. If women can get lots of people to watch their sports then they will reap the rewards. They.don’t. If college professors can fill football stadiums on Saturday to watch them work and get huge television contracts then they will get paid as much as coaches. I’d rather watch women’s gymnastics and figure skating than men’s so it isn’t always clear cut.
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There aren’t any other businesses I am aware of where the law requires a redistribution of wealth based on gender and other loosely correlated side businesses (other college sports). This case is really not “discrimination”, it is the free choice of fans to pay for what they want.
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I think every time the NCAA ends up at the SC they will lose. The players should unionize here because they are getting MONUMENTALLY ripped off. I have never seen such a clear cut case.
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“good for the sport” mostly means “good for growing interest and enthusiasm for the sport” and/or “good for the fans”.
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Unrestricted free agency in the NFL is good for the players but not good for the sport IMO. The first thing is teams start to lose their identity with large roster changes every year which affects fan appeal. The second thing is large market teams like NYC and LA can dominate a sport because of larger budgets. The Yankees spend about 3X more than the Tampa Rays and it would be much more if baseball didn’t have some redistribution going on. This redistribution is to try to maintain competitiveness in the market, thus fan appeal. There are trade-offs here, it’s not easy.
Russell
They are not interested in the girls having equal âopportunityâ to make money; they want equal results.
I know what ‘they’ want. Some certainly want that.
But I think these cases have already been adjudicated. Universities are not required to reduce the public’s enthusiasm for football down to the size that exists for women’s ice skating.
Tom
The first thing is teams start to lose their identity with large roster changes every year which affects fan appeal.
I hear that used as a reason to indentured servitude for players in the past. But they are more free to roam now. Baseball, football and basket ball all seemed to retain fan support despite the constantly changing rosters.
The second thing is large market teams like NYC and LA can dominate a sport because of larger budgets.
Didn’t the Yankee’s dominate back when Babe Ruth played? Rich cities dominating has always happened. I don’t think that’s related to free agency of the players.
ââŚ. with Russian warships policing the Levantine Basin and Black Sea, Putin can squeeze Ukraine economically, preventing maritime exports, and force the West to sustain Ukraine or risk its bankruptcy and collapse.
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The obvious policy response for NATO, as retired U.S. naval officer Adm. James Stavridis proposed in a recent Bloomberg News column, is an âescortâ system akin to Operation Earnest Will, the U.S. response to the Iraqi-Iranian tanker war of 1986-87. During it, the U.S. âreflaggedâ Kuwaiti tankers and escorted them with U.S. warships while de-mining the Persian Gulf and confronting Iranian naval forcesâŚ.â
. https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3497038-the-turkish-question-on-nato-a-larger-strategic-opportunity-in-the-black-sea/
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And the clock ticking towards nuclear war moves closer.
Ed Forbes
And the clock ticking towards nuclear war moves closer.
Sure. Since Putin seems to keep making elliptic references to using them and is perhaps willing to do so to get his way.
Lucia,
“Could they? I think Iâd have to read the legal ruling to see if that would be permitted.”
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I should have been more clear. Restricting NIL rights only works if signing over NIL rights to the college is a condition of being on *any* NCAA the team. Want to play for ‘Bama? Then sign over your NIL rights. The NCAA could try to make that a requirement for participation in NCAA competitions. If they do, then the NCAA is likely doomed as a governing organization, and the SC will gleefully and forcefully smack them down.
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The truth is that the NCAA and big-time sports colleges have taken advantage of the best-of-the-best athletes for many decades. That is going to change.
ISW has confirmed the Russian breakthrough at Popasaya.
. https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Severodonetsk%20Battle%20Map%20Draft%20May%2022%2C2022.png
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The next week will be critical for Ukraine. If Ukraine counterattacks canât force open the supply lines, or open a route for the Ukraine garrisons in the pockets to retreat out through, the Ukraine army will lose a major portion of its better veteran troops.
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As Russian supply lines in the Popasaya breakout are by rail directly to the front, Russia is not in danger of overextended supply that forced a pause as in prior actions.
I get the impression that many here look at Russia as an extension of the Soviet Union and that the evil of the Soviet Union is directly transferable to Russia.
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A couple of points on this view.
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1) the 2 most famous of Soviet leaders after Lenin, Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, were not Russian.
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2) Russia led the revolt that brought down the Soviet Union.
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Russia has issues, but the transfer of the sins of the Soviets directly to Russia is a logical failure of breathtaking proportions.
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If one were to go strictly by body count in wars since the downfall of the Soviets, the US wins hands down.
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War is âDiplomacy by Other Means â. Ukraine and Russia have opposing and deep set differences that has produced thousands of casualties prior to the current war.
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At some point, war is required to ratify diplomacy on the battlefield. This view is supported by most the major and minor powers of the world as a listing of all the wars produced from the 1990âs to date confirm.
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OkâŚI just saw this one
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âDIPLOMACY IS SAYING âNICE DOGGIEâ WHILE YOU SEARCH FOR A ROCK.â
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“The evil of the Soviet Union is directly transferable to Russia”
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Yes. Nothing has changed. Obviously. Read the news lately?
Ed
I get the impression that many here look at Russia as an extension of the Soviet Union and that the evil of the Soviet Union is directly transferable to Russia.
Uh. No.
But good try at avoiding discussing what Russia itself has elected to do in recent times.
Ed Forbes (Comment #212184): “If Ukraine counterattacks canât force open the supply lines, or open a route for the Ukraine garrisons in the pockets to retreat out through, the Ukraine army will lose a major portion of its better veteran troops.”
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I don’t see where you get that claim. The Ukraine troops still in Luhansk are surely at some risk, but that is a modest portion of the line of contact. So I don’t see that as a “major portion”. And given the glacial rate of Russian advance, it seem unlikely that most of those troops will be captured.
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But the breakthrough would seem to have the potential to force Ukraine to abandon Luhansk.
Ed Forbes (Comment #212185): “I get the impression that many here look at Russia as an extension of the Soviet Union and that the evil of the Soviet Union is directly transferable to Russia.”
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Nope. As lucia has said, Russia has earned condemnation all on their own.
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Ed Forbes: “the 2 most famous of Soviet leaders after Lenin, Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, were not Russian.”
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Khrushchev is more famous than Brezhnev or Gorbachev? Maybe to those of us old enough to remember when Khrushchev was boss.
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Ed Forbes: “Russia led the revolt that brought down the Soviet Union.”
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Really? Do you mean the coup attempt that precipitated the final collapse?
My guess is that endgame for Ukraine is to concede Luhansk, but no before pulverizing enough of Russian army to get concessions. I am not sure they will be give up on Kherson while they still have means to attack.
But good try at avoiding discussing what Russia itself has elected to do in recent times.
More accurately what Putin has done in recent times, eg to dissenters, journalists, opposition leaders. Saving the butt of other ruthless dictators.
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Admiration of Putin by some “Republicans” is pretty worrying. I hope they are not wishing for similar leader in US that can keep Democrats out of power no matter what the public wish.
Phil,
Putin is a murderous thug. Nobody I know wants a murderous thug to be president of the USA. You are mistaken if you think any more than a lunatic fringe admires Putin.
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A lot of people on the left in the USA *do* in fact admire other murderous thugs like Che’, Fidel, and Hugo Chavez. If there is any danger of non-democratic subversion of government in the USA, it comes from the extreme left, not the right. I think it is important to remember that the right mostly wants government to leave them alone, which is why the Constitution spends so much time describing what the government is not allowed to do. The left wants government to control virtually everything individuals are allowed to do and say. It is why the left is so relentless in its pursuit of power, and why it is more than willing to subvert the plain meaning of the Constitution to institute greater control over the individual.
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I want Democrats out of power because they are damaging the country in countless ways. They will get tossed out by voters in November because of their destructive policies; murderous thugs are not needed.
Phil Scadden (Comment #212192): “Admiration of Putin by some âRepublicansâ is pretty worrying.”
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Such people are virtually non-existent; especially among those with power and influence. The worrying thing is skill at spreading lies exhibited bythe Left and their allies in corporate media.
This is darling! A pic of a two seater ATV with an anti-tank guided missile launcher mounted on top. I have heard the Ukrainian tactics described as âhit and runâ or âshoot and scootâ. This seems perfect.
This is not my area of expertise, but modern tank warfare has changed forever. Since the German blitzkrieg of the 1930s European war plans have been tank-centric. Something else needs to replace it. https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1528730909285007366?s=20&t=oyvWVJQHu_q1_vl9MgJSMQ
Phil,
The Kherson region has a major canal that used to supply water to the Crimea. The Ukrainians blocked the canal after the Russians annexed Crimea, leading to severe water shortages in dry summer months. The Russians are not going to give back that region without a guarantee of water via the canal.
“My guess is Title IX will be struck down before it is used to regulate the earnings of star college athletes. ”
Title IX does not mention sports. It bans discrimination based on sex by educational institutions that receive federal funds.
John Tower proposed an amendment that would exempt athletics.
Bush Administration passed a regulation that gave colleges an out on fewer women athletes by conducting surveys rather than axing mens’ teams.
For those of you who still believe that there is no evidence of vote fraud in the 2020 election: https://spectator.org/this-opinion-just-in-2000-mules-offers-vivid-proof-of-vote-fraud/
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Video of people, often wearing gloves in warm weather, stuffing drop boxes with ballots. Hundreds of thousands of them. And the investigators have the cell phone numbers of the criminals.
Mike,
FWIW, I don’t dispute that fraud occurred. I objected to the illegal remedy Trump wanted to apply to it.
Mike M,
I think that delivery of ballots by third parties is allowed in some places, but not in others. I don’t think the film draws that very critical distinction. If there is some kind of conspiracy to swing close states to Biden, then the film should prove (at a minimum) 1) that there was nothing comparable happening in any states where the outcome was never in doubt (say Massachusetts or Alabama), and 2) that the delivery of ballots was in fact unlawful in each of the swing states where it might have made a difference.
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If the film makers can show that, then they will have my attention. Until then, not so much. What is very clear is that covid inspired laxity on enforcing voting laws in many places increased the total number of votes quite dramatically, and may well have swung the election to Biden in some states. But claims of a giant conspiracy need extraordinary proof.
No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation, in be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
The above is Title IX. I don’t think that most know how simplistic the original legislation was. It was specifically targeted directly at womens right to be educated. Everything else was appended via the courts, other legislation, or most frequently executive orders from the Office of Civil rights. More verbiage was spent on defining the entities to whom it applied to than the rule itself. Recieving federal assistance has since been defined to mean any school that accepts students with Federal student loans & grants or almost any educational institution K-PHD. It wasn’t until the late 80s that the guidelines for enforcing compliance surrounding womens sports were put in place. Title IX is also what is used to require university’s to adjuticate sexual assaults involving their students. It requires that each have a designated Title IX coordinator to monitor it’s compliance with the act and serve as a notification point for sexual discrimination, harrashment, or assault. Quite a bit of power came from those simple 37 words.
Russia was doing fine after the Cold War ended, and then Putin took power. He openly pines for the Soviet prestige days and acts just like a prototypical USSR thug that he is. It’s the same belligerence, saber rattling, and general menace that the Soviets continuously trafficked in for decades. I lived through it.
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As for the contention the US has killed more people, that is probably both true and false. 100K’s of people died in Iraq / Afghanistan / Syria. Many of them were victims of sectarian violence. What is different is we aren’t in any of these countries as a war of conquest, in fact we have left, intentionally.
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Russia is conquering Ukraine because they believe it is “Russian”. One can only wonder what the world would look like with Russia as the only superpower. The whole world would be “Russians” to them. Their neighbors fear them for good reasons. Do you think Mexico and Canada feel the same? Why is that?
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If Russia wants a better future, Putin and his ilk needs to go.
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In unrelated news, Biden said today we would militarily defend Taiwan, ha ha. It’s a complicated world.
Phil,
The Republicans love Putin is a partisan talking point. It really means they don’t denounce them as loudly and reflexively this week as the left does. This is all leftovers from the “Russians elected Trump” madness from 2016.
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Hilary Clinton / Obama called for a Russian reset in relations and there is this infamous moment where Obama denounces the Republicans for being too hard on Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0IWe11RWOM
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What I have seen is more along the lines of Russia must be respected and not dismissed. Putin and Xi keep their countries in line and are (allegedly) actually liked by their own people. Comparisons between these systems against the west, where it is now a stray cat fight 24/7, are up for debate. Are Putin / Xi better leaders than Biden or Trump beyond a debate on the political systems? One can easily argue that.
The voting fraud should be investigated, I’d like to hear the other side of the story. Right now it is activist assertions.
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It depends on whether these âvote harvestingâ efforts are legal votes or not. Iâm not a fan of vote harvesting, this is why authenticated in person voting is favored by some people. Personally Iâm OK with authenticated mail-in voting, but vote harvesting would be even easier this way.
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I also donât believe these type of efforts can be effective on national races. One would first need to have an extremely close race within a 1000 votes which is really rare, then have pre-selected the correct state(s) for the fraud effort, and then taken a very high risk for little chance of changing results. It also takes a lot of effort if the ballots canât be easily forged.
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This thing could be effective for city council races and other hyper local politics where voting takes place on odd days where other big races arenât happening.
SteveF (Comment #212202): “I think that delivery of ballots by third parties is allowed in some places, but not in others. I donât think the film draws that very critical distinction.”
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Do you have any information as to what the film actually says about that? I don’t. I saw the True The Vote person interviewed and I *think* she said that harvesting is illegal in those states.
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I have not seen the film. From what I have read, it seems clear that the “mules” were acting in a surreptitious manner. Going to many different drop boxes, in the wee hours, wearing gloves. That strongly implies guilty knowledge.
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I do not think the film makers need to prove anything. Probable cause is more than enough to get the police and prosecutors involved. They have the tools to obtain proof.
If a paid activist knocks on a door and asks “Have you voted yet? Do you need help? I’ll deliver the vote for you”. Should that be legal? Gray area for me. If the activist fills in the ballot, gives gifts, or does political promotion, or “loses” some votes when delivering them then this would clearly cross a line. They can still pass muster and be effective if they only vote harvest in politically favorable areas for them. Do we really know this is only primarily happening on one side?
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I’d say both I doubt this will be effective and it should be banned anyway because we need to keep the voting process as reasonably squeaky clean as possible.
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If it was to be legal then I think vote harvesters would need to be registered and all votes they harvested should be traceable for a possible future investigation.
Tom,
I also donât believe these type of efforts can be effective on national races. One would first need to have an extremely close race within a 1000 votes which is really rare, then have pre-selected the correct state(s) for the fraud effort, and then taken a very high risk for little chance of changing results. It also takes a lot of effort if the ballots canât be easily forged.
I don’t really understand why you say this. Why do you believe this type of fraud would be limited to affecting a race to within 1000 votes? It seems to me that the putative scheme would scale depending on the number of operatives / harvesters working on it. But maybe I am missing something, so I thought I’d ask.
Regarding pre-selecting the correct states for the fraud effort, it does not seem insane to me to speculate that such an effort would target all of the swing states.
I don’t think you recruit people saying ‘Hey, we’re going to rig an election, can you keep it secret? Are you in?’ You just recruit activists who care enough to involve themselves and let them make personal decisions to exploit a situation where nobody is watching closely and the rules can be easily broken without consequence. Something along those lines anyway.
Mike M.,
I do not think the film makers need to prove anything. Probable cause is more than enough to get the police and prosecutors involved. They have the tools to obtain proof.
How would the police and prosecutors prove anything after the fact? Real question. Once the ballots are in the drop box, there is, AFAICT, no way that one could distinguish legitimate from illegitimate ballots. How do we even know that the video in 2,000 Mules is real or deep fake? It is so easy now to create real looking but fake video that unless it’s something like George Floyd where there also a lot of witnesses, I would have serious doubts.
I do have serious doubts about the validity of 2,000 Mules. It’s not something that I have any interest in watching. That being said, drop boxes are, IMO, a really bad idea. If you’re worried about leaving a ballot in your mail box, take it to the local post office.
And I seriously doubt that a conspiracy that large wouldn’t have attracted someone who was a plant and blows a whistle. As the saying goes, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
“The Russians are not going to give back that region without a guarantee of water via the canal.”
Absolutely a talking point – just as Ukraine doesnt want Russion blockading access to Dnieper.
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If there are not people in the US right that are Putin admirers, then all I can say is that Russian are doing a very fine job of imitating them in rightwing channels. However, I put “Republican” in quotes because I find it hard to believe subscribers to traditional Republican values could own such views.
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I dont buy that US right are libertarians that just want the government to leave them alone. As far as I can see social conservatives, especially Christians, are very keen for government to regulate behaviour in line with their moral positions.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #212213): “How would the police and prosecutors prove anything after the fact? Real question. Once the ballots are in the drop box, there is, AFAICT, no way that one could distinguish legitimate from illegitimate ballots.”
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If ballot harvesting is illegal and someone puts multiple ballots in the box, then they are breaking the law. All the more so if they distribute 100 ballots among a dozen boxes.
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DeWitt Payne: “How do we even know that the video in 2,000 Mules is real or deep fake?”
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Why would the government create fake video?
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But it should be easily provable. You have cell phone data placing a particular phone at certain drop boxes at certain times. You have video showing the owner of the phone putting ballots in those boxes at those times. Send him to prison.
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Or better yet, do what they do with low level drug dealers: flip them and follow the thread as far up the food chain as possible.
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I find it amazing the lengths people go to so as to convince themselves that the election was fair. But then, I grew up in a place where it was widely assumed that elections were rigged.
I’d be very surprised if Phil can name a prominent voice on the right who is a Putin admirer. There sure aren’t any on Fox News.
Phil,
Odd how from afar you can see the tremendous support for Putin on the right, while those of us who live here don’t see it. Please point to a few well known (or even slightly known) people who admire Putin.
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WRT those on the religious right trying to force they views on everyone: I suspect you are reading way too much into the possible reversal of Roe V Wade, which is fundamentally a constitutional question. Roe is a unique case, where the clear majority of voters (about 2/3) favor substantially restricting abortions after the first trimester (much like in most countries). The evangelical right simply does not have much support for their faith driven policy preferences beyond abortion.
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And yes, most people in the States just want to be left alone…. lots are not even very political. But when a bunch of incompetents really screw things up (like President Alzheimer de Imbeciles and his band of loonies) voters are motivated to throw the bums out…. and they will in November. You may have seen video clips of spontaneous cheering on planes when a judge struck Biden’s mask mandate for travelers…. that pretty well sums up most people in the States.
I do not claim “tremendous” support. I claim “some”. I cannot judge how common, nor do I claim they are well known from anonymous handles.
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Abortion is complicated because it arguably involves another “person” rather than individual liberty. I was more thinking of Moral Majority type issues – eg school prayer, LBGT legalization, which figured so heavily when I read “Time” in the 1980s.
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By the way, does 51% translate as “most” people?
A large scale voting fraud of the harvesting type would very likely be detected. Too many people actually care about vote integrity, too many people would be involved in the fraud, and it would be relatively easy to get people to admit it under pressure. Large scale fraud would need to be in the counting and tallying room IMO. I’m not saying its impossible, just unlikely, and assertions require extraordinary evidence for me.
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Also guessing where the vital states would be is unpredictable.
Republicans are not mostly libertarians, but libertarians mostly vote Republican rather than Democrat if they choose between the two. A large sector of the US would struggle to define what libertarian views actually are because they don’t pay close attention to politics.
Phil,
“By the way, does 51% translate as âmostâ people?”
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Is that a trick question? By definition, it clearly does. In the specific case I was talking about, I don’t have exact numbers, but I do know (personal observation at multiple US airports and on multiple US flights), that somewhere between 90% and 95% of people are not wearing masks…. in spite of endless “recommendations” from Anthony Fauci. The pandemic is ending for most everyone….. except the Biden administration. The USA is one of the very few countries that still demands a negative covid test before boarding a plane for the USA…. a truly demented, just like Biden himself and the rest of his administration’s policies.
Mike M,
“I grew up in a place where it was widely assumed that elections were rigged.”
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Chicago? Or outside the States?
Northeast PA. When I lived in Chicago, the politics felt familiar.
Tom Scharf (Comment #212220): “A large scale voting fraud of the harvesting type would very likely be detected. Too many people actually care about vote integrity, too many people would be involved in the fraud, and it would be relatively easy to get people to admit it under pressure.”
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Only if actually investigated.
Steve, sorry, I should have explained my context immediately. You said “most people in the States just want to be left alone”. But you tend to imply frequently that Democrats are busy bodies who just want to control you, and voting percentage would then say that applies to lots of people. “most” to me usually means a considerable majority which the voting figures would not support.
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I think you would struggle to find a person on the planet that actually likes wearing a surgical mask. I certainly look forward to not having to wear one, but not yet!
> but libertarians mostly vote Republican rather than Democrat if they choose between the two.
I’m not so sure about that. Maybe libertarians do, but Libertarians are all about drugs.
Ann Coulter wanted to run 3rd party to take out a Republican incumbent, and the Libertarian Party refused her their ballot line because she wouldn’t support legalizing drugs.
While I approve of the general skepticism being exhibited here regarding election fraud, I do not particularly agree with the arguments presented [supporting said skepticism]. But arguing the point is not interesting enough to pursue, so, just let it be noted for the record that I don’t really agree.
Shrug.
mark bofill,
ditto.
I guess what I have perceived as recent radio silence on vaccine effectiveness data and omicron is explained. Expected, but not exactly being broadcast by the usual suspects.
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Recent CDC info on vaccines/omicron https://www.fda.gov/media/157475/download
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Page 8:
2 dose Pfizer vaccination, after 3 months, provides * 0% * protection against omicron symptomatic infection in a recent study. That’s right. None. Even stranger it provides * negative protection * after 7 months, let’s hope that is a statistical fluke.
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Page 16:
Vaccine effectiveness against omicron emergency room visits at only 37% after 5 months. Half that of delta.
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This document starts parsing out way better results for “immunocompetent” adults which is new to me. I suspect this is a bit of desperation analysis.
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NEJM, April, Omicron:
“Among those who had received two BNT162b2 doses, vaccine effectiveness was 65.5% (95% CI, 63.9 to 67.0) 2 to 4 weeks after the second dose, dropping to 15.4% (95% CI, 14.2 to 16.6) after 15 to 19 weeks and dropping further to 8.8% (95% CI, 7.0 to 10.5) after 25 or more weeks”
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Omicron vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization is 50% to 70% depending on doses and how long since. It is noted that omicron produces less severe disease overall, but we are no longer in the 10X better world, more like 2X.
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Moderna has an omicron specific version with availability expected in the autumn. They say the improved version has a 2.2x improvement in antibody response for current variants.
“Libertarians are all about drugs.”
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There are (L)iberterians and (l)iberterians. The US’s Libertarian Party is is a bit nutty which is why I don’t vote that way. If drug use is the single issue then that might be a Democrat vote, otherwise freedom of speech, small government, lower taxes, less nanny state, etc. will sway towards Republicans. Hard core libertarians will find a lot to dislike in both parties today.
Phil,
“But you tend to imply frequently that Democrats are busy bodies who just want to control you, and voting percentage would then say that applies to lots of people.”
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Um, I don’t make any implications, I come right out and say it: people of the left want to control everyone: what they are allowed to do and what they are allowed to say. They want to tax income at astronomical rates (75% to 80% is often suggested as “fair”), confiscate a fraction of “excess wealth” each year, and confiscate ~100% of wealth at death. Voting does not necessarily imply support for the philosophy of the left; the motivation could be as simple as voting for people who claim they will improve your personal financial circumstances. About 1/3 of US adults almost never vote at all.
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Surgical masks are covid theater, not effective. N-95 masks are potentially effective, but horribly uncomfortable if properly fitted, so are rarely properly fitted. If covid presented grave personal danger, then well fitted N-95 masks would be prudent, but covid does not present that grave personal danger for most people (young people, triply vaccinated people, people who already had the illness… remember that 60% of the population in the USA already recovered from the virus), and the masks people were being forced to use on planes were not remotely effective. Covid theater, nothing more. But for the left, theater with government directing individuals is critically important. So of course there were spontaneous celebrations on planes when a judge struck the regulation as illegal. It wasn’t just illegal (which it probably was) it was stupid lefty nonsense, and the vast majority of travelers recognized that.
Phil/Steve,
I think both progressive and religious leaning conservatives will indulge in busy-body-ness when they think they can win. Both embrace “keep the government out” when they think they can’t.
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The 70s and early 80s had a lot of conservatives who thought they could win forcing kids to say the pledge of allegience, making gays shut up and stay in the closet. The tide turned on all that, and now the forcing in from the other side and has extended even to a NY mayor wanting to ban “Big Gulp” beverages to force better diets. And of course we do get rather forced “education” on the job to right think about gay rights, sexual harassment and so on. And some of the later have crept into schools.
(I’m for gay rights and anti harassment. But by the 90s and 00s some of the training really went past don’t harass. Which sometimes put employees in the weird situation of both being talked at but not actually being above to get HR departments to take action.)
I disagree with any “both are guilty” claims.
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Kids are not required to say the pledge. People can burn as many flags as they want, and sleep with pretty much whoever they want. Those efforts to insist on conservative, mostly religiously inspired morality were blocked as unconstitutional. In response, did conservatives threaten the SC justices with court packing? No. Did conservatives “protest” outside the homes of SC justices? No.
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But the left wants total control, and will subvert the Constitution to get it. Court packing is broadly supported on the extreme left. The tactics of the two sides are fundamentally different in nature: Accept the constitutional order, or reject it. The left rejects it. Accept and enforce laws, or ignore them. The left ignores them. Obama was a thoroughly lawless President. The Biden administration is just Obama 3.0 with Alzheimer’s added.
I thought Bloomberg already banned the large drinks.
Courts threw out the ban pretty quickly by reason of NYC Health board exceeding it’s authority.
Steve,
I don’t know. I think a fair number of the religious goobers where I live would be only too happy to regulate other peoples lives via government if they could. It’s just that in the current environment they have very limited opportunity to do so.
Shrug. I think it varies regionally.
Steve,
I should have added, I agree with you about the lawlessness / lawfulness thing. IMO the religious right will do what it can to boss people around within the confines of the law generally speaking. I agree with you that modern leftists seem to have less respect for law.
I think the theocratic society depicted in The Handmaids Tale (I read the book, I had zero interest in the TV show), is not beyond the realm of possibility. One only has to look at the Taliban in Afghanistan to see that there are people who think that way and I don’t think they are all Muslims in the rest of the world. Robert Heinlein in his future history timeline included a theocracy in the US at some point.
However, I think the probability of that happening in the US is vanishingly small. Something like Venezuela, OTOH, is much more likely. IMO, the only way we get a right wing authoritarian government would be a situation like Chile after Allende or Franco in Spain, a reaction to a left wing takeover attempt.
SteveF
Kids are not required to say the pledge.
No. But it took a SCOTUS ruling to not require it (1943). And various schools kept trying to have work arounds (moment of silence etc.) And as recently as 2004, a father had to challenge the right of his daughter to not listen to a recitation, which was required of teachers. See https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-1624 .
(The dad was found to not have standing.)
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So the fact that conservatives lost when they tried to force this doesn’t mean they won’t try to force certain behaviors.
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The rest of your list also contains behaviors that conservatives tried to prevent or enforce.
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Both sides do try to enforce their preferred behavior to the extent they can. They change their tune when the other side gets the upper hand and starts trying to force opposite behaviors.
We are all genetically programmed to form tribes, seek tribal leadership, control the herd through force, and procreate. This evolutionary path is beneficial to the survival of the species. Many animals do the same thing. It is not derived or sourced by a political party but it sure is expressed that way.
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The moral majority was pretty controlling in their time. One of the reasons, the main reason IMO, that party control changes as often as it does is that this controlling instinct goes wrong immediately once the ability to control is obtained. The urgent need to suppress dissent, by force if necessary, is just a paper thin veneer over evolutionary programming.
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I believe this is one of the reasons the US political system for all its faults is enduring, because it was designed specifically to counteract these behavioral impulses. Even in the 1700’s people knew that leaders would feel compelled to restrict Big Gulps eventually, ha ha.
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The fight is against this evolutionary impulse, not one group who has it. There are times when this tribal behavior works great, maybe most of the time, but it has to be guarded against continuously from overreach.
Preventing abortion is a pretty controlling behavior. The left has had the better of cultural power for a while and has mismanaged it badly, but of course I would think that. The thing is that people who have this sort of power just.never.stop.using.it. It starts to become entirely about exercising the control, and not about a preferred preestablished outcome.
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The language control madness on the left is an example, who know what today’s rules are? What is a Latinx and how do you even pronounce that? 3 eighth graders were charged with sexual harassment in Kiel, WI for not using they/them pronouns with a non-binary classmate. If everyone agreed today’s rules are fine, it wouldn’t stop changing because it’s not about that, it’s about some deep instinct of exercising control. Thus, the crazy people who can’t get that under psychological control get removed from power so another set of crazies get put in power.
I should add that it is entirely possible that people who have a large impulse to control others will naturally gravitate to the political party that expresses the most desire to control. That would be the left today.
Tom Scharf,
It’s not just political parties. Have you had any experience with home owners associations perchance? There are overly officious people everywhere. There was even an ad that featured an HOA enforcer who took a chain saw to a mailbox post because it was too high. That was, of course, an exaggeration, but it wouldn’t have resonated if there weren’t some truth to it.
None of the tribalistic instincts of the human being are required for survival in the modern world. Humans are distinct from animals in their ability to reason. Forcing your ideas/actions or ideas/actions of your group on others has as its nexus the power of government to do the forcing. Without government using its monopoly on force to do the forcing, convincing others of the reasonableness of your ideas would require using persuasion and evidence in the place of force.
When governments imply that only they can solve real (or imagined problems) and citizens are convinced of this power, then it follows that using the force of government appears to some superior to persuasion and evidence. If citizens were convinced that government could be severely limited in these matters and if the government were limited, citizens would hardly waste their time attempting to get the government to do their forcing. Politicians and political parties would have limited involvement in these matters.
Unfortunately, in todayâs world politicians and political parties are mightily involved in these matters since government power is not limited and in fact some politicians are obviously of the mind that their power comes from convincing the public that their well being depends mainly on government actions. Their reach extends to sorting out minorities of all manner and maintaining that minority status and dependence on government to secure a majority of their votes to keep them in power.
A great example of this is the Democrat party and politicians maintaining urban Blacks as dependent on government and securing a high portion of their votes. The situation for urban Blacks does not appear to get better and government people keep their power whether they be white, Hispanic or Black.
That Kiel, WI incident was a Title IX investigation. That be would using the monopoly power of government force to change things and doing it from the Federal government down to the local level.
Major election fraud in Michigan, according to the state Bureau of Elections: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/michigan-bureau-of-elections-top-gop-gubernatorial-candidates-ineligible-ballot#&_intcmp=hp1bt2,hp1bt
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Approximately 36 fraudsters were paid to collect signatures required for candidates to get on the ballot. They submitted nothing but invalid signatures. So now half the Republican candidates for governor, including the two top contenders, are ineligible.
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It is not clear if the fraudsters were motivated by politics or by money. Hopefully, they will go to prison either way.
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Michigan law does not provide candidates with a way to check signature validity.
Interesting story Mike. The claim appears to be that the fraudsters vicitimized or sabotaged the candidates by supplying the fraudulent signatures, specifically in order to later disqualify the candidates.
“Criminals can commit fraud for money or by purposely infiltrating a victimized campaign with illegitimate signatures in a Machiavellian attempt by the opposing party to later have them removed from the ballot,” Johnson continued. “Unfortunately, the signatures provided to campaigns cannot currently be checked until after their submission to the Secretary of State. This needs to change, immediately.”
Sounds like a clever dirty trick.
mark bofill,
“Sounds like a clever dirty trick.”
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Sounds like they hired Hillary as a consultant.
Kissinger is the reasonable one ?
This spins my Vietnam anti-war days upside down. Article is worth a full read.
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â.. Kissinger warned that continued violence in Ukraine will imperil long-term stability in Europe, causing potential âupheavalsâ and conflicts across the continent.â
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â.On the eve of his 99th birthday and barely alive, Henry Kissinger has finally reached the point of cosmic transcendence where he sounds vastly more reasonable than almost anyone else who’s currently in power
â Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 24, 20âŚ.â
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â You know the political class has really fallen to shit when Henry Kissinger is the reasonable one in the room.
â Dave Smith (@ComicDaveSmith) May 24, 2022â
. https://bigleaguepolitics.com/kissinger-warns-of-fatal-consequences-if-zelenskyy-wont-negotiate/
Oh, don’t say that Steve! I like you. I don’t want to read that you shot yourself twice in the back of the head by accident. đ
Ed,
That was long. Not sure what your point is. Perhaps you could state it directly.
I hate this time of evening on election night. Alabama primaries only about 10% counted, too early to tell anything I didn’t already know. I’m so impatient…
Main points:
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Ukraine should make concessions to end the conflict with Russia and avoid a full-scale war with the geopolitical giant that Kyiv wonât be able to win.
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attempts to âinflict a crushing defeatâ on Russian troops in Ukraine would leave no exit for Putin.
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pushing further with embargoes or military might would risk sparking an all-out war with Russia.
Lucia, response went into moderation
Ed,
I get that might be what you want Ukraine to do. But I’m not seeing what benefit Kyiv gets by making significant concession. Maybe you can suggest how Kyiv falling on it’s sword and dying is good for Kyiv, but it appear to me you haven’t tried.
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Sure, it’s possible not giving Russia what it wants now would risk all out war. But giving it what it wants also risk all out war– just a few years more down the line when Putin decides winning in Ukraine is a good reason to go for Poland, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland and so on.
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When you do risk assessment, you need to look at all the risk, not just select one.
I am pretty sure Kyiv understands that they have to give Putin something, but I am also pretty sure that they want to increase their hand at the bargaining table. Like access to Dneiper if not Kherson city, clear the Khakiv omblast etc. which may be achievable. Getting a good hunk on Donbas even if in total ruins will give Putin a win.
The noose on 30,000 Ukraine troops is tightening. They are now in no position to run for the exits without being chopped to pieces.
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They are in the same position as the Germans running from Normandy through the Falaise pocket.
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If Ukraine counter attacks donât open the pocket, they are doomed.
Bagging this many Ukraine troops will add impetus to peace talks if the counter attacks fail.
FWIW:
Even the NYT is now calling for the Ukraine to sacrifice territory for an end to the war. Since the NYT is essentially Pravda for the Democrats, I expect the Biden administration is already on board and wants Zelensky to understand NATO is not going to save it from continued destruction. Russia has paid a very dear price in treasure and blood for their invasion, and is unlikely to do the same thing again; I just don’t see Poland or other NATO countries are in any danger from Putin, short of all-out nuclear war.
Day 7 of the Michael Flynn [sorry, Sussman] rerun trial.
Sussman looks likely to get off on account of Jury selection and Washington?
Love the way Durham has expertly brought in good witnesses and hostile witnesses from the FBI.
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He has tied together Elias, Sussman and Hilary in gentle nets then attached lead weights in the form of Baker. J, Preistap. Bill and the Operation Crossfire team.
All very surprised to be called up against their old legal buddy.
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The best is Mr Preistap, Head of Counter Intelligence who did a true sergeant Schultz.
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How can anyone lay claim to the job he did and then, with the aid of the defense attorneys, claim absolutely no knowledge of the most important operation he ever carried out to investigate his President?
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A shame he gets off as if convicted it would open up a lot more doors.
Regarding Russia and Ukraine, it’s the grind portion of the war in my opinion. Russia can continue to grind away as long as they can afford the cost in money and materiel and lives, Ukraine can continue to resist and endure as long as they’ve got the will to. I think concessions are a function of the question ‘who will have had enough first’. Who knows.
The limiting factor for Russia might be a shortage of officers. The Ukrainians have killed a lot of them, they are not easy to replace, and the Russian army is very top down.
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Peace will not come until both sides conclude that they have little to gain by continued fighting. Clearly not there yet.
Mike,
Could be. I read here that Russia is getting rid of the upper age limit of 40 for military service. Clearly they want more men.
mark bofill,
Yeah. [sarc] I bet there are just tons of men over 40 who want to sign up for this war. [/sarc]
Lucia,
~grins~ I’m sure they’re lining up. Come fight in Ukraine; get the mad pay, flexible hours, and fantastic free army food!
The age limit would not apply to officers. But it does indicate that Russia has manpower issues in the ranks. And enlisted men are much easier to replace than officers.
Enlisted Soldiers and Officers
If enlisted soldiers have prior military service, particularly in a job that is in high demand, they may be eligible to join as a reservist. All Army officers must have at least a bachelor’s degree, and normally, officer candidates must not be older than 34. However, candidates with certain degrees or licenses can qualify for the Army’s direct commissioning program, which has a maximum age of 42.
Russia has already taken land in the Donbass, it’s not something Ukraine can choose to give away. They can choose to not continue to fight over it. A recent Ukraine poll had 80% saying give Russia no land in Ukraine, at all. Only 10% said give land for peace. The Russian occupied lands were not part of the poll.
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To the extent this poll is accurate then the opinion of the NYT and Kissinger means exactly squat. Russia can roll over more land and Ukraine can choose to go down the insurgency route which was really their Plan A to start with.
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The death rate of Russians may go up in an occupation with a motivated fighting force. To say the least, the Russians have likely highly motivated Ukraine with the wholesale destruction of civilian areas and the large number of casualties both military and civilian.
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At what point Ukraine may get demoralized from continuous fighting is unclear, but they show no signs of this happening yet.
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From the Russian viewpoint the worst outcome is … what happens if Ukraine just says NO and keeps fighting, and fighting, and fighting more. This may actually happen, this is exactly what is currently happening. This appears to be a classic case of willing to die for their country, as hokey as that sounds.
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I cannot tell you how many interviews with people and soldiers in Ukraine used the phrase “we never invited them here”. Perhaps this is propaganda, but it might be real. If it is, then Russia will pay a heavy price.
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In any event, until Russia shows some sign of willingness to negotiate this debate is pointless.
angech,
Almost certainly the jury will ‘nullify’ the case, in spite of clear evidence of willfully misleading the FBI. Donald Trump has no supporters in Washington, and most people loath him.
The west is not going to cutoff weapons to Ukraine to force an end to the war, there are no incentives to do that. If Ukraine wants to end the war that is fine. Otherwise keep killing Russians is a good thing. Sorry, but I have very little sympathy for them. They are in a foreign land in a war of conquest which has very little justification. I have empathy for them on an individual basis, they all have families. But as a group following Putin I have almost none. This thing is a travesty.
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The war is entering a dangerous phase. The west may need to decide whether to let Russian win or escalate military support. Neither of those are particularly good options.
I suspect that this is the biggest factor influencing Ukraine to make peace:
By 24 March, more than half of all children in Ukraine had left their homes, of whom a quarter had left the country.
That was two months ago. It might well be that by now half the children have left the country.
SteveF (Comment #212272): “Almost certainly the jury will ânullifyâ the case, in spite of clear evidence of willfully misleading the FBI.”
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I do not believe your cynicism is warranted. Most Americans, even Democrats, care about the law and justice. But a hung jury would not surprise me.
In the two weeks to May 23rd, the number of Ukrainians heading back home from Poland (345,000) exceeded the number of those entering Poland (253,000). Neighbouring countries are seeing a similar trend. Many of those returning say they simply want to see loved ones.
mike M,
We will see, of course. Whether a hung jury or an outright acquittal: I do not believe a jury in DC will convict someone who was trying to keep Trump from being elected president, no matter how obviously criminal the effort was.
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WRT cynicism: I would be delighted to be proven wrong, but my expectation is that for many people on the left, the law is just a way to punish those you disagree with, and protect those you agree with, and what the law actually days is irrelevant. You only need look at the treatment of people charged with nothing more than trespassing (Jan 6) to understand the mindset of the left. Father of 4, 45 years old, never arrested in his life, sits in solitary for a year for trespassing? It is like a sick joke, but the prosecutors, all lefties, of course, are deadly serious.
It’s going to be tough to get any kind of political convictions either way. If there are 12 jurors then it seems likely there will be a couple partisans in each direction on the jury. Seating a jury of one party would likely not pass muster. They might convict him because nobody likes overly clever lawyers. We shall see.
Mike M: #212275)
May 25th, 2022 at 11:41 am
SteveF (Comment #212272): âAlmost certainly the jury will ânullifyâ the case, in spite of clear evidence of willfully misleading the FBI.â
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I do not believe your cynicism is warranted. Most Americans, even Democrats, care about the law and justice. But a hung jury would not surprise me.”
I think it has been clearly proven that Sussmann lied about not acting for a client. I thought FBI counsel, James Baker might try to muck it up by saying that his memory was hazy about what Sussmann said. However, Baker said that he was 100% sure that Sussman said he was coming as a private citizen. From a purely factual standpoint this is close to dispositive of the case when combined with other evidence, such as texts.
Here is Andrew McCarthy’s summary of Sussmann’s defense [That Hillary didn’t trust the FBI so he was acting on his own]
“So why did Sussmannâs lawyers do it? I believe it was done in the service of the preposterous defense they are trying to sell the jury.
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Sussmann would like to have been in a position to challenge the allegation that he represented the Clinton campaign at the relevant time. But he canât. The evidence is overwhelming. He was billing his time to the Clinton campaign. He was strategizing with the campaignâs operatives on campaign initiatives. And the defense concedes that Sussmann was working on the campaignâs behalf when he tried to get the New York Times interested in the back-channel claim.
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Consequently, since Sussmann canât credibly deny that he was representing the Clinton campaign, he is trying to parse what the scope of that representation was. Under this theory, even if he is working for the campaign, and being paid by the campaign, he shouldnât be seen as representing the campaignâs interests if he did things that the campaign supposedly opposed.
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Consistent with this spin, Sussmannâs defense claims that the campaign did not want anyone to bring the FBI the back-channel information. Sussmannâs counsel theorizes that if the information were brought to the FBI, the bureau would then have leaned on the Times to delay publication of the TrumpâRussia back-channel story to give agents time to investigate. That, weâre to believe, would disserve the campaignâs interests because the campaign wanted the Times to publish the story.
…..
Personally I believe there is at least a one-third chance that there will be jury nullification. Some people hate Trump so much they just can’t get past it. DC has a horrible jury pool for this case.
jd ohio,
“Some people hate Trump so much they just canât get past it.”
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Yup. A lot of people, and especially in Washington DC. I don’t believe there is even a 10% chance for conviction. Everyone involved (Hillary’s campaign, Sussmann’s law firm, people “creating” false stories about Trump, the FBI, the Justice Department, the entire Obama administration, etc.) was working in coordination to keep Trump from getting elected, and the means used to do it didn’t seem to matter much to any of them. After Trump won election, those same people worked to undermine the legitimacy of his election, disrupt the new administration, and drive him from office. If someone honestly believes Trump is as bad as Hitler, then they can easily justify lies, distortions, illegal acts, forging of documents, and more to keep him out of power. The only doubt I have is if those involved honestly believed Trump is as bad as Hitler, or if they are all just typical, utterly dishonest, lefty hacks. I think the weight of the evidence supports the later.
TDS is alive and well, and is an epidemic in DC. The WashPost still runs multiple stories a day related to Trump. I’m not sure who is interested in these, but apparently a lot of people are in DC.
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It’s a bit curious that conservatives are not outraged at these revelations, but I think that Clinton and the media had it in for Trump was baked in and nobody is the least bit surprised. This just isn’t news for conservatives.
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Trump is the new Hitler as far as the media is concerned, ha ha. Everyone up for election on the right is tied to Trump. The NYT is going down the new Mega-MAGA, Ultra-MAGA, etc. talking point route. They found that running against the not even on the ballot Trump in VA didn’t work, so now they are trying this out. It is so infantile, but that is US politics.
Russell, we will see what we will see. But âŚthe Russian advances to close the pocket is clear looking at movement over time where the ISW continues to say no Russian gains of any consequence.
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The ISW made statements May 6 that are contrary to their own map.
May 6: â.. Ukrainian forces continued to repel #Russian attacks on the #Izyum axis in the last 24 hoursâŚ.â
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This is clearly wrong as the column moving south from Izyum has made substantial progress southward as shown on ISW maps from May 5 to May 6.
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I will go with the actual movement on the ground over ISW opinions that are clearly pro Ukraine.
Here is one of the better maps showing major roads, railways, and rivers.
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https://www.nationsonline.org/maps/Ukraine-Political-Map-2017.jpg
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The rail lines are critical for both Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine is short of fuel for trucks as their refineries and storage tanks have been blown and Russia is very dependent on railroads as their supply system is mainly based on rail. Either getting farther than 100 miles from a railhead is a major problem, more so for Ukraine than Russia.
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For the east, Russia now has direct rail links leading from Russia to both Izyum and Rubinhiz where Ukraine rail is cut to the east past Sloviansk, just south of Izyum.
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Modern armies use supply in enormous amounts and lack of adequate supply is a major issue. Russia experienced supply issues it at Kiev and Ukraine experiences it in the east. Russia had a pathway to retreat itâs forces from Kiev where Ukraine has few to no options to retreat its forces in the east.
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May 5 map:
https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Luhansk%20Battle%20Map%20Draft%20May%2005%20%2C2022.png
May 6 map:
https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Luhansk%20Battle%20Map%20Draft%20May%206%2C2022.png
In the circles area in the upper left, there is some additional territory taken by Russia to the SSW. That is not actually in the direction of Slovyansk. That may or may not be tactically significant. ISW apparently thinks not; I give more credence to their opinion over that of Ed Forbes.
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Ed’s map is ridiculous since it only shows a tiny fraction of road and rail lines.
Here is Friedman at the NYTâs today:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/opinion/biden-ukraine-leaks.html
âAs a journalist, I love a good leak story, and the reporters who broke those stories did powerful digging. At the same time, from everything I have been able to glean from senior U.S. officials, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, the leaks were not part of any thought-out strategy, and President Biden was livid about them. Iâm told that he called the director of national intelligence, the director of the C.I.A. and the secretary of defense to make clear in the strongest and most colorful language that this kind of loose talk is reckless and has got to stop immediately â before we end up in an unintended war with Russia.â
“It is doubly dangerous, senior U.S. officials say, because it is increasingly obvious to them that Putinâs behavior is not as predictable as it has been in the past. And Putin is running out of options for some kind of face-saving success on the ground â or even a face-saving off ramp.”
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I agree. This was level 10 stupid because it is dangerous when a single person (Putin) is making decisions who has a very bad case of wounded pride.
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The media beyond Friedman just doesnât seem to care about this. In my view this is the type of thing that the media shouldnât even print until after the conflict even if they know it to be true. Iâve had it with these anonymous leakers, both because they can do lots of damage without facing consequences and because they tend to produce false narratives based on their activist ideologies by releasing selective information (see every leak ever during the Trump era).
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There are some cases where anonymous leaks may be a good thing, to prove the government is committing crimes for example, but the vast majority of them are politically motivated and should be exposed so the public can judge their veracity. The scales lean too heavily to one side right now.
It would seem the Russians are now trying to go the route of massive artillery and slow incremental movement. Old school. This may also be because they have no other choice and their losses via direct attacks are unsustainable. From all the WWII books I read being under artillery barrages for weeks on end is psychologically extremely difficult. Both sides have got to be pretty worn out already. A meat grinder may be to NATO’s advantage but I do have sympathy for all the young people who got thrown into this, everyone leaves this with mental scar tissue even if they survive.
Ed Forbes (Comment #211811)
âRussell, we will see what we will see.â
That I agree with. I recently have learned the meaning of the phrase âThe Fog of Warâ so Iâm not sure I know what happened yesterday. You seem to know what happened yesterday,
âRussian advances are therefore slow, but continuous.â
And know what the Russians are planning and know how it will turn out.
âThe Russians are slowly, but continually, advancing to place a major portion of the best of the Ukraine army in a pocket and destroy it, mainly with artillery.â
Perhaps you got your training at a war college that teaches clairvoyance.
Tom Scharf (Comment #211814)
May 7th, 2022 at 8:16 am
I guess if you trust Friedman. He does have an obvious agenda in most of his writings.
Tom Scharf (Comment #211815)
âIt would seem the Russians are now trying to go the route of massive artillery and slow incremental movement.â
Yes, maybe. Also maybe, thatâs what they want you to think and their real intentions are elsewhere. Remember when everybody thought their main objective was Kyiv. That sure changed in a hurry. I said early on that column attacking Kiev might be a feint.
Russell Klier,
And I think you’re still wrong. The advance forces attacking Kyiv were slaughtered, including elite Spetsnaz troops. Since those attacks failed, the rest failed too.
As far as I can tell, Ed Forbes is parroting Russian propaganda, not being analytical, so I don’t read his posts. If we had a mute function like in the WSJ comments, he would be on my mute list.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #211819)
You wrote: âAnd I think youâre still wrong.â
Yes, everything I write about war should be taken with a pinch of salt. I spent the 1960âs as an anti-war hippie. What I know about this stuff I learned in the last two months, in a La-Z-Boy, with an iPad.
Hereâs what happened:
The Russian primary objectives were the South and East. The main purpose of the Western attack was to draw the Ukrainian army in to protect Kyiv and away from the East. They led with crack troops to further frighten the Ukrainians. If the Ukrainian government or army had collapsed the Russians had a coup. If not, they planned an orderly retreat once they had obtained their objectives in the East.
What they didnât plan for was getting slaughtered.
ISW says that Ukraine is driving Russian forces away from Kharkiv and back toward the border:
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-7
Significantly:
Does Russia have the money to do a war of artillery and incremental gains?
Does Russia need “money” other than rubles? They make their own ammo, they don’t need to buy it. Missiles are likely more of a problem.
The Russian operation in the North is over; it was just a distraction; the assault on Karkhiv, distraction; Izyum, distraction. There was no pincer movement to trap the Ukrainian army in a pocket. It was Russian disinformationâŚand we all bought it. The Russian emphasis has been and remains elsewhere. [Where that is, I do not know.]
Russell Klier,
Speak for yourself. I never thought that Ed Forbes posts about the encirclement were anything other than repeating Russian propaganda.
Uhm, yeah. I’m with DeWitt, think most of us are. I try these days to mostly ignore stuff I think is garbage. Sometimes when something is particularly egregious I open my mouth to say so.
I don’t think Kiev was a feint. I don’t think disinformation has much to do with anything either. I think events have been as much of a surprise to Russian planners as everyone else, and things haven’t gone as Putin hoped, and that Russia has been changing plans on the fly as events have played out.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #211829), mark bofill (Comment #211830)
The Russian pincer disinformation didn’t start with Ed ForbesâŚit was all over the media first. I think I remember Marco Rubio talking it up too
âIf Mariupol falls to Russian forces – which is expected to take place in the coming weeks – these troops are likely to begin pushing north to join up with the Izyum force in a pincer movement.â 19 April 2022
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10732907/MoD-says-Ukraine-repelling-numerous-attempted-advances-Russian-forces-Donbas.html
âRussian forces took control of the city of Izium on April 6, and bisected Ukrainian defences in the port city of Mariupol, reaching the Sea of Azov on April 10. Between these two locations, Russia was building up its forces in a crabâs claw around the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, in what Ukraine expects will be an attempt to join its northern and southern fronts in a pincer movement to isolate Ukrainian elite units in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces in eastern Ukraine.â 13 Apr 2022
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/13/ukraine-prepares-for-a-russian-onslaught-in-the-east
mark bofill
That’s my impression too. For whatever that’s worth.
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I’ve never been interested in military strategy and so on. So my ability to guess what tactics or strategies people would plan on, or what sorts of bluffs they do is , how shall I say it, “not well developed”?
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But it does look like things did not go the way the Russians expected. Way too many generals have died.
Too many ships sunk (by a country with no navy.) To many dead young Russians. (Putin might not care, but dying pawns is nevertheless not a good sign.)
Surprisingly, Ukrainians turn out to have massive balls. Oh, and no one is just throwing down their arms when Russia makes elliptic allusions to using nuclear arms.
(Why one should be surprised that the epi-center of Kossacks is populated by people with large balls is good question. But most outside Ukraine don’t know Ukrainians. And the Russian’s evidently stereotyped them as blundering bumpkins. Still, some movies fans will recall what Captain Renault said about blundering:
“We musn’t underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918.”
Ukraine blundering seems to rival American blundering. )
The ISW maps are leaving out some major areas of conflict. They may not think it important, but I would be interested in knowing why if so.
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One of these is the Russian assault on Lyman that has been ongoing for several days now.
A pro Ukraine post on this section
https://twitter.com/InfoGeek17/status/1522341016539332609
âThey are tying to encircle Lyman, and force Ukrainian troops to pull back from the area. They are attacking Lyman from the south east and north axis.â
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Several position maps and comments on the post.
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The Ukraine loss of Popasna breaks through the original heavily dug in Ukraine defensive line. This will allow easier Russian advance here as the Ukraine defense in this area will now be less extensive. Russian supply to this area is directly supplied by rail, so logistics should not be an issue which allows for continuing heavy artillery attacks to further weaken Ukraine defenses.
Thanks Lucia.
Like you, I’m no military expert. I have an amateur interest in military stuff.
I sure get the same impression, that the Ukrainians are tougher than anyone realized. I certainly didn’t have an inkling. I wasn’t aware of the stereotype about blundering either. Truth is, I’ve quit paying close attention to the situation. I still hope they are at least largely victorious in the end, and I hope (although I do not expect) that Putin gives up the pointless killing and destruction sooner rather than later.
Only the Russians know what their original plans were. They would be incompetent to not have backup plans and secondary objectives. Hoping Ukraine would just surrender was worth a shot, but not obvious how realistic they thought this was.
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Clearly they are going to pretend everything is going to plan. It is not.
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2.5 months in to a 14 day war and we are still in active heavy fighting, the outcome is still in doubt, they have only gained marginal (but measurable) ground, lots of Russians have died, they have lost a lot of equipment, depleted their high tech precision weaponry, the west has united against them in sanctions, Finland and Sweden are going to join NATO, their arms export market has probably taken a massive hit, the brutal warfare against civilian areas they are executing is obvious to everyone, and the Europeans are running for the Russian fossil fuel exports exit. It’s fair to say they aren’t in the “hope for the best” category anymore.
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All of this, and even if Russia gains the ground they hope for they could still likely face a brutal insurgency fueled by western arms against a mighty pi**ed off foe in their Ukrainian homeland. I don’t want to be the Russian soldier doing patrols in captured villages where the Russians executed civilians. Flowers are not going to be passed out.
I will have to see if I can find a copy of the “art of war” Sun Tzu [or maybe just look it up on the internet.
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Things like know your enemy.
Don’t attack in Winter.
[Luckily summer is now coming on}
Tanks are so passe.
A bit like infantry charges into machine gun nests.
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Surely the Russians are getting enough background rumble to get rid of Putin by now.
angech,
“Surely the Russians are getting enough background rumble to get rid of Putin by now.”
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I suspect you are far too optimistic. Putin is going nowhere soon.
Regarding that, it’s not clear to me that removing Putin removes the problem. I mean, maybe it does. Maybe it solves the immediate problem of the war. Maybe somebody worse takes over though and the resulting problems next year are even worse. Maybe not.
Also what Steve said – I expect Putin isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, unless his abdominal cancer or Parkinsons complications kills him. If he actually has those things.
mark bofill,
Removing Putin gives the Russian government an off ramp from the war. They axe Putin, possibly literally, and then blame everything on him and apologize. As long as he is the head of government, I don’t think there is any way out except total victory, which is looking far less likely than it did at first.
Except you don’t stay in power in Russia by appearing weak. Admitting that Ukraine was able to hold off mighty Russia, isn’t going to sell well to the populace. If someone tries they will be quickly replaced. Kamil Galeev’s twitter feed is a good read on the internal politics of Russia. It’s not just Putin’s crew who believes that the eastern block belongs to Russia and that the native citizen’s are somewhat sub-human. Truthfully the only way I think this has a decent long term outcome is if the minority area’s in Russia that are providing a disproportionate percentage of RA canon fodder decides that enough is enough and throws off, or at least attempts to throw off, Russia’s rule.
WSJ: “Russian President Vladimir Putin used the annual commemoration of the countryâs victory over Nazi Germany in World War II to justify the Kremlinâs attack on Ukraine, saying it was the only way to prevent what he said was a planned assault on Russia.”
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Ha ha. The old preemptive attack on you to prevent you from attacking me story. The 200 lb. guy punched the 130 lb. weakling because he swears that the weakling was about to attack him. That won’t hold up in court. Ukraine was going to assault Russia? This is pure fantasy, most Russians have got to be questioning that one at least privately, it doesn’t pass the small test.
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The only charitable interpretation here is it is analogous to the Cuban Missile crisis, except NATO wasn’t secretly installing nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The US certainly seriously considered invading Cuba and tried a horrible 3rd party invasion (Bay of Pigs). NATO was training the Ukraine military and likely was covertly sending weapons for the ongoing Crimea standoff. Ukraine wasn’t trending to be friends with Russia, but being an a-hole bully doesn’t win you friends.
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A better interpretation I read is that Putin saw Ukraine becoming a success story after courting with the west could eventually threaten his power and the west would then covertly support turning Russia away from glorious communism. An existential threat of western decadence. While I don’t doubt the west would enjoy poking the bear for its own entertainment this is a bit of paranoia rooted in an ideology that isn’t winning the argument. Tyranny temper tantrum.
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Putin has managed this badly, it doesn’t look like it is going to improve for many years for Russia. They are stuck now, blocked by national pride, not sure how it can be resolved. A major miscalculation. The people won’t blame Putin for a while, it is a very slow burn to that endpoint. The Russians know how to suffer, but it is another thing entirely to choose that path willingly.
Thanks DeWitt. There is that.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #211839): “Removing Putin gives the Russian government an off ramp from the war. They axe Putin, possibly literally, and then blame everything on him and apologize.”
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No way does that happen.
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Andrew P (Comment #211840): “Except you donât stay in power in Russia by appearing weak.”
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Right. Putin or not Putin, the Russian government will need a “win”. It might well be that a replacement for Putin would have more flexibility in defining a win. And it might well be much easier for Ukraine and NATO to make some concessions if Putin is out. But there is no guarantee that either will happen.
The latest jobs report said that something like 400K jobs were created in the last month. Good news.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that civilian employment dropped by about 300k. Bad news.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-employment.htm
I have no idea how to reconcile those numbers and am wondering if someone can enlighten me.
Mike M,
Looks like two very different measures: a survey of employers (reported rising employment) versus a survey of households (reported falling employment). https://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/us/
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Nothing short of weird.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/04/europe/ukraine-drone-footage-popasna-intl/index.html
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Shows the effects of heavy artillery superiority backed by drones that are supporting Russian infantry attacks.
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A scorched earth approach that the US used to great effect in WWII. The US used the Piper L-4 light planes for spotting instead of unmanned drones, but the effect is the same. Directing massive artillery strikes on acquired targets that have minimal ability to respond is brutal.
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With the introduction of effective and long range antitank infantry weapons, infantry when backed with artillery and drones are regaining the leading role that had been taken over by tanks.
Mike M. (Comment #211845)
The 300k are workers on the sidelines and not working but now are no longer seeking work. That would not effect the jobs created as it did not cause any job loss. If enough workers on the sidelines quit looking the unemployment rate can decrease – every thing else being equal.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #211848): “The 300k are workers on the sidelines and not working but now are no longer seeking work. That would not effect the jobs created as it did not cause any job loss. If enough workers on the sidelines quit looking the unemployment rate can decrease â every thing else being equal.”
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Nope. That is not it. The 300K was a change in employed, not total labor force. And if 300K quit looking (Why, in this market?) while 400K found work, the unemployment rate would have dropped by 0.4 or 0.5 percent. It did not change.
So Biden is to give an address tomorrow on inflation. He says it will be “unifying”. How will he do that? By telling a bunch of lies about Republican so that he can paint them as unreasonable extremists. Interesting concept of “unifying”.
Yes, and here’s what happened today when the Russians tried to get in their vehicles and drive down the road after they think they have gained ground. It’s a meat grinder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mne__eoiopM&t=189s
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I think it’s the accuracy of artillery that has really changed here. Some of it is the drones and some is just better guns and ammo. Lots and lots and lots of artillery ammo. Some of the drone shots show hundreds of artillery strikes in the fields.
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Somebody better be working overtime on anti-drone technology. A low cost radio seeking missile of even a bully predator drone that just knocks them out of the sky kinetically. The drone arms race starts. I doubt off the shelf drones will work very long.
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This guy here has some long but interesting presentations on the economics of the war. TLDR is that Russia has very large reserves of weapons to endure the short term but a long term conflict (year or more) will be a big problem for Russia if NATO is even a little bit committed.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC3ehuUksTyQ7bbjGntmx3Q
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He also said the economics of the war to capture Ukraine’s fossil fuels isn’t justified because the war costs more than the profit they would get after the cost of extraction so that is unlikely why Putin did it.
So far political unity is what it has always been. If the other side changes their ways, accepts their views are both moronic and immoral, and meekly joins my side after publicly taking the knee, then we can have unity.
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Last time I checked Biden was trying to sell a plan for large increases in government spending to help inflation. Does not compute.
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DeSantis signed a bill to remove state gas taxes in October. I’m sure it is just a coincidence that the election is in November. Biden might have a similar plan.
Mike M. (Comment #211849)
The labor force was reduced by 0.2% in April 2022 and that comes to approximately the 300K you noted. If you have a direct source and quote for the 300K being lost jobs I would like to see that.
I gave the link above: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-employment.htm
Tom Scharf (Comment #211851)
Damm you TomâŚ..that link just took over 4 hours of my life!!
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I wish most of my college professors had produced lectures even half a interesting. Sitting through 4 consecutive hr long PowerPoint lectures without needing a gun pressed to my head is a new experience.
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC3ehuUksTyQ7bbjGntmx3Q
MikeM, not to belabor a point, but those numbers from your link look very much like labor force numbers. I saw 158,458,000 for March 2022 and 158,105,000 for April 2022 in the graph. That is a 0.2% decline.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/06/job-growth-and-wages-were-strong-in-april-but-some-workers-just-disappeared.html
Ed,
Ha ha. I was thinking those PowerPoint presentations were more informative than almost anything I read in the media over the past several months.
MikeM, I finally looked at the official numbers and you are correct about employed reduction from March to April. It was in excess of 300k as was the labor force. As SteveF posted there are 2 sources of employment statistics. The one you noted as losing workers is, I believe, the Houshold Survey. It has a much wider margin of error, but it is better to have more than a single source. p
Biden:
“I want us to be crystal clear about the problem,” Biden stated. “There are two leading causes of inflation weâre seeing today. The first cause of inflation is a once-in-a-century pandemic. Not only did it shut down our global economy, it threw the supply chains and the demand completely out of whack.”
“And this year we have a second cause, Mr. Putinâs war in Ukraine.” He added, “We saw in March that 60% of inflation that month was due to price increases at the pump for gasoline.”
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The president said his plan is “to lower and lower and lower everyday costs for hardworking Americans and lower the deficit by asking large corporations and the wealthiest Americans to not engage in price gouging and to pay their fair share in taxes.”
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And the unity part, ha ha:
âThe other path is the ultra-MAGA plan put forward by congressional Republicans to raise taxes on working families, lower the income of American workers, threaten sacred programs Americans count on like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and give break after break to big corporations and billionaires.â
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Yawn. Seen this movie already.
Tom Scharf,
Biden is a lying sack of dog-$hit…. and always has been. He has changed his opinion on every important question of public policy over the last three decades, always adopting whatever position is politically expedient at the moment. Now he is demented enough to not likely even remember what his past policy positions were; he just reads whatever tripe his handlers put on the teleprompter. He becomes an official lame duck after the November election….. and one Kamala will be desperate to get out of office. Count on “health issues” leading him to announce he will not run for re-election in 2024…. allowing a full-blown primary fight among Dems.
Biden is a sad joke.
COVID hit us in early 2020. Putin didn’t invade until 2022. Inflation took off in March of 2021, preceded immediately by a dramatic increase in the money supply right after Biden took office. Supporting data here for inflation by month and here for inflation and the money supply. I think that this coupled with the 1.9 trillion COVID giveaway in March of 2021 is what did it.
Gas prices have also been up since Biden took office, although I will grant that they have spiked since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Still – gas prices have been bad for some time now, and that can’t be plausibly attributed to COVID or Russia either. More than half of the increase in gas prices happened since Biden took office and before the invasion.
I am curious how much the ISW will be updating their maps for May 10. There are multiple reports over the last several days that indicates Russian breakout through entrenched Ukraine lines are progressing in several critical areas.
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Here is one such, but there are others. This one is worth a full read as it goes into more detail than the bit I have posted.
https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-9-may-2020-a1137caa3ed7
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â.. Yet more bad newsâŚ
Itâs the situation just some 20â30km further east thatâs making me growing concerns. South of Zarichne, a BTG each of the 15th Independent Motorised Rifle Brigade and the 74th Independent Guards Motor Rifle Brigade (supported by plenty of Spetsnaz) are pushing on and over the Siversky Donets.
Mind: contrary to the defenders â especially the 95th Airborne Brigade (Siversk) and 79th Airborne Brigade (Bilohorivka) â all of Russian units are âfreshâ: i.e. relatively new to the battlefield, and thus at near-full strength. And the Spetsnaz are causing lots of problems to the defenders, not only because they can use the local forest for good cover, but because they can fight the way the Ukrainians fight: in âde-centralisedâ fashion.
Now, on the western flank of this advance, they have reached Siversky Donets at Zakitne, and thus blocked the road connecting that place with Lyman..â
I understand everybody already knows – my post wasn’t news to anybody. I state the obvious sometimes because I think it helps keep me from going crazy. Well, any crazier than I already am.
I have it on the word of experts, * credentialed experts *, very serious people, that this inflation is going to be transitory. They have reminded us recently they meant transitory in geological timescales, so they weren’t really wrong. It was our fault for not asking the right questions.
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It is noted that nobody seems curious enough to ask the experts how long this inflation is going to last now. The media treats Biden like they feel sorry for him.
There’s no consequence for being wrong in the bureaucracy. On the contrary, Biden rewarded Powell for ignoring the warning signs and getting the inflation bonfire going. What was it Powell said back at the time? Oh yes. Here:
No cost for this whatsoever as far as I can tell.
Was this supposed to be the unifying speech!!??!!
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/05/10/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-economy-5/
mark bofill (Comment #211861): “Inflation took off in March of 2021, preceded immediately by a dramatic increase in the money supply right after Biden took office.”
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I don’t think that is right. If you look at monthly inflation rates, it started around the end of 2020 or start of 2021. The annual numbers are misleading because of the strong deflation in March/April of 2020. That depressed the annual rates until those months passed out of the analysis period causing the annual rate to jump. And inflation abated in Q3 2021 before taking off in Q4.
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The money supply mostly grew in 2020, with the rate of increase peaking right at the end of the year.
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The increase in money supply was irresponsible. But I am guessing that we’d have inflation even if Trump got re-elected. But probably not as bad since we would not have had Biden’s economy shackling policies.
Yeah. It’s quite the masterpiece in that regard, isn’t it.
You here that everybody? Your plan, which is to raise taxes on the middle class and let the rich off the hook (it’s that simple) sucks.
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That really makes me want to get behind Biden. I’m all fired up now. Once I figure out what gender I’m going to be and what pronouns people ought to use and how to properly repent of my being white and male, I’m joining the darn Democratic Party!
[SARC]
Mike,
Here, hang on. I said this:
I don’t think you dispute this?
Perhaps I should have said a dramatic increase in the rate of increase of the money supply, does that fix it?
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[Edit: or are the graphs I linked wrong?]
Lucia,
“Was this supposed to be the unifying speech!!??!!”
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The left never apologizes for error, never admits even obvious error, and never compromises on substance. The Biden administration has made a series of terrible errors that have hurt the country.
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A ‘unifying’ speech like Biden’s latest is the inevitable result of those errors.
mark bofill (Comment #211869): “Inflation took off in March of 2021. I donât think you dispute this?”
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I dispute that. Using 12-month averages, you can not tell when something happened with a time resolution of less than one year. There are month-over-month rates, but I don’t have a link handy
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‘preceded immediately by a dramatic increase in the money supply right after Biden took office.”
“Perhaps I should have said a dramatic increase in the rate of increase of the money supply, does that fix it?”
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Nope. The big increase was before Biden took office.
Thanks Mike.
The huge expenditures in 2020 for covid related bills no doubt had already “baked in the cake” some increase in inflation. Biden’s policies just made everything worse. His war on fossil fuels, which artificially reduced domestic production, almost guaranteed an increase in fuel prices…. which was their intent, of course.
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None of Biden’s “unifying efforts” (AKA blatant lies) will save him from a reckoning in November 2022, after which he will face lots Congressional hearings on his destructive public policies and on his blatant personal and family corruption.
Asking producers not to price gouge? Oh.
Gas prices aren’t up because of price gouging. My dance lessons prices are up– not because of price gouging, but because Janna increased rates to pay the teachers more. The teachers are frittering some of it away on gas (to get to work) and groceries and, in the case of the ones competing (hoping to become US Rising Star champs– which is a very useful business thing), on expenses related to competing. (Some of those are defrayed, but some aren’t.)
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This rise isn’t “price gouging”. Obviously, since my lessons are discretionary, it’s not going to kill me. I would just take fewer private lessons. But businesses are going to pass on expenses to consumers.
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I also don’t know quite where he thinks large corporations get money to pay taxes. But generally speaking, the money to pay taxes doesn’t just “magically materialize”. It comes in when they sell products and services to consumers. If they pay more in taxes, that will affect prices. (That’s not necessarily a reason not to tax corporations. But it’s not going to keep inflation down.)
Lucia,
“I also donât know quite where he thinks large corporations get money to pay taxes.”
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You are giving Biden far more credit than he deserves. He is a demented old fool who reads what is on the teleprompter. He has no idea why claims of ‘price gouging’ causing inflation are pure nonsense, and likely didn’t even before he became obviously demented. The guy is a career politician who never really held a meaningful job. I prefer to think of Biden like a talking parrot who can read a teleprompter; the parrot hasn’t the slightest clue what he is saying; Biden is pretty much the same.
Shockingly economists were not able to see the future correctly. I’d be more forgiving if they didn’t pretend they were omnipotent while transparently pushing tired ideological agendas. All the economists lined up behind another massive BBB spending plan even as the current inflation was already in the books. They just don’t have much credibility at this point.
It’s not just gas, food, and auto prices. Rents are up 58% in Miami and 43% in Tampa over the past two years. That is an enormous hit.
Inflation is now an everywhere, everyone problem. It’s going to be hard to survive this politically, especially with lame attempts like Biden tried today. He would be much better off throwing the Fed and economists under the bus.
Poking the BearâŚ.
âDEFENDER-Europe 22 is a multinational, regular joint and combined exercise organized by the United States Armed Forces to build preparedness and interoperability between Allies and partners of the USA and NATO.â
âBetween 1 and 27 May the exercises DEFENDER EUROPE 2022 (DE22) and SWIFT RESPONSE 2022 (SR22) with participation of Polish soldiers will be conducted on the territory of Poland and 8 other countries. There will be approximately 18 000 participants from over 20 countries training together in both exercises.â
https://www.gov.pl/web/national-defence/exercises-defender-europe-2022-and-swift-response-2022-begin
âTens of thousands of troops from NATO and its European allies are gearing up for a series of military exercises that the United Kingdom is calling one of the “largest shared deployments since the Cold War.”
âThe exercises, backed by aircraft, tanks, artillery and armored assault vehicles, will take place in Finland, Poland, North Macedonia and along the Estonian-Latvian border. They will include troops from NATO and the Joint Expeditionary Force, which includes non-NATO members Finland and Sweden.â
https://www.foxnews.com/world/nato-military-exercises-europe-during-ukraine-russia-war
Oh what a difference two months can make!
Wall Street JournalâŚ. Feb. 1, 2022 11:33 am ET
âRussia Confronts Ukraine With Upgraded Military Rebuilt After Soviet Collapseâ
This is an in-depth article from February detailing the mighty Russian war machine. Some excerpts:
âIn the more than two decades since Vladimir Putin came to power, that has been transformed. Today, Russiaâs fighting forces include a large, well-trained class of soldiers, hypersonic strategic missiles and anti-aircraft missile systems that can detect stealth aircraft.
âThe situation has turned around,â President Putin told journalists in December 2020. âRussia has one of the most efficient armies in the world.â
âOpinion polls show that the army is now the most respected institution in Russian society, and Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu one the countryâs most popular senior government officials.â
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-confronts-ukraine-with-upgraded-military-rebuilt-after-soviet-collapse-11643733217
I tend to look at these economic developments like inflation, as I do most all government developments, as being caused by government actions that were in turn promulgated as ideas from the current intelligentsia and mainly the academic part of that group of individuals. In my mind it is better to trace these developments back to the sources and look at less intellectual endowed politicians and their agencies who put these ideas into effect as intermediaries.
In the case of inflation, it is a problem of the Federal Reserve. While the Federal Reserve is able to place the blame for inflation and the cycling of the business cycle away from its actions in changing the money supply with a large support from academia, the media, most politicians and an unknowing public, this problem will not be addressed, and we will continue to see causes and blames pointing to the items that Biden mentioned in yesterdayâs speech. Those items are mainly supported by the intelligentsia as causes of inflation.
There is some shared blame for inflation between the Federal Reserve and the congressional and administrative parts of government in that the latter two generate huge amounts of debt that can be sustained only with artificially lower interest rates. That is part of the reason that the Federal Reserve has been hesitant in raising interest rates.
While Biden shows signs of dementia, his progressive agenda would receive approval from much of the intelligentsia who are not demented. Biden is merely their conduit, or less politely, their useful idiot.
Kenneth makes sense. It is not government spending or even government borrowing that drives inflation. It is the increase in money supply that tends to accompany such actions.
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In 2020, governments foolishly forced large parts of the economy to shut down. That mistake forced handouts of huge amounts of borrowed money. Bad enough. But the Fed, in an apparently Pavlovian response, then recklessly expanded the money supply. There was no need for that. No need to support government borrowing since people were spending less, therefore saving more. No point in stimulating the economy since the economy was being held down by decree. All they did was to create an inflationary land mine.
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In 2021, with inflation starting, the Fed kept feeding fuel to the smoldering fire. Biden deserves at least some blame. His overspending no doubt encouraged the Fed and he was happy to reappoint Powell, thus giving his seal of approval to the Fed’s misguided policy. A lot of damage will be done before we get this under control.
Mike M,
The Fed is a politically accountable lap dog… in fact if not in theory. Yes, they foolishly expanded the money supply to allow crazy Federal borrowing (and crazy business borrowing) without a rapid increase in interest rates. Had they not done so, inflation would not have jumped, but interest rates would have sky-rocketed, asset bubbles in stocks and housing would have long ago burst, and the economy would long ago have entered a deep recession. Political lap dogs at the Fed, doing exactly what the politicians want, are not the problem. The problem is profligate politicians who are unwilling to make difficult choices and control expenditures. I doubt there is any way to avoid a recession in the next 12 to 24 months, with substantial drops in asset prices as well. But like drunken sailors, politicians can’t make themselves stop spending money the country does not have to support an over-reaching Federal government the country does not need.
SteveF (Comment #211882): “they foolishly expanded the money supply to allow crazy Federal borrowing (and crazy business borrowing) without a rapid increase in interest rates. Had they not done so, inflation would not have jumped, but interest rates would have sky-rocketed, asset bubbles in stocks and housing would have long ago burst”
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I do not believe that. They did not have to increase money supply near as much to keep interests rates reasonable. Corporate borrowing went flat and household savings went up so absent the big increase in government borrowing, interest rates would have gone down. The asset bubbles mostly occurred *after* the big increase in money supply, at least partly driven by that increase. The big increase in money supply was not needed to get us out of the Wuhan virus recession; recovery would have happened anyway.
Area to watch on possible Russian breakout as I posted earlier. Well worth a read. The maps attached show how serious this breach would be.
https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-10-may-2022-e7598e3d0f57
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â..Canât help it: Iâm still not happy with developments along the Siversky Donets. Therefore, here another âquick and dirtyâ update, explaining the âwhyâ. The reason isâŚ. well, a mix of âtotal silence at the topâ and âusual bragging at the bottomâ on the Ukrainian side..â
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. â.Here itâs worth paying attention at the following:
Over a month ago, there was a similar situation south of Izium: the Russians attacked in a pincer movement around both flanks of the town. Breached through on the western side, threw two pontoon bridges over Siversky Donets, crossed the river and pushed forward.
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All the unofficial Ukrainian sources reacted with, âah, no problem, weâve destroyed themâ, followed by photos/videos of âdestroyed pontoon bridges & sunken tanks and other vehiclesâ.
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Now check the maps ever since: itâs obvious that was â at most â a temporary success. Actually, yes, they knocked out one bridge, but the Russians used the other to keep on crossing and then kept on steamrolling further south.
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By now we all know how the battle went on and where they are (i.e. the RFA is certainly not back to Izium).
â..
SteveF and Mike M.,
The big problem with the Fed was Quantitative Easing, which they just stopped last month. The last round of QE, which started in June 2020, was completely unnecessary. Purchasing bonds fed money directly to Wall Street, not Main Street because with low bond yields, investors were forced to chase yield. The Fed was buying $120 billion of treasury ($80 billion) and corporate ($40 billion) bonds per month for all of 2021 even though the inflation rate was already going up in early 2021. But Powell was afraid of tanking the stock market.
Biden’s speech was unifying if you’re a Democrat. Biden and the Democrats are only interested in unifying their party. Republicans are all deplorable so they don’t count.
DeWitt,
It was a very “My way or the highway” type speech. I get some people agree with his way. We’ll see how many people decide on the highway.
DeWitt,
“But Powell was afraid of tanking the stock market.”
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The Fed is a political lap dog. If they had not done quantitative easing, the asset bubble would not have blown up so much, interest rates would have gone up, and we would have long ago gone into a recession. And yes, the stock market would have suffered losses.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #211885): “The big problem with the Fed was Quantitative Easing, which they just stopped last month. The last round of QE, which started in June 2020, was completely unnecessary.”
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Indeed. They used that mechanism since they could not drop the discount rate below zero. Doing so increased the money supply too fast and for too long.
I don’t know if the main concern was the stock market or jobs. In any event, now we have inflation, a tanking stock market, and probably a recession. Triple threat Powell.
Looks like the Russian breakout river crossing at Bilohorivka is happening as I previously posted as likely. Ukraine does not confirm the breach of their line, but does confirm major combat at Bilohorivka where the Russian bridging was located. It is less than 45km down the road from here to the Russian breach at Popasna, the other side of the line, which will close the pocket on a major part of the Ukraine army.
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Russia is now behind the Ukraine main dug in defensive lines and into their supporting units and with militia being sent in to try and plug the breakout.
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ISW report for May 11
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https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-11
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Note that previous ISW reports expressed the view that they did not think it likely that Russia could close the pocket. ISW has removed this disclaimer in this latest update.
Ed Forbes (Comment #211890)
You Wrote: âLooks like the Russian breakout river crossing at Bilohorivka is happeningâ
That crossing has turned into a disaster for the Russians. The bridge was blown and the armored column was attacked. The Russians built another pontoon bridge and tried to retreat. That new bridge was also destroyed. The following Twitter thread has a collection of pictures and a running tally of 38 Russian armored vehicles destroyed so far: https://twitter.com/Danspiun/status/1524101694732255232?s=20&t=0NCIwvqNYq9TdzWcshvewg
From Ukraineâs Defense Ministry: Ukraine destroys bridges to stop advance of Russian troops in Luhansk Oblast.
The Defense Ministry published satellite imagery that reportedly shows two destroyed bridges crossing the Siversky Donets River near the village of Bilohorivka.â
https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1524562362317033472?s=20&t=0NCIwvqNYq9TdzWcshvewg
Even CNN has the story:âUkrainians eliminate at least 2 pontoon bridges near Bilohorivka, satellite and drone images showâ
âThe Ukrainians have â twice in the last 24 hours â stopped Russians efforts to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in the Luhansk oblast, blowing up two pontoon bridges near Bilohorivkaâ
https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-05-11-22/h_ec80e0cc3ecc3bc617414c159c824b5d
Russell, Ukraine said the same thing at Izium. They lied then and it looks like they are lying now. Both sides lie constantly. I pay more attention to where the action is on the ground than what either Ukraine or Russia high command has to say.
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On the bridges, reports I am seeking say 4 were thrown across. Destroy 2, leaves 2 active.
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If the Russians have broken through here, you will see movement down the highway toward Popasna to link with the Russian force that broke out from there. Should be obvious which situation is correct in the next day or so.
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Ed Forbes, Can you show any evidence of four bridges? I only can find the two the Ukrainians destroyed.
May 12, 2022âŚ.. Joint statement by the President of the Republic and Prime Minister of Finland on Finlandâs NATO membership:
âFinland must apply for NATO membership without delay. We hope that the national steps still needed to make this decision will be taken rapidly within the next few days.â
https://www.presidentti.fi/en/press-release/joint-statement-by-the-president-of-the-republic-and-prime-minister-of-finland-on-finlands-nato-membership/
Russell
Geolocation now has 3 locations blown
https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1523271692424204288
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So, if only 3, then the Russians may have got their butt kicked hard.
If there is a 4th, 1 is still moving troops. No hard data on how much of a Russian force got across before the bridges were blown.
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Heavy casualties are expected in these types of actions, but considered acceptable if it opens a road behind a fortified line.
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I donât have a hard, confirmable site for the 4th, so it might not exist.
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This was one site that located bridging locations, noting more bridging units in reserve. So the 4th, or more, might be rebuilt on 1 of the 3.
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https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-9-may-2020-a1137caa3ed7
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The next 2 days will tell the tale.
Nothing new for BIden. He declared the unvaccinated were standing in the way.
Before, he was a little more reasonable. When Harry Reid wouldn’t negotiate as the Bush tax cuts were expiring, McConnell called Biden saying he needed a dance partner, and they reached an agreement on some tax cuts.
Democrats stalled Fed moves until now, because they can claim their actions brought inflation under control.
Year over year inflation, starting around June, will be compared to the higher price level, and will be lower and look like things are under control.
However, the latest numbers were worse than expected, as they got to apply a large negative in gas prices for a 1% drop in Aprilm which gets weighted heavily.
Those pictures do look like the Russians took a beating.
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I think pontoon bridges are pretty easy to build, pretty easy to destroy. Obviously a risky move because the other side can destroy your bridges and trap you on the wrong side with no escape. One would think that they would let a certain number of advancing forces through on purpose, then blow it. Not likely to be be able to hide these temporary bridge efforts with all the eyes in the sky. You will need to accept that some losses are going to occur if you try it.
If Russia doesn’t make significant advances after a month of this offensive then they might need to go to Plan C, I’d be a bit nervous to find out what that is. If it stalls then that is the moment where this thing could be settled. Not sure that is possible because of the high emotional factor.
CNN gets security video of Russian soldiers shooting civilians in the back at close range, then looting their business. This is as bad as it gets.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/europe/ukraine-video-russian-soldiers-shoot-civilians/index.html
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War gets messy, but this is beyond the line even for messy. The only valid response from Russia is to find these people and prosecute them, the standard “this is fake” response won’t cut it here. This stuff will happen on both sides, but it has to be prosecuted when it is this blatant and the perpetrators can be identified. Propaganda gold for Ukraine, this type of thing sticks.
Tom,
I’m sure this isn’t new to you; that looks relatively mild to me. I think ‘as bad as it gets’ is far too strong a term to use here. The atrocities of war can be much more barbaric, widespread, and severe, even in the 20’th century. See also, Rape of Najing.
[Edit: or My Lai, or others. I don’t keep a list handy and I don’t like to dwell on them.]
mark,
Yes, you are right, certainly there have been worse things even in this conflict. I guess I meant as âclearâ as it gets for a documented and undeniable crime that should be prosecutable.
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There wasnât any threat here, a key point here is the soldiers talking with them, then releasing them, then shooting them in the back. Many of the civilian shootings can come down to scared soldiers with itchy trigger fingers in the fog of war who canât really tell who is an enemy. At least there is some plausible deniability in many cases. Soldiers do drive in civilian cars, etc.
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Just for balance, you have to prosecute these cases.
U.S. Soldier convicted of killing Iraqi family hanged himself in prison
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steven-dale-green-soldier-convicted-of-killing-iraqi-family-dies-in-prison/
Tom,
I don’t mean to be obnoxious, really. But war is like that. Why should Russia care that civilians are dying? (my answer, I don’t think they do, I think they think that’s the point) They’ve been blasting cities with missiles and bombing them with airstrikes and smashing them with artillery; those civilians didn’t deserve to die any more or less than these, as far as I can tell. I don’t buy the fundamental concept of ‘war crime’. All war looks essentially criminal to me – murder and destruction sanctioned by a force external to the local state. What else to call it but criminal.
Shrug.
Tom,
This is not intended to be personally aimed at you. It’s just a general vent.
See, I personally suspect we in the US prosecute our soldiers for war crimes because we want to pretend that war is some sanitizable affair that can be conducted with clean hands — so we don’t have to feel guilty about the death and destruction our forces cause.
I don’t think that flies. Sometimes we deem it necessary to fight. It’s ugly and evil as all get out, but sometimes it’s still necessary. But I wish we didn’t have to pretend about it, so our politicians and noncombatant citizenry can wash their hands. If people can’t deal with the horror, maybe the cause isn’t really worth it and they should rethink it.
Anyways, that’s my rant for the month.
I’m not a big supporter of war crimes at all unless it is ordered from central command or there is repeated actions from a group. This one is simply a crime, it is outright murder, and the very long leash you give to soldiers in a war doesn’t apply * here * IMO. Note to soldiers: Don’t do this with security cameras rolling. We will see a a much higher incidence of this stuff now because the surveillance is so high, not because this war is special.
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I saw a European produced documentary about the eastern front in WWII and soldiers from both sides (USSR/Germany) openly admitted they routinely executed opposing soldiers. An example was they simply didn’t want to have to process them as prisoners of war.
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These Russians here were probably a bit worried these civilians were really Ukraine soldiers who were going to go get weapons or they were going to reveal their positions. Once a few fellow soldiers get killed in your unit then everything changes.
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I would randomly guess that the US prosecutes maybe 1% or less of things like this that happen. A bigger problem for the US is properly aiming at and properly hitting things it shouldn’t be targeting. One should not expect this to be perfect, just reasonable care taken to avoid civilians. That line is debatable.
The Ukraine line on the river has been breached per Ukraine General Staff. Breach acknowledged is to the west of the blown bridges from above posts, but the same general area.
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â The enemy forged the Siverskyi Donets River in the Limansky sector for the introduction of the main forces and an offensive. On the Siverskyi direction, the enemy launched an offensive towards Zelenaia Dolina and Novoselenivka. Combat operations continue.â
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https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/uo489n/ua_general_staff_update_in_the_lyman_direction/
OMG. The new Russian tank turret Olympic gymnastics champion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiybJ8UuHXA
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Looks like a triple twisting double back. I’m guessing that one is not survivable.
mark bofill (Comment #211904),
I think that is exactly right.
May 15, one small reprimand for one small lawyer.
Shame the judge will not allow evidence of Hilary purported malfeasance.
Expect the Democrats to throw up some last minute reason to save Sussman, but live in hope.
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Democrats now subpoenaing Republican house members.
Feels so South Americanisto.
Surely the US courts are robust enough to stand up to this new
McCarthyism?
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Go Ukraine and all Ukraine supporters.
Ed Forbes (Comment #211906)
You wrote â The enemy forged the Siverskyi Donets River in the Limansky sector for the introduction of the main forces and an offensive.â
The Russian strategy seems to be to keep providing targets until the Ukrainians run out of artillery shells. The Russians lost another pontoon bridge and about 30 more pieces of mechanized armor.
âOSINTtechnical@Osinttechnical, ¡2 hours ago
According to reports, yesterday, Russian forces attempted to recover some of the troops and equipment that crossed the Siverskyi Donets River a couple of days ago. It didnât go well. Destroyed and abandoned PMP bridging units, BTRs, and BREM ARVs.â
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1524962088774520833?s=20&t=ppSS-p4mBYa5AjZCOnNq9A
âEuromaidan Press@EuromaidanPress,¡1 hour ago
On May 12, the artillery destroyed another pontoon bridge and equipment. 4 days of unsuccessful attempts to cross the Siverskyi Donets river in Luhansk Oblast saw the losses of more than 70 units of equipment & 2 battalions of infantry & engineers.â
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1524974467146866690?s=20&t=ppSS-p4mBYa5AjZCOnNq9A
Finally, a tabulation of the NATO air assets required to provide surveillance of the Ukrainian battlefield. The link provides a snapshot of the operation on 1 April 2022. I canât imagine the cost of this operation⌠24 hours a day for months on end and up to 30 aircraft at a time. A side note, I had suspected that NATO was flying fighter aircraft but I could not see them. This confirms it⌠Fighter aircraft were a major component of the assets.
âNATO@NATO In response to Russiaâs invasion of #Ukraine, NATO has up to 30 aircraft on patrol at any moment. To deter any potential aggression against Allies, #NATO is deploying an unprecedented mix of fighter jets, reconnaissance aircraft and support planesâ
https://twitter.com/NATO/status/1523978450901553159?s=20&t=3XYhOEJ1B5SIDV9dfcRzdQ
Russell, heavy losses in a defended river assault is expected.
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I am seeing reports of multiple breakouts through the main defensive lines on multiple sectors. If the lines can be turned, the Russian losses in the crossing will be less than breaking their teeth with frontal assaults against fortified positions.
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The biggest Russian advantage at this point is that Russia has been able to rotate fresh or rested units into the attack where Ukraine forces have been under constant artillery fire now for days, sometimes weeks. This is extremely hard on the defense.
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Again, the next 2 days will tell the story. Not enough hard data as both sides lie constantly so I will wait until movement on the ground tells us what is real.
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As the US passes the 1-million-death toll for Covid, it’s heartening to know that Biden is in office: “God knows how bad it would be if [Biden] had not taken the actions that he has taken” Nancy Pelosi said.
I wonder what she would have said if the numbers were similar but Trump had remained in office…
[Just to be clear, I don’t blame either Trump or Biden for the Covid deaths while they were/are in office.]
I should remind people that lots of burned out equipment can be from either side, it’s not always obvious. Ukrainian propaganda can include pictures of their own equipment they claim is from Russia. The one thing we know for sure is this war is an armor graveyard of a scale we haven’t seen since WWII.
The Jan 6th committee continues to only subpoena their political opponents, almost all of which were not present at the riot. A witch hunt. Nobody is paying attention to this except extreme partisans. It’s an embarrassment in my view, but will be solved if the right takes the house in November.
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I agree that people who participated in the riot (beyond the MAGA tourists) should be prosecuted, but object to the different standards of justice applied to Antifa protests. Nobody on the Jan 6th committee could possibly write a neutral standard to prosecute their political opponents without also sweeping up half of their own party who using the same fighting words continuously. I tuned this stuff out a year ago.
Tom Scharf,
People accused of misdemeanors (which is all or nearly all the January 6 rioters), seldom get put in solitary for months awaiting trial, with no possibility of bail….. especially if they have no criminal history. The process of selective prosecution is being used by the DOJ to dole out punishment that is wildly disconnected from the charges against those being held. It is indeed a political witch hunt, and has been from Jan. 7 on. That is not going to change at all until Democrats lose control of Congress. The politically motivated prosecutions will, unfortunately, continue for as long as the Biden administration is in office. Toss a Molotov cocktail into a Federal courthouse? Slap on the wrist. Assault a Federal officer defending a Federal courthouse? Charges dropped. Wander around the Capitol for 15 minutes, then leave…. damaging nothing? No bail, and years awaiting trial in prison for a crime that gets a sentence of not more than a couple of months. It is an ugly travesty.
Hypothesis: The current fanatical attempt by the Russians to bridge and occupy territory south of the Seversky Donets River [and the fanatical defense by the Ukrainians] is [mostly] about oil and gas reserves and infrastructure. This report from an energy consulting group seems to indicate that: âUkraine At Risk: An Oil and Gas Perspectiveâ
http://www.energy-cg.com/UkraineAtRisk.html
What is actually going to happen if the Russian dog catches the car it’s chasing? Real question.
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Russia should still be able to achieve it’s military objectives through weight of force. Although the chances I think have fallen further IMO (95% at the start, to 90%, to 75% now). If they disperse the Ukrainian army … then what? What if Ukraine refuses any peace deal?
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The will to fight from Ukraine is indisputable at this point. Russia has committed enough atrocities large and small to properly motivate a long term fight that will be supported with advanced weapons from the west.
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Kill all the Ukrainians? No. Long term hostile occupation of Ukraine? Unlikely, requires too many soldiers. Where is the Russian army going to go? Home? No. Large bases outside of cities? That seems dangerously grouped. Disperse inside the cities? Even worse. Group inside of cities? No.
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My guess is the Russians will wall off eastern Ukraine like the Berlin wall because there is no hope of successfully occupying western Ukraine. Ukraine will keep attacking at this line for months and years. Can they suppress the population in eastern Ukraine to prevent an insurgency there? They better or they are in for a big hurt. My read is that the Russians aren’t so great at winning hearts and minds.
Well, how about this? The NYT prints a puff piece on DeSantis. Written by Lowry of the National Review, but they still printed it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/opinion/ron-desantis-conservatism.html
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Too bad they disabled comments, those would have been amusing.
Jerome Powell was given an overwhelming and bipartisan confirmation by the Senate for a second term with the Federal Reserve. An outsider unfamiliar with the rationale behind a seeming accolade coming on the heels of failure by the Federal Reserve may need to be versed in those rationales and thus I will attempt to provide the usual ones from the Fed itself and all its supporters in academia, Wall Street and the media.
1. The counterfactual for any Fed failure is that an alternative end result would have always been worse than whatever the Fed did.
2. The Fed can change the economic results with their many tools but bad outcomes are always outside the Fedâs prevail.
3. While the Fed is reversing the actions that led to the recent outbreak of high price inflation with the intent of reducing inflation those actions being reversed did not cause the inflation. This may seem to be intuitively a contradiction but that is because only well-informed Fed people and their supporters are smart enough to understand how this can happen â and they are not telling you.
4. The Fed for some time was attempting to increase the price inflation rate above their normal target and by god they have accomplished that task. The fact that it is way beyond their expectation is no way their fault or doing.
5. The Fed can in modern times accommodate huge amounts of money printing without price inflation because they now have the tools to do it. If it were not for supply chain problems, Covid 19, greedy business people and the war in Ukraine that magic would have continued â just ask any informed economists and their supporters.
6. Keynesian economics says saving is bad and consumer spending is good for the economy so an increasing price inflation, which encourages spending today instead of tomorrow, must be good. Besides it is what often motivates the Fed policies – so it must be a good thing.
A look at the Russian view on the Ukraine situation as opposed to the ISW ( or to be more accurate, the Ukraine command )
https://southfront.org/no-good-choices-for-kyiv-forces/
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Well worth a read.
Ed,
Love how they refer to the Ukraine army as “Kyiv’s forces” as if Ukraine doesn’t exist. No use of “war” or “invasion”. Very Putin of them, ha ha.
This is [what happens] when political attack ad people listen too much to people who answer phone surveys the way Lucia does.
What were they thinking… I can hear Ian McKellen’s voice in my head saying ‘Authority is not given to the democrats to deny the return of the Great Maga King!’
These fools are going to get the orange man nominated and elected again. It’d be much better to ignore Trump and give the air time to DeSantis. Maybe that’s why they are doing it; Biden (at least used to) polls better against Trump.
Oh well.
Mark Bofill,
My understanding is Biden’s use of “Ultra-Maga” was developed by experts over a six month time frame.
Betting markets place the odds of Republicans taking control of the house at 85+%, and taking control of both chambers about 75%. The Biden administration can already hear the oncoming freight train.
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That won’t make them change any of their foolish and destructive policies… those changes will have to wait until 2024. But at least there won’t be any nutty new laws passed nor any crazy Federal judges confirmed, and there will be plenty of congressional investigations of the Biden family’s corruption. Invest in popcorn futures. Best of all: Nancy Pelosi will be gone for good.
Lucia,
My understanding as well. Maybe Biden just flubbed the delivery and ‘Great Maga King’ was as close as he could articulate to ‘Ultra-Maga’ in that moment.
As far as the Ultra-Maga strategy goes in general.. Well, good luck with that.
[Edit: I should have added; I was only joking above when I referred to political attack ad people listening to people who answer phone surveys the way you do. đ ]
Seven Russian tanks were transformed into submarines, with gun barrels acting as snorkels⌠or the Russians were retreating when the pontoon bridge was destroyed and they sank them intentionally. This is the fourth Russian pontoon bridge crossing that got bombarded by the Ukrainians, along with about 100 pieces of mechanized armor. Picture⌠note the tread tracks in the mud on the river banks.
https://twitter.com/SteveYangTW/status/1525425701393903617?s=20&t=mj_djPXYQJX8Jxx9puyy5Q
Wait this is a wider pic with seven tanks; that one only has six.
https://twitter.com/charlie__/status/1525284083336720386?s=20&t=z0M51GN3ZHQAj7SxiXCpig
mark bofill,
No doubt Democrats prefer Trump to any other plausible Republican. His permanent (never-going-to-change) negatives are right around 50%, and Dems could not ask for a better get-out-the-vote motivation than Trump running again. IMHO, Trump as the Republican candidate is the most likely path to Democrats controlling the White House in 2025. Lots of people recognize that, probably even Trump, but Trump, being Trump, would never allow a more electable candidate to get the nomination… that would be acting in the county’s best interest instead of Trump’s best interest. Short of a serious health issue, I don’t see how anyone but Trump gets the nomination. I am horrified.
I couldn’t agree more Steve.
That’s Trump in a nutshell.
Well, so the more I think about it, the more I think this: It’s not ‘Trump’s best interest’ exactly I don’t think. I think it’s that Trump honestly believes he and he alone and above all others is the best choice for the job, regardless of his obvious pitfalls. It’s a blind arrogance or narcissism or something that looks a lot like blind arrogance or narcissism. That’s what I honestly think anyway.
Russell,
Pretty funny picture.
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Most modern tanks can snorkel and cross rivers. This is partially a side effect of them having chemical and biological warfare capability so their turrets can be made air tight. You also have to provide air to the engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI_Myjk9xf4
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Unfortunately you canât just do that anywhere, it tends to be pretty slippery on the bottom of a river. My guess is these tanks got stuck. Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all Russian tank losses are breakdowns, out of gas, stuck in the mud type of abandonment problems.
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Itâs also possible they just drove them into the water so they couldnât be used by Ukraine.
A slight drawback of the Ultra-MAGA strategy is Trump isn’t on the ballot.
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I think there is a lot of Trump fatigue in the electorate and this won’t be very effective. It’s also a bit psychotic that on one hand they want Trump banned from all media and social media and on the other hand they want to talk about him 24/7.
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They thought it was such a great thing to give Trump lots of coverage and assumed he was easily beatable in 2016 and it backfired spectacularly. In my view there was an inflection point in 2016 where they stopped attacking Trump and started attacking Trump supporters with a shame campaign. That is what turned a lot of people against them (media, partisans). I don’t think they learned that lesson.
The left consolidated to get Sanders off the ticket in 2020, the right may need to do that with Trump in 2024. Trump wins the nomination if he allows a bunch of others to split the non-Trump vote. The RNC should be able to see this coming and plan for it. We shall see.
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Trump can still wreck everything by running as an independent. I don’t wish him ill outcomes, but that would solve some problems.
Tom Scharf,
“Itâs also possible they just drove them into the water so they couldnât be used by Ukraine.”
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That’s my guess. Once the bridge was gone, the soldiers could either sit in the tanks and wait to die or abandon the tanks, swim the river, and live. Surrender would mean some Ukrainian soldier would likely shoot them. They probably wanted to live.
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Tank: an expensive, over-weight, mainly useless, mobile coffin….. with a big gun. Nobody is going to think tanks are effective assets in the future. The US Marine Corps has already dropped tanks from their equipment list.
Lightning bolts… Thor hasn’t helped us yet, I guess he’s not going to.
Tom Scharf,
“I donât think they learned that lesson.”
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Paraphrasing Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-PĂŠrigord, the left learns nothing and forgets nothing. Theirs is a peculiar religion, without a god that commands them. Still, they are prohibited by their religion from allowing factual reality to change their views. I find the left a very odd religion indeed…. a bit like Islam in its arrogance, rigidity, and stupidity, but without the beheading of apostates (at least in our era).
I marvel at the seeming confidence with which people read Trump’s mind.
There is exactly zero probability that Trump runs as an independent in 2024.
Maybe Trump runs, maybe he doesn’t. If he runs, maybe he wins the nomination, maybe he doesn’t. If he is the nominee, maybe he wins the election, maybe he doesn’t.
What I am sure of is that the 2024 nominee will be a Trump Republican or somebody who has successfully masqueraded as one. I think the latter is very unlikely. I am also sure that the press will claim that the Republican nominee is no different than Trump.
Mike,
What is a Trump Republican? Real question.
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[Edit: and who do you think is reading Trump’s mind?]
Mike M,
No mind reading is needed.
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Trump has consistently acted like an arrogant a$$hole for decades, and the rational conclusion to draw is that he is in fact an arrogant a$$hole. Seriously, who would want to play a round of golf with the guy? Not me!
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He will run again unless he suffers a serious health issue; anything else would be a complete reversal of his life-long behaviors.
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I agree that the Nikki Haley’s of the Republican party (AKA Obama Lite folks) are not going to get the nomination, independent of what Trump does. Only a candidate that is willing to bring about real policy change, reversing all the destructive woke policies, is likely to get the nomination.
The scenario where Trump runs as an independent is him losing the nomination because the RNC “steals” the election from him by getting everyone but DeSantis out of the race early. Then he runs as an independent for vengeance.
Mike,
I also want to know what a ‘Trump Republican’ is. Do you consider DeSantis a Trump Republican? Or Dr. Oz?
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I agree with SteveF that we can expect Trump to continue to act like Trump. No mind readign required.m\
You guys can’t tell the difference between Trump and Romney? Really?
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A big part of the difference is attitude: Being willing to fight for America and its people. As opposed to those who are more concerned with protecting the “principled conservativeâ brand: mild-mannered, respectable, and unwilling to rock the boat. Attack Disney? Are you kidding me?
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The simplest distinction is recognizing that left/right is not the big issue; the real divide is between the patriots and the globalists.
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Or just listen to Trump:
“Many people have asked what is Trumpism, a new term being used more and more. Iâm hearing that term more and more. I didnât come up with it”
“what it means is great deals, great trade deals, great ones, not deals where we give away everything, our jobs, money.”
“It means low taxes and eliminated job killing regulations”
“It means strong borders, but people coming into our country based on a system of merit. So they come in and they can help us as opposed to coming here and not being good for us”
“It means law enforcement. It means very strong protection for the second amendment and the right to keep and bear arms. It means support for the forgotten men and women who have been taken advantage of for so many years.”
“it means a strong military and taking care of our vets”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-cpac-speech-2021-b1809208.html
Mike,
Not knowing what the term ‘Trump Republican’ means is not indicative of an inability to tell the difference between Trump and Romney. Not knowing what the term ‘Trump Republican’ means is indicative of nothing more than not knowing what the term means.
It sounds like a Trump Republican is a Republican populist, roughly speaking?
What they say about San Fran is quite true. First day, hotel off Union Square, guy sprawled on the floor shooting up in broad daylight.
A Trumpist, coined by the media, is basically not a RINO and isn’t afraid of saying so.
DaveJR,
I’m mildly curious what MikeM meant, whether he meant a politician Trump supports, or whether he meant a politician with a political agenda similar to Trump’s, or whether he meant more broadly a Republican populist, or whether he meant most broadly anybody who is not a RINO.
It’s not of any particular importance, just me trying to understand what MikeM meant when he said this:
MikeM
Of course. That doesn’t tell me what a “Trump Republican” is.
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As far as I can tell Romney fights for America and its people.
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You could really clarify if you gave a list of 20 “Trump Republicans”. Then I’d know. But your schpiel tells me nothing.
DaveJR,
I also don’t know what a RINO is. Can you give me a list of 20 or so RINOs?
Not much wrong with Trump policies, the problem is with Trump behavior. There is a lot of room for a sane Trump. DeSantis is an example. One has to wonder what Trump would do with Ukraine.
markBofill,
I want to know what he means because as it stands, his claim is unfalsifiable. If he had a list of people he thinks are Trump Republicans (and DaveJR thinks are not Rinos) I could tell whether he is right in the end.
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Trump Supports Dr. Oz. Presumably Oz is a “Trump Republican”. I don’t think Dr. Oz is going to get the GOP nomination for President.
Lucia,
Fair enough. For my part, I just wanted to understand what Mike was saying and why — what his claim is.
But it’s not terribly important to me.
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[Edit: Oh. You were talking about RINOs. I think I could come up with a list of those, I’m going to go try.]
Mark,
I can see how it’s not important to you. It’s impossible for either of us to understand and so amounts to a non-claim. But I think he intends to make a claim and I’m a bit curious what that claim actually means. If he clarifies, I’ll know. So I ask.
mark bofill (Comment #211943): “It sounds like a Trump Republican is a Republican populist, roughly speaking?”
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Yes.
Sorry, I took that as understood. A Trump Republican supports policies that roughly align with Trump’s policies. As opposed to those Republicans of the Bush/McCain/Romney sort.
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In context, what I meant is obvious. But I failed to provide the context.
———-
Hmm. Maybe the missing context is that I assume that Trump is not irrational.
lucia (Comment #211947): “As far as I can tell Romney fights for America and its people.”
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No. Romney has no fight in him. He rolls over whenever the establishment pushes even a little.
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lucia: “You could really clarify if you gave a list of 20 âTrump Republicansâ. Then Iâd know. But your schpiel tells me nothing.”
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I don’t see how you can expect me to be able to do that or how it would enable you to tell what a Trump Republican is. I would be basing my judgement on a subset of what that politician does or says and you would be interpreting using a likely different subset.
lucia (Comment #211950): “Trump Supports Dr. Oz. Presumably Oz is a âTrump Republicanâ. I donât think Dr. Oz is going to get the GOP nomination for President.”
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I do not know that Oz is really a Trump Republican. I don’t know what he is. He seems to be a quack, but maybe he just plays one on TV. Might be similar with politics.
I think that McCormack is very much NOT a Trump Republican. I may have been misinformed, but my understanding is that as CEO or Bridgewater he pretty much aligned with the woke corporatism and pro-China policies of Blackrock.
Mike M,
“Maybe the missing context is that I assume that Trump is not irrational.”
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Trump is clearly rational, unlike president Biden de imbeciles, who wanders around in his personal fog of dementia, constantly risking WWIII with his demented rantings about invading Ukraine and getting rid of Putin.
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But that doesn’t mean Tump is able to effectively advance a sensible policy agenda; he clearly can’t. Trump embarrasses wildly out of control people, because puts them to shame with his lack of control.
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He has zero self-dicipline, and apparently, zero self-awareness, so he presents a ‘target-rich’ environment to his political opponents. He is the Republican’s worst possible option to win in 2024, and probably the only nationally known Republican that would likely lose in 2024. A lightening bolt from Zeus would sure help the Republicans, but that is unlikely.
MikeM
I also suspect he is the modern day equivalent of the peddler of patent medicines. So of those were real– but that was incidental the the hawking of the goods.
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I do know Trump backs him.
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Mentinioning 1 or 2 people who are not Trump republicans doesn’t help me recognize what who you think is one. I want a list of 20 Trump republicans so I know how to recognize who is a Trump republican. You can add who is not to your list. But I really need a list of who is (other than Trump himself.)
MikeM
Ok. Maybe you can’t. Well, if you can’t identify which politicians are “Trump Republicans”, I suspect the term has no meaning. I think it’s pretty obvious I won’t be able to tell who you think qualifies as a Trump Repubican if you can’t or won’t do so.
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I have to admit, this is what I suspected. It’s a word. Sort of like “Super-mega-Maga” or something. It’s made up for effect and means nothing.
Lucia,
DeSantis is a ‘Trump Republican’.
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I don’t think it is hard to identify ‘Trump Republicans’: If they utterly and loudly reject the woke rubbish, open boarders, the refusal to prosecute violent criminals…. while simultaneously punishing the Jan. 6 rioters without limit, they are Trump Republicans.
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I think it is a bit like Scott Adams pointed out: multiple people are looking at the same factual reality, but seeing two diametrically opposed ‘movies’ of what that reality means. Trump Republicans utterly reject the movie that leftists see.
SteveF,
Does MikeM agree DeSantis is a “Trump Republican”? I asked specifically
But Mike didn’t say. So I don’t know a single Republican MikeM thinks is a “Trump Republican”.
Steve,
So, we are all Trump Republicans here, even though many or most of us don’t want Trump nominated or re-elected. It seems an unfortunate turn of phrase. I’d prefer to avoid it, myself.
The people Trump endorsed should probably be considered Trump Republicans. They have embraced the idea that Trump won in 2020 and it was stolen from him. Without saying this, candidates do not get Trump’s endorsement, is my understanding. That gives us at least 50 candidates for ‘Trump Republican.’
People who support Trump policies is another way of defining ‘Trump Republican.’ Or it could be Republicans who like to attack Democrats in a Trumpy style.
Here are some names, that Mike can say yes or no:
Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Madison Cawthorn, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Elsie Stefanik, Kevin McCarthy, Kathy Barnette, Dr Oz, Mo Brooks, Tommy Tuberville, David Perdue, Hershel Walker, Sarah Palin, John James, Kelli Ward, Joe Arpaio, Glenn Youngkin, Doug Mastriano, Jason Chaffetz, Rand Paul, Josh Mandel, JD Vance.
Mike,
Thanks for your response (211953). I get the misunderstanding now. But no, I don’t think Trump is irrational either. I have aired my grievance with Trump many times here, I don’t see a need to do so again unless you specifically want me to for some reason. But it’s not that I think he’s irrational; I don’t.
See – MikeN’s comment. That is a good reason I’d prefer not to identify as a ‘Trump Republican’. It’s got too fuzzy a meaning; people can assign whatever they think. ‘Trump Republican’ might as well mean ‘Trump Supporter’.
No way.
[Edit: … Of course, I still identify as a Climate Denier, so what the heck do I care… hmm.. I need to think that through.]
SteveF (Comment #211959): “I donât think it is hard to identify âTrump Republicansâ: If they utterly and loudly reject the woke rubbish, open boarders, the refusal to prosecute violent criminals …”
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Right. And I gave more details above. I suppose I was defining “Trumpism” rather than “Trump Republicans”, but is there a difference?
——–
mark bofill (Comment #211961): “It seems an unfortunate turn of phrase. Iâd prefer to avoid it, myself.”
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All that is needed is a better term. Do you have one?
——
DeSantis is the most obvious example of a Trump Republican since he has done so much to establish his cred. Cotton and Hawley typically sound like they are. But so does Lindsey Graham, and he is just an opportunistic windbag. J.D. Vance for sure.
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It is not like you can draw a clean boundary. The important thing is standing up for America (both the nation and the idea) and the common people. That does not require that a politician agree with Trump on everything or think that Trump walks on water.
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Hmm. I think that Bill Barr is pretty much a Trump Republican. So, yeah; it is a bad label.
I would be very careful about the term Trump Republican.
I think some philosophical conservatives think of the term as meaning policies that they agreed with that made it through congress and the President (Trump). A number of Trump Republican politicians, and doing what politicians do, use the term because they feel there are a goodly number of Republican voters who identify with that term. Trump, on the other hand, is not a Trump Republican. He is politically for whatever benefits Trump and that well might be something more in line with the Democrat party. He would turn on the Republican party in a heartbeat and most likely as a matter of revenge for like losing a primary. I have never trusted Trump and never will.
My advice to the Republican party and their voters is that they should distance themselves from Trump as quickly as possible. I know that most will not and I see that as problematic for the Republicans in 2024 and maybe 2022, depending on how involved Trump becomes.
Rand Paul, no. I’d say he is 90% libertarian. I like that guy, if just because he has some of the most entertaining question/answer fun during Senate hearings. He’s also pretty smart, unlike the Marjorie Taylor Greene tribe.
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Classic: “… frankly my toilets don’t work in my house and I blame you and people like you …”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELDHaeEsNF0
I won’t vote for anyone who endorses the “stop the steal” madness. That I cannot take. If they ever come up with some actual evidence then perhaps I will see it another way.
MikeM
Much of that has nothing to do with Trump. If that alone were to make you a “Trump” republican, it would sweep in lots of “never Trumpers”. So I think it’s odd to call that Trump Republican. I also reject “Trumpism” for it.
,
Just “Republican”.
I can’t think of a worse term than labeling pretty much normal Republican’s “Trump” ones.
I bet he doesn’t consider him a “Trump” republican. I think he considers himself “DeSantis”. Beyond that “cred” is not something many people associate with Trump.
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Honestly, I don’t know why anyone who hopes the GOP can win the presidency in 2024 could want to call the nominee a “Trump” republican.
The ‘Trump Republican’ is an unfortunate label, since it ties a lot of perfectly sensible policies to a very disagreeable and offensive person, discrediting those policies by association. Sort of like ‘sky dragon slayers’, who reject basic radiation physics, discrediting those who rationally argue that global warming from CO2 will not bring about the rapid end of humanity.
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‘Rational Nationalist’ might be a better label than ‘Trump Republican’. đ
Lucia,
I agree. I was tempted to say that but hesitated, but I agree. Trump has pulled quite the branding trick if the ‘Trump Republicans’ comes to stand for all the things Steve identified, and ‘Republican’ comes to mean RINO. I don’t intend to cooperate or participate in that.
I should try it at work though. All the best and brightest software engineers that work really hard can henceforth be known as ‘Bofill Engineers’. Everyone says they’re the best, maybe the best ever… Bofill Engineers have done more for embedded DOD systems than the inventor of the transistor.
SteveF,
Rational Nationalist would be a much better label. Trump Republican makes someone sound like the puppet of the head of a junta in a bannana republic. It also takes away any individual identity. I’m sure DeSantis would not want to be thought of as some sort of Trump satellite when (a) DeSantis is important in and of himself, (b) his views are his own, (c) Trump slammed Desantis because he has his own views. He doesn’t just kowtow to Trump.
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Why any politician who is independently important would want to be talked about as a “Trump-anything” would be a real mystery. I could see where some voter might want to call himself a “Trump republican” — it means he likes Trump a lot. I could also see where some person hoping for a start in politics might (e.g. Dr. Oz). That’s to curry favor with Trump.
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But it’s both an inaccurate and counter-productive label for anyone who has their own spine.
Tom, I like the issues that Rand Paul raises, but he leans too much, in my view, towards a political and emotional approach. I think a more intellectual and less personality directed approach would work better.
Of course, what Paul does is much in line with almost all politicians in Washington. What continues to puzzle me is that these politicians’ constituents do not in great numbers express disdain for being patronized. I think part of this disconnect has to do with the two party system and voters acting more like fans of “their” party and ignoring the weaknesses in their party’s arguments.
This seems like a heck of a good idea. In addition to alleviating starvation it gives the US biofuels industry a poke in the eye:
âCutting biofuels can help avoid global food shock from Ukraine war
The US and Europe can compensate for the loss of Ukraineâs grain exports by scrapping biofuel mandates, helping to avoid a food price shockâ
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2312151-cutting-biofuels-can-help-avoid-global-food-shock-from-ukraine-war/#ixzz7TMi11J7f
As already noted, “Trump Republican” is a poor term. I used it only to distinguish those Republicans who generally agree with Trump’s policies from those of the Bush/McCain/Romney ilk. There are still many of the latter in positions of power and influence in the Republican Party and they hope to regain ascendance. So “Republican” fails to recognize an important distinction.
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“Rational Nationalist” is little better. Nobody knows what that means. Maybe “Populist Republican”? Most people would likely recognize that label as fitting Trump, DeSantis, and Vance but not Romney, Bush, or McCain.
Well finally some good newsâŚ. âNBC News poll asks Republicans: ‘Do you consider yourself to be more of a supporter of Donald Trump or more of a supporter of the Republican Party? Result: 34 percent Trump, 58 percent GOP. 34 is lowest ever; 58 is highest ever.â https://twitter.com/byronyork/status/1525842434919485440?s=21&t=NDnC6UNCv-PmPVtgfLFKsA
Given that you use “ilk” for the others, and other reasons, I take it you approve of Trump. That may well be why you felt ok labeling people who are not Trump supporters as “Trump Republicans”. But it’s worse than just a poor term. It is counter productive, likely insulting to those you so label and alienating to many Republicans.
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Whatever that distinction is “Trump” is not a useful descriptive word. “Trump-X” should be reserved for those who actually align with Trump”.
Is DeSantist a populist? I’m not sure that even fits.
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One thing is certainly true: Rational Nationalist will generally not be seen to fit Trump. đ
Here is a series of simple questions which would separate the RINOS from the rest:
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1. Do you believe transgender males (AKA males ‘transitioning’ to be ‘females’) should be 100% prohibited from competing in women’s sports at all levels?
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2. Do you believe all non-citizens who enter the USA illegally should be immediately deported?
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3. Do you believe that crimes of all kinds, including shoplifting, assault, car theft, burglary, robbery, and all more serious crimes, should be uniformly and vigorously prosecuted?
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4. Do you believe judges should be always allowed to evaluate the risk an individual arrested for a crime poses to society and either set bail (or refuse to) while the accused is awaiting trial?
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5. Do you believe that differences in average life achievement (educational, professional, income, etc) between identifiable groups are due mostly to widespread prejudice against any identifiable group that achieves less?
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RINOS will hem and haw at each of these questions, with few straight answers. Rational Nationalist Republicans will answer: yes, yes, yes, yes, and no, without delay or hesitation.
You could probably add a question on free speech as well.
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Funnily enough, yesterday in san fran, across from a BLM money raising wheeze was a black religious group. Abortion is KKK parenthood and kill all the homosexuals! Seems some people already have all the free speech they could ask for!
I am wondering how to get lucia to realize that I agree that “Trump Republican” was a poor choice.
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It is good that Trump supporters are now saying they are primarily Republicans. That is not a result of rejecting Trump’s policies, it is a recognition that populsm now dominates the party. But vigilance is needed, or the Old Guard will make a comeback. Likely by the time honored method of saying one thing to get elected and doing something very different once in office.
———
For the record, if Trump is the nominee in 2024 I will vote for him without hesitation. But I hope they choose someone better. At present, that list consists of DeSantis and maybe Pompeo.
Just as an FYI, it was Trump’s endorsement of DeSantis in 2018 that proved instrumental in getting him elected as governor. He was losing the race before that happened.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-trump-backs-desantis-20180622-story.html
“The additional Trump tweet comes a day after a Fox News poll was released showing Putnam with a 32 percent to 17 percent advantage over DeSantis.”
Trump has redeeming characteristics, it was really him alone taking on the woke dogma with an unvarnished and rebel yell attitude. The same for the increasingly monolithic legacy media. All the “cool kids” literally laughed at him coming down that escalator. Who can forget Obama’s public humiliation of Trump at DC’s yearly press gala? As with a lot of trailblazers of this type, those very same impulses eventually brought him down. So … thank you Trump, now please go away, ha ha.
MikeM
Not sure of that.
Anyway, I think a lot of people have rejected Trump himself. That may not be a rejection of his policies. It’s the Tweeting – egomanaical- Trump-comes-first -including all americans– self indulgence that many people don’t like. Many know they can get many of those policies in a package that is not Trump.
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Tom,
Sure. But Trump reviled DeSantis later from not just doing whatever Trump wants.
Many people know they don’t need Trump to get those parts of Trump they like (whether few or numerous.) I definitely wish he would go away and let others who don’t share his many flaws be seen.
I am puzzled by the claim that “Trump reviled DeSantis”. I am not aware of that other than a media-manufactured “rift” between the two. Maybe I missed something.
There are media reports of Trump bad mouthing DeSantis. They may or may not be accurate.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/590071-trump-desantis-tensions-ratchet-up/
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I think there’s a decent chance we see Trump go full attack mode come 2023 if DeSantis announces a run.
Trump republican, Trumpist etc, were primarily coined by the media. It’s supposed to not be a good choice, from their POV.
Mike
Media manufactured? Trump volleyed shots. That’s not manufactured. Trump claiming it was manufactured after people aren’t on Trump’s side doesn’t make it “media manufactured”.
Now we should attempt to define Populism and Republican Populism. Going back to the early 20th Century I would see Populism as being for a bigger role for government and outdoing the Progressives in that area.
What differentiates the Republican and Democrat parties for me is that in more areas the Republicans are for smaller government and I think that difference has become greater given the greater lean to the left of the Democrat party. Both parties are for way more government than I want. MikeM’s talk of Populism in the Republican party from evidently Trump’s influence is something to be considered and what it means in terms of the size of government.
I suspect that a number of Trump supporters and voters who might claim to be Populists are not necessarily in favor of smaller government. They might well be considered the new RINOs.
Trump is a man of no known consistent principles or intellectual bearings and thus is probably more suited for a Populist movement than a small government Republican.
https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_a-history-of-the-united-states-vol-2/s07-from-populism-to-the-progressi.html
Kenneth,
“I suspect that a number of Trump supporters and voters who might claim to be Populists are not necessarily in favor of smaller government.”
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Sure, there are lots of people suffering the consequences of horrible government policies who will accept most any policies which give them leave.
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Still, there are many who just want to be left alone.
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The left will never leave them alone.
“I bet he doesnât consider him a âTrumpâ republican. I think he considers himself âDeSantisâ. ”
Before he became governor DeSantis won the primary with ads about how much he supported Trump, like building Trump’s wall with his kid from blocks.
NeverTrumpers never forgave him for it.
MikeN,
That doesn’t make him a “Trump Republican”. Nor does it suggest he thinks of himself as a “Trump-anything”.
lucia (Comment #211983 May 15th, 2022 at 11:24 am
“Anyway, I think a lot of people have rejected Trump himself. That may not be a rejection of his policies. Itâs the Tweeting â egomanaical- Trump-comes-first -including all americansâ self indulgence that many people donât like. Many know they can get many of those policies in a package that is not Trump.”
–
While many of those policies are potentially obtainable in a package that is not Trump it is a fact that no one was offering his policies without Trump before Trump and no one is really offering them now.
–
If the Trump policies could be obtained by a leader who was not Trump then, due to your comment [I think a lot of people have rejected Trump himself] it is obvious another leader before Trump would have been chosen.
Also that currently another leader with those policies would be visible and Trump would have disappeared.
–
I understand that a lot of people here have expressed a dislike for Trump personally.
But a lot of people do espouse many of the Trump principles.
While I look on with bemusement at overtly over nationalistic people
there is a lot to say about the idea of making America a great place again.
We could do with making Australia a great place again.
–
Looking after one’s people’s jobs first.
Building on the American principle of free speech [not free violence or action I note].
Respect for the law.
Ethical values even if honored in the breach by said redhead.
Defending America and the world.
Building up a responsible United Nations and NATO and, dare I say it, a responsible Russia, China and North Korea and France and Germany.
–
So.
–
Where were the Republicans pushing this agenda 2016?
Bush?
The Mario brother?
Dr Kit?
Cruz? well possibly the best of that brigade.
Trump won because he promised good policies [not wacky tea party politics] was honest in his pursuit of them, and was anti the pocket lining establishment on both sides.
Democrats posing as Republicans like Mitch McConnell and the husband of the new Supreme Court Judge.
Incestuous Washington?
not much.
–
Where are these policies now and who is offering them?
Redhead?
Who has alternatives for the Republican Party?
Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney and crickets.
–
De Santis is offering Trump lite.
Will get in if the Democrats succeed in their McCarthyist trials.
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But to get Trump policies which half of America wants one has to elect Trump acolytes who will support?
Trump.
–
What the Democrats have failed to realize in their hatred is that their actions are making Trump a martyr and rallying point.
He might get ill, indicted or suffer Russian Billionaire disease.
Biden might get the credit for the Russians disposing of Putin.
but otherwise?
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Sorry for the rant.
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angech,
If by ‘Trump lite’ you mean DeSantis wouldn’t have his VP overturn a legitimate election so DeSantis could rule a paltry four more years, but otherwise similar to Trump policy-wise, then I certainly hope so. Trump lite would be much better than Trump.
Mark bofill,
Agreed.
Angech isn’t voting in the US elections.
As an Australian, I Angech doesn’t grasph how really horrible Trumps vain, egostistical and fortunately failed attempt to overturn the electoral college vote is really, truly a horrible thing.
He should never be president again. I shudder at the thought he might be nominated. I wish we could deport him to Australia where he could live nextdoor to Angech.
I don’t at all think it unfair to state shenanigans occurred in the 2020 election. Evidence was presented and ignored. The establishment turned a blind eye because of the ramifications and the acceptable result. You only need compare the exhaustive investigations into the entirely fraudulent 2016 election interference claims to similar claims in 2020 to realize every stone was left officially unturned. That reassures me of nothing.
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I’ve seen it claimed that Trump won 2016 with something like 30,000 votes? Probably ridiculous, but the point is, you don’t need “wide spread fraud” (the mantra everyone repeated) to win an election, but highly targeted fraud in a few key places.
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Still, I hope vigilance will be at paranoia levels moving forwards and any such irregularities will be carefully documented and pursued.
DaveJR,
I think that’s a rather misleading thing to say.
Trump tried to get Pence to delay certification of electoral college votes! There is something wrong with that.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/05/politics/mike-pence-donald-trump-electoral-college/index.html
Trump, made a few things better but he made other things worse. His trade policies hurt US consumers and more businesses than it helped. His border and immigration policy was no more than a holding action and like a lot of the programs that he favored he hurt getting items approved by exaggerations and lies. He did not reduce the size of government and further threw the Georgia race up for grabs by telling Republicans to spend big on Covid 19. His unsupported election victory claim lost Republican control of the Senate and if he insists that his support (and he gets it) from Republicans running for Congress depends on claiming a stolen election, he will hurt their chances in 2022. His claim that Pence could overturn the counting of the electoral vote was insane, unconstitutional and beyond the pale for a US president.
He has publicly turned on many of the members of his administration including Pence who was a constitutional hero in this matter. Compare the debate performances of Trump versus Biden. Trump’s idiotic strategy was to keep interrupting Biden instead of presenting his plans and ideas and then letting doddering old Biden have the floor and reveal his circumstances. Pence handled his debate in excellent form.
I personally think that there were and are many Republicans that could have done much better than Trump as President since they would not have had the impediments that he brought to the office as an egotistical buffoon with no ideas and initiatives of his own other than exaggerating his own abilities and performance.
Dave,
There were shenanigans. There are always some shenanigans. COVID and mail in probably increased them.
Still. Having your VP overturn the election is not the answer. It was inexcusable and remains inexcusable in my view. Trump would have severely damaged or destroyed our system if he had his way.
Just imagine it. Biden is going to lose 2024, what happens when Kamala overturns the election? And so on and so on forever. It can not work that way, because that doesn’t work. At all.
Trump was fine with that. Think that through. Either the man is way stupider than we all think, or he doesn’t give two shits, or he thinks he’d do so much good in four years that it’s worth it, or .. take your pick. I can think of no acceptable explanation for Trump’s willingness to do this. He is unfit for the office, unless you want our election system demolished.
Lucia wrote: “Trump tried to get Pence to delay certification of electoral college votes!”
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And democrats tried to overturn the 2016 election by pressuring the electoral college to vote in favor of Clinton. It’s smelly all round.
We all remember the Resistance BS right? If Pence had done what Trump wanted it would have destabilized our country to the point where anything might have happened. There might have been a military coup, or a civil war. I promise you, Trump’s opposition wouldn’t have meekly accepted Pence overturning the election and quietly gone away. It would have torn the country apart and been a complete disaster. There is no way I can see anybody thinking this through and concluding it was a good idea. It wasn’t. And it’s what Trump wanted. He still bitches about it today; he still thinks Pence should have done this.
Maybe it’s smelly all around, but I thought it was the progressives who placed no stock in our traditions or constitution and wanted to destroy and replace our system, I mean they’re the ones who say that. I didn’t think conservatives supported burning everything down to try to win the scrimmage for an electoral cycle. I don’t.
Yes, Mark, that’s a conundrum indeed. Giving unchallenged power to those who want to burn the system down to preserve the system because they claim they played by the rules but have made it abundantly clear that the rules are for suckers and the ends justify the means.
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Anyway, I get it. I hope Trump gets it as well. Sometimes you have to lose to win. I think he might pass the baton at the last moment. I’ll wait and see who’s right!
Trump had to overturn multiple states, didnât have an evidence backed story in any of them, he had no path. He should have conceded. Let the crazy partisan true believers try to find some evidence later, but * he * should have done the right thing. Unforgivable.
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There is plenty of election uncertainty. 2000 was basically a tie. Gore conceded after the SC ruled. Trump would have done the usual Trump thing in that scenario. We canât have that.
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If anybody would have overturned the election a large segment on the right would not have accepted that either. That was never going to work, ever.
That Russian river crossing was a complete disaster. Over 80 vehicles destroyed and likely 400+ dead or injured. Even the Russian bloggers are calling it out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/world/europe/pro-russian-war-bloggers-kremlin.html
“The destruction wreaked on a Russian battalion as it tried to cross a river in northeastern Ukraine last week is emerging as among the deadliest engagements of the war, with estimates based on publicly available evidence now suggesting that well over 400 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded.”
“The last straw that overwhelmed my patience was the events around Bilohorivka, where due to stupidity â I emphasize, because of the stupidity of the Russian command â at least one battalion tactical group was burned, possibly two.”
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https://twitter.com/i/status/1525887492876079104
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I think at least one Russian commander will be missing a promotion cycle here. Artillery is once again a major factor in this war. It’s not sexy, but it does the job.
“Angech doesnât grasp how really horrible Trumps vain, egotistical and fortunately failed attempt to overturn the electoral college vote is really, truly a horrible thing.”
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I sort of tuned out for 2 months after he lost and agree I did not get how badly you perceived it over there.
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Trump lost the election.
He lost the election.
He was entitled to call for a recount in areas.
The shift from winning to losing is always hard to take.
The reasons why in one election the late votes consolidated Trump and in the second went against him are psephologically challenging and do suggest possible voter fraud as a mechanism in one or the other or both.
There are a number of means to overturn a close election and Trump explored those possibilities.
Legally.
It is legal to explore them.
Not nice but legal.
Legality also depends on how far you go and how far you are enabled to go by those in charge of the various constitutional offices.
He was still in charge.
Not by the public’s perceptions.
If Pence had the power to abrogate the election and the Supreme court ratified it then it would have been legal.
Not nice.
Not proper.
Not sportsmanlike.
Trump was entitled to ask?
Yes.
Or No?
Of course Pence did not follow that step so we do not know.
angech
The Vice President (who was a candidate himself, btw) does not have the power to abrogate the election.
For Pence to abrogate the election? No. He’s not entitled to ask. The President is sworn to uphold the constitution and it’s his duty to do so. He doesn’t have the right to ask for clearly unconstitutional acts just because he wants to continue to be president.
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Had Pence done want Trump was pestering him to do it would have been utterly illegal. It would have been a serious hit to our system of government and if success had followed for Trump, it would be bad enough it would likely trigger a civil war! You can’t violate the rule of law around elections that badly and that transparently and get away with it. It would have been a coup!
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You can’t make a list of all the other things that can be legal and ignore this YUGE thing and succeeded in whitewashing Trump.
Angech,
There is nothing in the constitution to suggest the vice president can overturn an election; Trump insisting on that was crazy….. and dangerous to the social fabric, just as claims electors in the 2016 election could just vote for Hillary instead of Trump. Both sides of the political divide have acted badly for a while.
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There were plenty of dubious changes in voting rules in 2020, mainly justified by covid panic. Widespread use of mail-in ballots was plainly contrary to multiple state laws, but neither state nor Federal courts wanted to get involved to block their use. Because COVID!!!! Some states (like Georgia) have now formally changed voting laws to limit the future use of mail-in ballots, since the most common election fraud is via mail-in ballots. It really only matters in swing states, not in states dominated by one party or the other. Swing states with Republican legislatures and a Democrat governor have not restricted future use of mail-in ballots because those governors have vetoed the legislation. That pretty well defines how the two parties view the impact of mail-in ballots.
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Alzheimer’s patients in nursing homes, who hadn’t voted in a decade, suddenly became mentally aware enough to vote by mail, and ~100% for Biden…. assisted by unidentified persons, of course. Democrats think this is a good idea, Republicans don’t.
“SF
There is nothing in the constitution to suggest the vice president can overturn an election; Trump insisting on that was crazy.
Lucia
Had Pence done want Trump was pestering him to do it would have been utterly illegal.””
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OK
I guess there is no “Constitutional Crisis”
Congress passed the Electoral Count Act in 1887 in response to a contentious presidential contest in which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes defeated Democrat Samuel Tilden. After the 1876 election, several states submitted competing slates of electors. Legislators went weeks before resolving the conflict, partly because there were no rules for how Congress should handle such a crisis.
The Electoral Count Act provided those rules, but in language that is vague and archaic and doesnât translate well into the modern world. Some Trump allies used ambiguities in the law to bolster their efforts to block Congress from formally certifying Joe Bidenâs election victory on Jan. 6, 2021. One of the architects of the scheme, law professor John Eastman, argued that the statute gave Vice President Mike Pence the authority to refuse to certify Biden as the winner, a view not shared by the vast majority of legal experts. Trumpâs team also tried to use other provisions in the law to toss out Electoral College votes for Biden.
âThey knew that, under the 12th Amendment, if nobody collected a majority in the Electoral College, that the contest would shift immediately over to the House for a so-called contingent election,â Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, tells TIME.
Raskin is on the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, which has also discussed overhauling the Electoral Count Act. The panel is preparing to host a series of hearings in June, and then release a report that will include recommendations for changing the arcane law.”
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No need to overhaul any arcane act.
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Anyway enough of that.
He lost the election.
Finis.
angech,
‘Nice’ doesn’t come into it, I don’t care if the President is nice. I don’t particularly want a priest or a boy-scout troop leader running the country. If a President wants my support rather than my opposition then s/he needs to uphold the Constitution and protect and serve the country, at minimum.
angech,
Except it’s not ‘Finis’ if he runs for office in 2024, as he will probably do. The issue remains alive and pertinent in my book so long as Trump is active in politics.
I do not believe this business about Trump asking Pence to “overturn the election”. Doing that would be so obviously wrong that the claim sounds like a TDS driven fantasy. Not the first one.
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Here is a more rational description of the issue:
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2022/04/06/the-electoral-count-act-is-unconstitutional/
At the time, I was expecting Trump to exhaust all possible ways to challenge the result (as he is entitled to do) and then concede. He never got the chance, so we will never know if he would have. His subsequent behavior may well indicate that he would not have conceded or it may have been the result of digging in his heels in response to the new round of attacks. Either way, I think it was both wrong and a big mistake politically.
The election was stolen.
There was the suppression of news about the Hunter Biden laptop. That alone might have changed the outcome.
There was the Zuckerbucks private take over of election management in key states.
There were the illegal voting rules used in many states.
In Maricopa county, 56K votes were cast be people who did not reside at the address on their registrations. Biden carried Arizona by about 10K votes.
In many cases, voting results by precinct show huge difference between adjacent precincts in different counties, even in the absence of any significant demographic difference between those precincts.
Cell phone tracking data shows individuals making repeated trips between Democrat offices and drop boxes. Where video is available, it shows those persons illegally putting multiple ballots in the boxes at one time.
There were absentee ballots counted in Georgia in spite of never having been folded, meaning they were never put in an envelope.
Criminal charges have been filed against election officials in Wisconsin.
No evidence? What a crock.
Mike,
I don’t think it’s TDS. Fox reported on this:
Here is Trump talking about it at the rally on Jan 6’th:
Whether or not Democrats stole the election is an entirely different and separate question in my book from whether or not the Vice President can overturn elections.
If we think the opposition did something illegal, that’s a problem. If we do something we know perfectly well is illegal in response.. That’s a real problem. Iterate that a few times and we don’t have a country anymore.
I don’t know what the answer is to election fraud, but I don’t think Trump’s proposed solution was the correct one.
Mike M. (Comment #212013)
You need evidence that will hold up in court and none of the Trump supporters promoting stolen election have done that. This attempt to delegitimize the 2020 elections is very much inline with what the Democrats attempted to do with the 2016 election.
Gore also tried to “steal” the election in 2000. His lawyers tried to only recount heavily Democratic counties in Florida in the hopes there would be more missed votes in those counties. Turns out that was a bad assumption as the recounts in those counties favored Bush but it was still the basis why the recount was stopped. When it looked like this plan was going to be a legal loser, he switched tactics late to a full state recount.
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If he had succeeded with a partial recount then the same type of enormous backlash would have happened by the electorate and he would never have been accepted as legitimate.
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It is perfectly OK to challenge elections, it is not OK to come up with almost nothing, have very long odds to winning more than one state, and never concede. Gore conceded, then reversed, then eventually accepted the SC ruling.
mark bofill (Comment #212015): “Whether or not Democrats stole the election is an entirely different and separate question in my book from whether or not the Vice President can overturn elections.
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Definitely true.
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Trump: “it would have been appropriate to send those votes back to the legislatures to figure it out”.
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That is arguably true. Doing that is not “overturning the election”. Doing so would, it seems be constitutional. The question is who has the power to do that. It can be argued that the Electoral College Act gives the VP that power, but even if that is so it can be argued that the Act is unconstitutional and that only Congress has that power. Arguing that case is not an insurrection.
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IMO, it is obvious that the VP alone does not have that power and that if the Act gives him that power then the Act is unconstitutional. But it is not treasonous to argue otherwise.
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But what if the results had been sent back to states? Most likely, legislatures would have concluded that the only practical course would have been to recertify the results. So no change. My guess is that with the last option exhausted, Trump would have finally accepted the result, at least nominally.
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Once again, I think that Trump blundered badly, both legally and politically. But I don’t buy that it was an attempt at “insurrection”.
“The election was stolen.”
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No. The margins were small enough that everything was the cause of Trump losing. Had Trump not been a narcissistic a-hole that would have been enough for him to win as well.
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In all the states that had bad addresses and so forth, you can’t assume all those votes are for Trump, or even a majority of them are. Recounts have never resulted in 10K’s of vote changes. You are lucky to get a couple hundred votes changed state wide.
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The votes are public record. Keep looking. The media all banded together, got all the ballots, and recounted Florida in 2000. It took about 10 months and millions of dollars. Bush still won in most scenarios and that was a margin of a few hundred votes in one state.
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What is definitely true is that the media isn’t interested in investigating this Trump election closely because of their bias, they liked the outcome. They spent all their time relegating complaints to conspiracy theory. Trump lost, and until he can prove differently, he will remain the loser.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #212016): “You need evidence that will hold up in court and none of the Trump supporters promoting stolen election have done that.”
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The courts have mostly not allowed evidence to be presented in court. And they have not allowed the discovery process that might turn up such evidence.
Tom Scharf (Comment #212019): “In all the states that had bad addresses and so forth, you canât assume all those votes are for Trump, or even a majority of them are.”
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Technically true. As long as the bad addresses were just technical errors (the voter moved and forgot to update their registration), there is no reason to assume bias. But with votes from people who moved to a different state or were not entitled to vote or died, there might well be systematic fraud. And there is evidence for that.
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Tom Scharf: “Recounts have never resulted in 10Kâs of vote changes.”
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So what? Recounts treat illegally cast ballots identical to legally cast ballots.
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Tom Scharf: “What is definitely true is that the media isnât interested in investigating this Trump election closely because of their bias, they liked the outcome.”
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Indeed. But they go further than that. They suppress info that goes against the preferred narrative.
Mike M, close enough.
I use the ‘overturn’ term because I’m under the impression Trump used the term, but I haven’t had time to substantiate that, so maybe I got that wrong. If Trump didn’t use the term / in talking about having Pence ‘overturn’ the election then I’d be happier rethinking my use of the term. I’ll follow up on that in my copious spare time.
I agree that there is a difference between an argument and an insurrection, but it’s a hell of an inappropriate argument for a sitting US President to make in my view. It’s not treasonous to argue otherwise, but again in my opinion it demonstrates reckless disregard for the continued health and wellbeing of our system and is wildly inappropriate for a President to make if he wants my continued support. To put this more plainly with an example: it’s would not be treasonous or insurrection for Trump to argue that we should install him as a permanent dictator either. It would be wildly inappropriate and would certainly cost him support.
Maybe there would have been no change in the results, but it would set a precedent. I don’t know that we can easily foresee all the ways this sort of precedent could cause problems in the future. Maybe it would be benign. Maybe not.
BTW – I’ve appreciated the discussion Mike.
It was reported back in early 2021 that Trump said this:
Unfortunately I have been unable to find the source document where Trump wrote this. Apparently it was a ‘Save America’ PAC statement and it does not appear on the Save America PAC website anymore. So I don’t know yet.
[Edit: Oh! Maybe I mixed up the year! I think he said this in January of this year!]
Yeah, I had the wrong year, that’s what my problem was. Here it is:
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/news/news-hktthafwz61481
If Trump uses the phrase ‘he could have overturned the Election’ I think it’s fair game. It’s not my spin, that’s Trump’s spin.
“If he had succeeded with a partial recount then the same type of enormous backlash would have happened by the electorate and he would never have been accepted as legitimate.”
While it was in the legal case, I don’t remember ‘only recounting in some counties’ ever being an issue. It was more that they were cheating in the recounts and votes were being cast not counted.
Also, that the media announced the polls were closed and people didn’t show up to vote in the panhandle where the polls were still open.
MikeN,
Yes, the TV shows called the vote in Florida in 2000 before the polls in the panhandle closed. Of course they claim that didn’t make a difference. But a small, compared to the overall advertising budget of the two parties, Russian presence on social media absolutely for certain caused Hillary to lose in 2016. Can you say confirmation bias?
I thought the different recount methods was a large part of the issue, but that was over twenty years ago. According to the later analysis, both sides first picked the method that was most damaging to them. Bush wanted a full state recount, which under one recount scenario would have cost him the election. Gore wanted only a few counties recounted. That tactic definitely would have increased Bush’s margin.
mark bofill (Comment #212022): “itâs would not be treasonous or insurrection for Trump to argue that we should install him as a permanent dictator either.”
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I think that would be both treasonous and insurrection since it is plainly against the Constitution and would amount to overthrowing the government.
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It does not help that Trump uses careless language, exaggerates wildly, and often way overstates his case.
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I fully understand why Trump’s behavior re the election has cost him support. If not for that, he’d be my choice for 2024. As it is, I sure hope that the Republicans can find someone else who is dedicated to similar policies and is tough enough and capable enough to make progress against the Establishment and the Deep State. That is a tall order. But I will vote for whoever gets the nomination since the alternative will be far worse.
Thanks Mike.
I may be confused.
It’s not treasonous to argue otherwise. So:
It’s not treasonous to argue this where this is:
…that the VP alone has that power orthat if the Act gives him that power then the Act is constitutional.
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So – would it be treasonous for a person to argue that something which is not constitutional is constitutional? To fix my example, would it be treasonous for Trump to argue that it’s constitutional for him to be installed as a permanent dictator?
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See, I don’t like the idea that making an argument that turns out to be wrong is treasonous. How do you know until after the argument is articulated and discussed and evaluated? It’s like thought crime.
Anyways.
[Edit: my formulation wasn’t exactly right..
Not treasonous to argue NOT( that the VP alone does not have that power) OR NOT(that if the Act gives him that power then the Act is unconstitutional) ought to be closer]
Is the argument treasonous or the act of making the argument treasonous? I’m OK with the argument being treasonous, it’s the idea that the act of making a treasonous argument is treasonous that I have a problem with.
Artillery is regaining its status as âQueen of the Battlefieldâ. As far as I can tell, almost all tactical advances on the battlefield by both sides in the last month has been due to winning the artillery duels.
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The below post is a pro Ukraine site, but rational in its logic. Well worth a read. One of the few sites that give a detailed and technical analysis of whatâs happening on the ground. I highly recommend reading his prior posts if you are interested in getting into the âweedsâ of the Ukraine battlefield.
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https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-14-and-15-may-2022-9e9a89f694be
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Tomâs basic premise in his latest post is that the NATO artillery fire control supplied to Ukraine is MUCH more effective than the Russian artillery fire control. This superiority was directly responsible for stopping the Russian bridging attempts cold. Incompetent Russian local command helped.
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Russia is using tactics and equipment that would not be out of place in the Soviet Union of the 1980âs and the current use of Russian artillery would not be out of place in the Soviet drive across Poland in WWII. Soviet, and contemporary Russia, still follow âQuantity has a Quality All of Its Ownâ tactics.
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If Ukraine can continue to supply the huge amounts of heavy artillery shells to the front needed for a modern battlefield, Russia is in trouble. If Russia can even somewhat interdict Ukraine supply of artillery shells, the Russian huge advantage in heavy artillery and 122mm mortar tubes will win out.
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Ukraine supply to the front rests entirely on its railroads as Ukraine lacks both the trucks and the fuel to run supply from the far western border. Ukraine rail has a limited amount of non electric engines and Russia has heavily targeted the electrical substations supplying power to its electric engines.
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Russia supply is also highly contingent on rail as its main source of supply but has direct rail to all of its front line positions.
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The Ukraine defensive lines in the east have now been under constant artillery fire for over 1 month and are starting to crack. Over the short term, I expect Russia to envelop and destroy the Ukraine front line positions from Popasna to Severodonetsk to Lyman, and Avidiivka at Donetsk.
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Long term, if Russia does not get its act together by drastically improving its artillery fire control, it will likely lose the artillery duels as Ukraine supply lines get shorter, making resupply easier. Russia losing the artillery duels will cost it the war. There are a number of actions that Russia can do to improve fire control, but we will see if Russian command is flexible enough to follow through.
We are sort of abusing the term ‘treason’ anyway I think. I read that the Constitution narrowly defines treason as one of two things:
Insurrection might be better:
or it might not..
‘Illegal and unconstitutional’ might be all we mean here when we speak of treason or insurrection [in this thread]. I don’t think it’s illegal or unconstitutional to make dumb arguments. Some arguments might be for things that are illegal or unconstitutional though.
That’s my take anyway.
Mark Bofill,
Well, word search indicates MikeM introduced the term “treason” for some mysterious reason. Like this
Mike M. (Comment #212018)
May 16th, 2022 at 10:24 am Edit This
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It seems he wanted to post a counter argument to an argument advanced by no one.
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It appears we all agree that the VP alone does not have the power to not accept the electoral ballots. That’s what Trump was trying to pressure him to do.
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And for those who want to allude to past historical cases where some states sent two sets of ballots and people didn’t quite know what to do and which to accept: That is nothing like what happened when Trump didn’t like being faced with the fact he lost. Whether Trump (or Trump – afficianados) like it or not, 50 states all certified their ballots and all of then only certified one set. There was no dispute at the state level that those were certified and they were the only certified set.
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Trump was pressuring Pence to turn away ballots– a whole anti-democratic move.
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Arguig about whether “some” people airing the opinion that Pence could or could not do it is amounts to ‘treason’ is neither here nor there.
It’s pretty obvious that candidates for the offices in question taking it upon themselves — all totally on their own– is utterly anti-democratic. And it’s also not constitutional for the VP to turn them back merely because the president (a candidate in the election he is setting to overturn) want the election overturned!
mark,
I think we are having a problem with parsing words, quite possibly because I have been unclear.
Merely arguing that Trump should be made dictator would not in itself be insurrection. Trying to bring that about it would be insurrection, because it is obviously against the constitution. I read your statement about “Trump arguing” as actually seeking to make it happen.
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On the other hand, Pence ruling that electoral returns should be sent back to the states would not be insurrection if there is an act of Congress giving him that power. Even if that Act is unconstitutional, it is reasonable to rely on it being valid until it is ruled unconstitutional.
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OK, I am confused by your confusion.
MikeM
Trump wasn’t merely arguing. He was pressuring Pence to turn back the electoral ballots. Not accepting/opening the clearly certified ballots would be step to turn back the election.
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The act doesn’t give him that power. The Veep has a ceremonial role. He can’t just turn back certified ballots sent by the state for no good reason. The only reason to turn those back was “Trump didn’t like the outcome”.
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Pence, fortunately, understood he didn’t have the power to just reject certified ballots even if some others do not.
Mike,
I get what you’re saying now. Thanks. I’m sorry if I’ve been beating a dead horse. I do get my panties in a wad over phrasing sometimes.
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Lucia,
Yup, as far as I can tell it’s both illegal and undemocratic for Pence to have done anything — the law doesn’t permit him to, and it would be contrary to the obvious intended functioning of the system as well — anti-democratic, as you say. Certainly I think it takes an imbecile to think that it’s OK for one of the parties running for re-election to have the power to disrupt the results when they aren’t going his way!
âI wish we could deport him to Australia where he could live nextdoor to Angech.â
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Wife says NO. NO. NO. NO.
She suffers from TDS.
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It would be like sending Napoleon to the island of Elba.
Fitting but so cruel.
Are you guys familiar with this story and this memo?
Disturbing.
If I knew about this, I’d cheerfully forgotten.
mark,
I have no idea. The links seem to not work.
My apologies, for that and for not providing some summary of what they are and why I was linking them. I meant to, my wife interrupted me. Some interrupts are non maskable high priority!
So – the story is that John Eastman was the lawyer behind this scheme involving Pence in the first place, and that he issued this memo detailing a plan by which Pence could overturn the results. They (Trump and Pence presumably) would have to organize a group of alternative electors to submit the alternate slate; that’d put the country into playable position.
CNN reporting, probably why I missed the story the first time around, so it starts from a place of low credibility in my view. I will research it as time permits.
new links:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/politics/trump-pence-election-memo/index.html
http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/21/privileged.and.confidential.–.jan.3.memo.on.jan.6.scenario.pdf
The ISW maps are inadequate to show what is happening on the ground in Ukraine to the point of almost being disinformation.
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Compare the situation maps of ISW to, for example, South front
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https://understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Kharkiv%20Battle%20Map%20Draft%20May%2016%2C2022.png
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https://southfront.org/military-situation-in-eastern-ukraine-izyum-severodonetsk-on-may-16-2022-map-update/.
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ISW doesnât show the major road net and local towns that give a strategic rationale for why actions are being conducted in specific areas. With South front, and others, one can do internet search on specific towns of interest by date to get information from both Ukraine and Russian sources on these specific locations.
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The amount of disinformation produced by both sides is staggering and it takes quite a bit of digging to get some semblance of truth.
Interesting bit of candour on Russian State TV today. This link provides subtitles.
https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1526293852704890882
National review covered this as well here and here, and did interviews with NR as well. It does not appear to be disputed that he authored these memos, or that he was advising Trump at the time.
Ah well. I’ll shut up about it now. Maybe it was just news to me. đ
MikeM
Mark’s links work for me. Here they documents are again.
Truly, there was a plot to overthrow the election and give the victory to Trump– by thinking through scenarios throwing out votes clearly sent by the states.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/politics/trump-pence-election-memo/index.html
http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/21/privileged.and.confidential.–.jan.3.memo.on.jan.6.scenario.pdf
Lucia,
It sure looks that way. I blush to admit that I’d become accustomed to ignoring negative stories about Trump and I didn’t investigate this properly when the story was fresh.
I’ll sort through my thoughts over the next few days, but I gotta say, I didn’t realize how bad this situation actually was. This was a nonviolent coup attempt — and I’m pretty sure Trump knew how crooked it was. Thank God Pence didn’t play along.
Lucia, when I first posted that I messed up the links and fixed them in a subsequent edit; that’s probably why Mike was unable to access them. Timing issue I expect.
Itâs not illegal (specifical criminal) for Trump to ask Pence to do something Trump believes is legal (but eventually turns out it is not legal).
Itâs not criminal for Pence to do something he believes is legal, even if it is not.
So a lot of this discussion infers Trumpâs request to Pence is somehow insurrection or criminal. I donât think it is, and you would need to prove Trump and Pence did this thing knowing it was illegal to get to some kind of conspiracy charge or insurrection. What we seem to have here is politicians doing things that are arguably legal (even if the argument is weak). This happens all the time, such as Biden using alleged CDC power to extend eviction moratoriums. This just happens to be an extremely high profile and moronic political stunt that would have been quickly overturned by the SC. I donât think there would have been any civil war or anything and the legal system would have ironed it out.
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The charitable view is the âplotâ to overthrow the election was to use every legal means necessary to delay certification until all those ⌠ahem ⌠missing votes ⌠could be found. This assumption of innocence would need to be overcome which is why Trump is not being charged.
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In most contested elections the legal strategy is to keep counting and contesting votes indefinitely until you get the right answer and then immediately declare the election over. The courts have to eventually stop the process.
I don’t think that’s so. Is it? I can’t commit a crime and get away with it just because I didn’t realize I was breaking the law!? I didn’t think it worked that way.
It’s not criminal for elected officials to do something legal that later gets deemed unconstitutional by the SC, for sure. But there are limits to that — they can’t do stuff that is clearly illegal, regardless, I think anyways.
The Hogwarts incantations for this are Ignorantia Juris non-excusat and ignorantia legis neminem excusat. Book of legal incantations, grade 7.
Besides Tom, how do the President and Vice President not know this is election fraud? I mean, as Lucia has mentioned above (212032 : ” And itâs also not constitutional for the VP to turn them back merely because the president (a candidate in the election he is setting to overturn) want the election overturned!”)– what could possibly be going on in Pence’s head that might permit him to rationalize rejecting state election results, given that he’d been briefed on some lawyers memo about how to overturn Biden’s win? I can’t understand how that could be anything besides election fraud.
https://www.rt.com/russia/555591-azovstal-captives-surrender-ukraine/
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Ukraine orders Azovstal fighters to surrender
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The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has confirmed in its social networks, on Tuesday evening, that its servicemen holed up at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol have been ordered to surrender.
With Sweden and Finland joining NATO this war’s higher level political aims are a smoking crater hole now.
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You aren’t paranoid if the rest of the world is really out to get you. Invading your neighbors and weekly nuclear saber rattling tend to make that happen.
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Very curious: “President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that there was no threat to Russia if Sweden and Finland joined NATO”.
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This is pretty bizarre given the last few months of rhetoric. My interpretation is that this is aimed at his domestic audience to try and cover his a** because things aren’t going so well. Could be the first crack in the foundation.
Itâs not * criminal * even though it is deemed illegal later on. Politicians donât get thrown in jail for passing laws they know are likely illegal. Today:
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Judge Strikes Down California Law Mandating Women on Boards
Decision follows a similar ruling last month on a separate law requiring racial or ethnic diversity on boards
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At a minimum you need a legal argument to support your actions. Pence can do whatever he wants and the justice system will prevent him from doing things that are illegal, it is not prevented by Penceâs incomplete knowledge of the law.
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I see it as a very dumb thing to do, but not criminal if they had an argument to back them up. What would have really happened if Pence refused to certify? A messy legal fight that would end up forcing Pence to certify or overruling him. If there was no obvious legal path then we know our laws need updated.
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Iâd also consider the reverse case of if there was actual election fraud in a state and the state refused to correct it and sent in fraudulent results. Say Illinois for example, ha ha. How is that going to be handled? Iâm no expert but there needs to be a process for this to be challenged.
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For the most part the system worked fine. Politicians tried to do idiotic things and were prevented from doing so. If Pence had attempted dumb things the voters can sort it out in subsequent elections.
Tom,
I disagree with you, but I don’t think I’m going to invest the energy to argue much. Pence and Trump are not legislators, they weren’t passing laws. If they were part of a scheme to:
then they were part of an election fraud scheme. I’m not sure it matters that they could concoct a legal argument. That just means they could concoct a legal argument. Maybe they would have gotten away with it if prosecuted for it. But they would have been guilty in fact, as far as I can see.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/52/20511
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[Edit: the false slate of electors seems to fit under item (B) to me. Link here: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-michigan-elections-electoral-college-criminal-investigations-8a0454f0a28fd3f5903fa3ab962f764b ]
It’s the “knowingly” and “known” part that is very hard to prove to get you to a criminal conspiracy. I don’t find it that much of a stretch to believe Trump really believes the election was stolen and that there were missing votes out there. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. If there was a case then Trump would have been charged by now by a rather hostile political opponent and justice system.
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Being a stupid clown is perfectly legal. Of course there are situations where this turns into a criminal process, I just don’t see it here but I really didn’t pay very close attention to this.
Tom,
If Trump really believes his attempt to disenfranchise entire states to keep himself in office was legal, then he certainly does not deserve to be president. If he knows it was illegal, he also does not deserve to be president.
mark bofill (Comment #212047): “I canât commit a crime and get away with it just because I didnât realize I was breaking the law!? I didnât think it worked that way.”
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It does normally work that way. The key being that you must have a *reasonable* belief that you are acting within the law.
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You can not kill someone and try to argue that you did not know that was illegal. That would not be a reasonable belief. If you kill someone in self defense, you must have a reasonable belief that your life was in danger. So you can’t argue that you dreamed he was going to kill you or that you were afraid just because he happened to be big and scary looking.
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Trump was taking advice from a distinguished constitutional attorney. It seems that the people criticizing that opinion have a hard time agreeing on why the opinion was wrong. I would think that is enough for a reasonable belief. So I agree with Tom.
MikeM,
I think you are wrong that it generally works that way.
Some crimes require mens rea. For example: bigamy is a strict liability crime. You are guilty if you are married to two people even if you thought you were divorced from the first.
Also, some crimes require you to know something is a crime, other’s don’t. You could be guilty of murder if you intentionally kill someone even if you think murder is legal (for whatever reason.) Maybe you thought it was legal provided it was done in a religious ceremony. Maybe you thought it was legal because you were raised by wolves. To you that seemed “reasonable”. But you thinking it’s reasonable is not a criterion.
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Your mens rea springs from intending the act, not from whether or not you know it’s legal. It also doesn’t spring from whether or not you had a “reasonable belief” it was legal. You can’t even get out of a jay walking ticket like that! Or trespasssing because you “didn’t seen the sign”.
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Many crimes do require mens rea. But that doesn’t mean you need to know the act is a crime. It only means you intended to do whatever it was that turned out to be illegal.
The eastern Ukraine defensive line north and south of Popasaya is collapsing. Russian forces have entered Toshkivka, south of Lisichansk. This Russian advance is on the WESTERN side of the S. Donets river and behind the Ukraine fortified line on west side of the river.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineCrisis2022/comments/ur5cpq/lpr_took_control_over_large_parts_of/
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https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1V8NzjQkzMOhpuLhkktbiKgodOQ27X6IV&ll=48.813455415663654%2C38.3865288514868&z=10
Bigamy is not a crime.
Being caught is the crime.
Male chauvinist view I guess
Not many women could be bothered having two husbands!
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Similar to the Trump situation.
It is not treason or insurrection in at least 2 situations.
One if you are not caught but more importantly if you win.
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Guy Fawkes was caught – treason.
French Revolutionaries won – heroic not traitorous.
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All elections can result in a change of government.
All parties push for a change.
So it is not treasonous for a political party to do as much as is possible to change the government or keep it.
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Trump was a duly elected President for 4 years and took these steps while he was still in power.
Blatantly therefore not a traitor or treasonous.
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Remember if Pence ratified the step.
If the states put in the electors.
If the ScCOTUS had no choice but to ratify it
All steps being considered legal.
Then he would be an elected, untraitorous politician.
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What is unseemly, despicable, treasonous and traitorous is Hilary hatching a plot against the President of the day the way that her organisation did.
As the evidence clearly shows.
As the FBI CIA and all of the previous Presidents men and the press contrived to push.
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Of course, when you win, Cromwell, French Revolutionists and Pelosi, you have to label people as traitors and off with their heads.
Winners write the history.
Obviously they have already won the hearts and minds of 51% of the American people when the mere act of disputing a hanging chad is treason.
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lucia,
The requirement for mens rea is the norm, strict liability is the exception.
Mark
52 U.S. Code § 20511 – Criminal penalties
A person, who in any election for Federal officeâ
(1) coerces, or attempts to coerce, any person forâ
(A) registering to vote, or voting, or attempting to register or vote;
(B) urging or aiding any person to register to vote, to vote, or to attempt to register or vote;
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As you see all politicians break this law every election.
Except possibly one.
As I recall, although an elected official, the Code does not apply to a President of the United States who can commit almost any crime while in office and not be held accountable to it by the courts, only by due process of the house of Reps and the Senate taking action to impeach him.
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Hence the current tawdry, misbegotten and totally embarrassing procedure (January 6th) by which the Democrats hope to impeach him a 3rd time.
NB the only legal way to get him for Jan 6th.
He is immune to his actions by dint of law.
Only by throwing a whole lot of people in Prison can they justify this third attempt.
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Kangaroo courts seem to have bounded from Australia to America, or are they Star Courts or McCarthy courts?
In 5-10 years anyone looking back at this sorry mess will see how bad the Democrat actions are.
They have to do this because they have already gone too far too turn back.
Lucia & Mike, thanks for that on mea rens. Tom, thanks for your thoughts as well.
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angech, that’s all very well and good, except that I actually am a conservative. I’m not a progressive with a different colored jersey / from a different team. I do not want to fundamentally change our system, I do not want coups — even if ‘my’ guy wins. If somebody wants to take radical steps of dubious legality in defiance of the legal customs and traditions of our country, generally speaking they will not enjoy my support, but will instead incur my opposition. Further, I’ll argue the case with other conservatives (as I’m doing here) to try to persuade them that this is not what we are all about.
angech, also — I think there is a difference between getting away with something illegal and something being legal. This distinction actually does matter to me. The President is in a great position to get away with all sorts of illegal acts – that doesn’t make it OK for the President to do so.
Gah. I said ‘mea rens’. I meant ‘mens rea’. oops.
MikeM
Perhaps, but mens rea only means you intended to do what you did. It does not mean you knew what you intended to do was illegal. The legality or illegality of your action and intended action has nothing to do with mens rea.
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For example:
(1) Suppose you ordinarily stock sugar on your shelf, inspecting only the outside of the bag (as delivered by the distributor). Then, unbeknownst to you, someone sneaks in substitutes cocaine for one of the bags. A customer comes in. You grab that bag– believing it to be sugar– and you sell the bag of concain believing it was sugar.
Then you do not have the “mens rea” of selling cocaine. Your mens rea was to sell sugar.
But now:
(2) Suppose you sell a bag of cocaine knowing it is cocaine. But you didn’t know selling cocaine is illegal. You do have mens rea for selling the cocaine. Because you intended to sell cocaine. This would also apply to any substance that it turns out to be illegal to sell, some of which many people might have no idea are illegal to sell. (Hemp used to be illegal to sell. It would not be “unreasonable” for a person who’d heard hemp is terrific for ropes to not know it was illegal and intentionally sell a hemp rope back in the day. Of course, this assumed they got some somehow, but if it was hemp, they knew it was hemp and the sold it intending to sell a hemp rope, that would have been illegal. And they’d have met the burden of “mens rea”.)
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Trump intended to be doing what he as doing. He had mens rea. We can debate whether it was or was not actually illegal to try to pressure Pence into turning away ballot for no reason at all. But Trump definitely had mens rea: he knew that he was trying to get Pence to turn away those ballots.
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It is not generally the case that “not knowing it is illegal” makes it ok to do some illegal. That has nothing to do with mens rea.
It is often the case that not intending to do that thing that is illegal (as in the first sugar/cocaine) mixup is not illegal owing to lack of mens rea.
lucia (Comment #212067): “It is not generally the case that ânot knowing it is illegalâ makes it ok to do some illegal. That has nothing to do with mens rea.”
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From a legal dictionary:
https://legaldictionary.net/mens-rea/
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So obviously knowing that something is a crime is an element of mens rea.
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What you are ignoring is that the law *assumes* that you should know certain things. You can not successfully argue that you did not know that selling cocaine is illegal because it is common knowledge that is illegal.
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Here is another source:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mens_rea
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So it seems you have to know it is wrong. But that source goes on to say:
But if you look at the link, which is a SCOTUS ruling from 1994, when the District Court charged the jury it said:
In other words, the defendant should have realized that he needed to check the law. The Court of Appeals upheld that. SCOTUS *overturned* it in a 7-2 decision. I only skimmed the opinion, but it makes it pretty clear that knowledge of illegality is the norm, but that there are exceptions.
I google ‘is ignorance of the law a defense’. I read overwhelmingly that the general opinion is ‘generally, nope’.
Good enough for me.
Shrug.
Mike, from your first link:
From your second link,
[Edit: You cited that and went on to say SCOTUS says ‘ but it makes it pretty clear that knowledge of illegality is the norm, but that there are exceptions.’
Could you link something to support that?]
Mike
Neither of these require you to know the act is illegal. It means have to act purposefully, knowingly, recklessly or negligently.
https://coolidgelawfirmaz.com/what-are-the-elements-of-a-crime/
It says nothing about “knowing it’s illegal“.
Mike,
Here is a case maybe that supports what you are arguing. The ‘Lambert exception’. I’m reading about it now.
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[Edit: But these are exceptions. The general case is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignorantia_juris_non_excusat
Mark
Worth nothing: cases where ignorance of the law make something not criminal are the exception and very rare ones at that.
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The examples of exceptions were tax law. Thank heavens, since the tax code is complicated and it is plausible to not know something! Of course, ignorance doesn’t absolve you of the taxes or interest.
There is a large gap between the executive attempting to do something that is against the law which is later simply disallowed and the executive doing something against the law which is deemed criminal and subject to personal punishment.
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The executive overstepping their power is a daily event in US politics. Someone needs to explain how this is different and special in a legal sense.
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I think there is a zero case against Trump now, mostly because nothing actually happened past the bad idea stage, secondly he is the highest law officer in the land and is given the most authority, thirdly the supposed charges require mind reading Trump’s knowing malicious intent when all the available evidence is he believed the election was stolen, in fact he still apparently believes this. He was using all the available legal tools to overturn a fraudulent election. Being wrong about that is * not a crime *.
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HRC still believes Russia did it. We had endless “not my President” protests. Remember the push for faithless electors? The left has tried to get Republicans thrown off the ballot because they are “insurrectionists” this election cycle.
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/05/1078416631/saying-hes-an-insurrectionist-challengers-aim-to-keep-rep-cawthorn-off-the-ballo
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The argument above is idiotic, the lawyers should “know” this. They do it anyway as a political stunt. Nobody goes to jail for bad ideas.
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The fevered dreams of partisans is that Trump would have somehow just kept being President through clever lawyering and legal technicalities. The US system is more robust than that. I put that theory up there with the Viking King was this close to taking over the US government because he managed to breach the Capital on Jan 6th. The end result is that this was political suicide by Trump.
Lucia,
Yeah. Good thing! Although I usually just rely on Turbo Tax. My taxes aren’t that complicated.
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Tom,
I’m thinking this through out loud here. I think you are mistaking the importance of motive rather than intent. I agree with you — I’m sure Trump absolutely believes the election was stolen, and that [was] his motive. His intent is what matters though. What was he intending to do? I think his intent was to persuade Pence to:
with this alternative electors scheme.
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Maybe I got this wrong though, god knows law is complicated and I’m not good at it.
He will never face charges for this, fine; I don’t care. I hope he doesn’t get nominated, and if he gets nominated I hope he doesn’t win, because he ‘attempted to deprive the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process by the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that were known by Trump to be fictitious under the laws of the State of Michigan’, if nowhere else. He committed election fraud when he tried to persuade Pence to do this. He got away with it, fine. Let’s not nominate or re-elect him though.
Somehow the Buffalo shooting is Tucker Carlson’s fault. I have seen this across multiple media outlets now. I’m a bit confused on the chain of logic here.
“Grandma is surprised to receive a citation, and a criminal charge of discharging a firearm within the city limits. … In this case, Joanne was not mistaken about what she was actually doing, but only about the fact that it was against the law”.
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Because gun owners are supposed to know the laws pertaining to legal use of firearms. But the example is made up and I have my doubts that it is legit. If it is, then the law is screwed up.
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Ignorance is not an excuse in itself. It is only an excuse if it is reasonable to claim ignorance. It would not be reasonable to claim that you did not know that you can not fire a gun wherever or whenever you like. Or that you did not know that it is illegal to go around shooting random animals. But it would be quite reasonable to believe it legal to kill a dangerous animal in order to protect yourself and others.
mark bofill (Comment #212073),
Those exceptions seem to be exactly what I was arguing. They are rare since it is rare to have circumstances where ignorance is reasonable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_v._California#Decision
Mike,
On that we can agree. I have often thought the same thing. Your example is a good one; how on earth can it be illegal to kill a dangerous animal to protect yourself and others?
In fact you may be right that that is a poor example. I suspect that if the animal in question posed an immediate threat self defense law would apply. I think (I might be wrong) that one can use a gun in self defense regardless of city limits. Maybe I’m wrong and legitimate self defense people can still be fined for discharging firearms within city limits — in which case, yes. The law is screwed up.
Here’s an Arizona example. It has exceptions for various things, including the dangerous animal situation:
Trump did not attempt to disenfranchise any states. The Constitution says that:
It can be reasonably argued that is some states the electors were *not* chosen in that manner. Trump wanted those votes sent to the state legislatures so that they could decide what to do. No disenfranchisement. Nothing facially illegal in that attempt. It can certainly be argued that the method, having Pence do it on his own authority, was wrong. But even on that there is a plausible counterargument. Certainly the whole exercise was misguided if only because there was no realistic chance of changing the outcome; nobody but Trump would be willing to kick that hornets’ nest. And Trump’s subsequent behavior has, to put it mildly, not reflected well on him.
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Trump is guilty of poor judgement and poor manners. But there was no crime.
Each state has laws governing the selection of the electors. Regardless of whether or not it can be reasonable argued that some electors were not chosen in that manner, it is certainly the case that the Trump alternates were not legally selected. Therefore Trump was attempting to deprive the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.
Please don’t ask me to believe Trump didn’t know that the alternate electors were not the ones selected under the laws of the State. Well, you can ask, but I don’t believe it’s reasonable to think that, and I don’t.
The best I’ve been able to do is this — apparently this Eastman guy did not want to rely on the alternate electors part of the scheme. He wanted Pence to just reject the ballots. Maybe that is enough to get around “(B)the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held,”. Pence rejecting ballots is not procurement, casting, or tabulating ballots, so it doesn’t satisfy the conditions of the election fraud law.
[Edit: Maybe that’s what saves them, that they had a variety of options open to them & identified by the memo, and that not all of the options were directly election fraud.]
Maybe not.
Did I make that up? I’m not sure where I got that impression from now.
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Look – it’s fine to quote ‘The Electoral Count Act of 1887’. But deliberately setting a situation up with fake electors to exploit it constitutes election fraud, if it fits the definitions provided by the federal election fraud law. Pence can both adhere to the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and be guilty of election fraud if he set the situation up to disenfranchise voters of the states he rejects.
Put another way, nothing in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 empowers Pence and Trump to setup fake electors. That’s fraud.
No, I didn’t get that quite right about Eastman. But at any rate what I was trying to get at still stands — the memo outlines a variety of options and possible scenarios. But I think in all of them the fake electors have to be there to create the situation where Pence can act according to the Electoral Count Act of 1887. But maybe not all the endgames are election fraud.
I don’t know how the courts might sort that out. Personally, I would prefer little leniency to be shown for such dangerous and harebrained scheming. These fools were playing with dynamite around one of our most critical institution’s legitimacy.
I realize my response is a little disorganized; I was thinking out loud again. If you want to ask or comment further maybe we can sort out the jagged edges.
I’ve organized my thoughts. My conclusions are these:
Whether or not there was election fraud might depend on what we think the plan actually was. It’s not clear to me if Pence was ultimately intended to disregard electors and declare Trump the winner, or if Pence was intended to have States recertify electors. Maybe that matters, I’m not sure.
So — maybe it was election fraud, is where I ended up.
mark bofill (Comment #212091): “Itâs not clear to me if Pence was ultimately intended to disregard electors and declare Trump the winner, or if Pence was intended to have States recertify electors. Maybe that matters, Iâm not sure.”
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It matters hugely. The former would clearly illegal, unconstitutional, anti-democratic, the lost goes on. And I would pretty much agree with mark. It is my understanding that it was the latter.
Trouble is, I read that Eastman might have been involved in trying to fix things for Trump at the State level too, in Pennsylvania I think. I don’t know how persuasive or conclusive that evidence is. Some of his emails apparently got released last week.
Shrug. It’s pretty bad if they were shooting fire recertifying *and* they were working with the recertifiers. Don’t know yet.
Now I know why we have lawyers.
Avere o essere.
To have or to be [Fromm],
To be or not to be [Shakespeare].
To act or to think [me].
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The law generally takes the action the be the defining moment for a crime to be potentially committed.
Wisely so given the various thoughts we all have had over many years.
Thought, speech and action are three offshoots.
The latter two being action.
Speech being both an action and a medium for action.
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Laws are written by the winners.
Rules and regulations apply to all sustainable societies.
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Hence guilt is purely subjective even when it seems objective,
as witness Presidential pardons.
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Here we have a course of action taken by desperate people subject, as far as I can see by a reading of the comments, to guilty or not guilt by our own personal biases based on our own personal assessment of the few facts that we know.
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My personal outsider biased view on the situation is that Trump lost. He first asked people to look for missing ballots [10,000 was it?] believing that they must be there.
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Not for someone to make them up because if they could [elector fraud] do that and he could ask for that to be done then he would not need to have done so.
This is so obvious.
Why would people who can rig an election have to rig an election?
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Faced with the crumbling edifice he both looked for and was offered other solutions.
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Elections can be suspended [in case of fraud] and reheld.
I do not “know” this other than it is intuitive and obvious.
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Elections can be suspended in times of national disaster, eg war until it is safe and wise to proceed.
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Re the different states sending their electoral college representatives.
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Is it true that you guys do not vote for your President after all?
I recall that some Republican electoral college representatives did not vote for Trump at all [was it 6] and some did not vote for Hilary.
What a quaint system!
Theoretically Hilary could have been elected democratically by enough electoral college representatives changing sides.
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Since this is obviously the case there is nothing wrong with asking those states whose laws allow them to nominate electoral college representatives to nominate whoever they so desire to be the electoral college representatives.
If legal.
Other than they follow the law which means nominating them on time.
So as not to be fraudulent!
The US election laws were changed in some states due to the pandemic, a lot of it related to absentee ballots and in person voting. More mail in ballots, then extended periods of days after in person voting to count mail in ballots where the results of the count become politically vital inviting possible corruption.
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This was very controversial because it was effectively decided by the courts, not the normal legislative process. It’s almost impossible to change laws at the last minute like this without one of the sides having the perception that the change disadvantages them. This was a big mistake. As far as I can tell it very likely didn’t affect the national outcome but it’s impossible to know for sure.
Germany is so screwed with its energy dependence on Russia. The WSJ has a really good article today on what they are trying to do.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-germany-is-curing-its-dependence-on-russian-energy-11652801958
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“But transportation was a problem, and the key Schwedt refinery in eastern Germany, which supplies most of the regionâs car, airplane and heating fuel, was controlled by Rosneft. Berlin officials said the Russian company had no interest in refining non-Russian oil.”
“German officials have said that for now they donât have the legal authority to nationalize Schwedt. A new law is expected to pass this month allowing the government to seize assets such as the Schwedt refinery, and the EUâs adoption of oil sanctions against Russia could also change their position.”
“Gazprom had left its German gas storage facility largely empty ahead of last winter. An aide to Mr. Scholz said Berlin had begun contemplating taking over the facility because it suspected the empty tanks were designed to give Mr. Putin extra diplomatic leverage as he prepared to attack Ukraine.”
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Germany is going to seize the Russian owned refinery in east Germany. Wow. That’s probably going to get a reaction. Germany has to seriously consider that Russia might just cut them off.
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Germany let this happen over decades. The answer is going to end up costing them by paying higher energy costs and disadvantaging German industry. What a mess. Buy your German manufactured BMW’s soon!
Off topic, sorry but I can’t force myself to think about Trump.
These two videos are Ukrainian artillery and mortars lighting off two Russian ammo dumps. They are very dramatic and best viewed on a big screen TV, but small screens are good too. Sometimes they seem to move in slow motion and sometimes they just go BOOM.
https://youtu.be/KWhOXip6L4I
https://youtu.be/YASEtyhWs84
Hopefully we are done talking about Trump. Depressing subject.
Tom Scharf (Comment #212096)
âGermany is so screwed with its energy dependence on Russia.â
Before Merkle messed it all up Germany was in good shape. They had an ample domestic coal industry and a large nuclear power sector. First they prematurely closed the coal generating plants and left the coal industry to die because of the Global Warming nonsense. Then after Fukushima they decided to prematurely close the nuclear plants. Maybe itâs not too late to reverse those decisions.
Another issue is that Biden has not marshaled the US energy industry to gear up to help rescue the Germans. We have gas, oil and coal reserves waiting to be unleashed. We need a President who is not petrified of the Loony Left.
Russell Klier,
From what I’ve read, the decision to close the nuclear power plants was largely based on the perceived effect on the German elections. Merkel was afraid that if she didn’t change perceptions, the Greens were going to increase their share of seats enough to change the balance of power and she wouldn’t be Chancellor any more.
I heard the same about Merkel’s political decision as DeWitt notes above. I do, however, believe that the many in German populace have a somewhat self-righteous view of climate change mitigation in that everything will turn out splendidly as long as they adhere to the platitudes of ridding themselves of GHG emissions.
A policy consistent with that view would be to allow the current energy crisis with higher prices to push them to get to alternative energy faster than planned. It will be interesting to see how the Germans will handle this problem.
The Biden administration does not appear to be changing their policy of hurriedly getting to alternative sources. They are in line with German thinking on the energy front.
DeWitt Payne
âthe decision to close the nuclear power plants was largely based on the perceived effect on the German electionsâ
Yes but it was all political BS before the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Fukushima caused it to actually happen.
âThe Fukushima disaster shook the belief in safe nuclear power to its core. For Germany, it marked a historic turning point for environmentalism.â
âHow Fukushima triggered Germany’s nuclear phaseoutâ
https://www.dw.com/en/how-fukushima-triggered-germanys-nuclear-phaseout/a-56829217
âA coalition government formed after the 1998 federal elections had the phasing out of nuclear energy as a feature of its policy. With a new government in 2009, the phase-out was canceled, but then reintroduced in 2011 following the Fukushima accident in Japan, with eight reactors shut down immediately.â
âNuclear Power in Germanyâ
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/germany.aspx
“Sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the disinformation board was being put on hold and director Nina Jankowicz will resign.”
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Ha ha. That thing was the worst idea ever.
Yeah. The Bee had a thoughtful piece on it:
https://babylonbee.com/news/touching-disinformation-board-realizes-the-true-disinformation-was-inside-them-all-along
The Washington Post as an article worth reading on Ukraine.
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The maps are superb showing lines of attack and supply and topography with rivers and road nets. The maps give a very good overview of why combat is occurring where it is.
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Itâs missing railway lines that are the main line of supply for both sides, but the article does address the issue which almost no other MSM does.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/17/eastern-ukraine-maps-russia-war/
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Iâve been skimming Russian sites to get their take on the Ukraine war. Most of their user comments match western comments, ie useless.
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I did find several that were interesting. One such was on the use of tanks in support of urban assaults.
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One tactical change said to being used in some areas was for tanks to carry a max of 5 rounds. As they use up these rounds, they cycle back to reload and other tanks cycle forward.
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As catastrophic destruction of a tank comes from the detonation of ready ammunition storage in the main compartment, getting rid of the ready rounds stops the main line of attack from shaped charged rounds, such as the Javelin.
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These shaped charges focus a thin stream of hot gas through very thick armor, but cause little direct damage themselves. Itâs the detonation of the ready ammo that causes the destruction.
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Crew casualties by being directly hit with the gas stream or hull fragments still occur, and critical components can be damaged, but the catastrophic destruction of the tank is stopped and allows for the tank to be quickly repaired and returned to duty.
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Something to look into further.
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For reference on Russian Auto loaders http://fofanov.armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/EQP/al-72.
Good news ! US life expectancy increases more than previously reported.
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â.. Nearly 2,400 registrants listed on New Jerseyâs voter rolls are 105 years old or older, according to a review of data by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILFâŚâ
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/18/data-new-jersey-voter-rolls-have-2-4-k-registrants-105-years-old-or-older/
I imagine that a single shell detonating inside a tank would destroy the tank and kill everyone inside. It would just make for less impressive video.
Mike, âŚtrue, but decreasing the number of rounds from 39 to 5 vastly decrease the odds of a narrow stream of gas from the shaped charge hitting a round. This should also work for assaulting dug in infantry positions also. Allows a force to take hits and recover repairable tanks afterwards.
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The WWII Sherman tank had the same problem early with ready rounds. They were called âRonsonsâ or âzippoâ the name of popular lighters. The fix was going to wet storage. The Sherman would take a hit, be knocked out of action, then repair crew would steam clean the inside to remove the remains, weld up the holes, put in a new crew, and then put the tank back on the line.
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Fixing ammo storage fixes most of the issues with shaped charges
Current armor tactics tend to be as tanks for infantry support, not breakthrough assault by tanks with infantry support following behind due to enemy infantry shaped charge weapons.
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If reducing T-72 main gun ammunition to 1 round loaded and 4 in reserve generally keeps the tank from being totally destroyed when hit with shaped charges, then mass use of tanks following behind a rolling artillery barrage with mech infantry following the tanks should allow an attack to overwhelm and run over a defensive line without suffering a catastrophic permanent loss of armor.
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The Russians will be forced to redesign their tanks to protect their ready ammo, but for the war in Ukraine, the above should work.
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The age of the tank is not yet over
Coal! Itâs in Europeâs future. It only took a Russian invasion for them to see the light. â Brussels has given the green light for the EU to burn more coal over the next decade as it tries to end the use of Russian gas and oil.â. https://www.ft.com/content/5d95b294-280f-4b38-9d23-70035e077392
Russell Klier,
Germany burned a lot more coal after they shut down the nuclear power plants. Worse, it was lignite, or braunkohle auf deutsch, which has a significantly lower energy content than anthracite, bituminous or subbituminous coals. Hence the carbon emission per kWh is higher than for coals with higher energy content. IIRC, carbon emissions from Germany increased a lot.
The nuclear power plant at Fukushima was an accident waiting to happen based on location and design, not a fundamental problem with nuclear power plants in general. sarc What a good idea to put your diesel backup generators as close to the shore as possible in an area subject to tsunamis! /sarc
NBC news was in close to full panic mode this morning about the recent increase in case rate. We may need to mask up again according to the usual suspects. Cases went up from a low level by a whole 26% in a week! That’s a pretty low Reff, especially compared to doubling in a couple of days for omicron. I doubt that public health measures would make much difference and I suspect the public wouldn’t pay any attention.
No mention, of course, that the same thing has happened in Europe with case rates having peaked weeks ago. But we need to get children not merely vaccinated but boosted. *sigh*
Ed,
The Russians have far more tanks than trained tank crews. They also have a huge morale problem among their troops. Tactics that sacrifice tank crews while preserving the tanks would be counterproductive.
In US pro soccer the women are screwing the men, and the men are not enjoying it:
âU.S. Womenâs and Menâs Soccer Teams Will Receive Equal Pay Under New Labor Dealsâ WSJ
The menâs team brings in the lionâs share of the revenue but the women have been bitching because the men were getting paid more than they were. Next I think the men should fund payment to fans to go watch the women’s games because no one is going to the games now.
Free link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/us-soccer-women-men-equal-pay-11652840505?st=5bxlzo0h4oj8sm2&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I doubt that the Elon Musk recent political conversion has an intellectual basis. When he says, âIn the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness partyâ, I have to doubt there is any serious thinking about party differences.
Musk owes much of his wealth to the fact that US governments subsidizes his Tesla operation through tax credits to purchasers of his automobiles. That might have been a reason for voting for Democrats in the past.
Interesting with his recent actions and words how the left and the right have changed positions on him.
I doubt that the men soccer players involved are that unhappy. There is the free market pay and the national team pay. On a relative basis in international soccer play, the US women have been far above the US men – even though it appears that women in other national teams are quickly catching up and in some instances surpassing the US women.
Soccer audiences worldwide prefer watching men over women.
I think the main purpose of anti-tank missiles is to disable the tank, especially if it can be recovered. Weight of the missile is very important, so they will use minimal necessary munitions to disable the tank reliably. The design defect in many Russian tanks than does the jack-in-the-box blow the turret off effect is superfluous but makes for good video. I doubt the designer of missiles really care that much if they kill the crew but that is a bonus as they are expensive to train. A single round exploding inside the tank turret is going to be … messy.
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Causing the tank to stop and be disabled is actually superior to it blowing up if it can be recovered by friendly forces and reused. It’s unclear but a lot of destroyed tanks in this war may have actually been scuttled.
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It’s quite unclear what the extent of the damage inside a tank typically is from a shaped charge hit is or how repairable that is. They should have some good data now though, ha ha.
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I have seen almost no video of actually Javelin hits. Part of this is because the Javelin doesn’t record it. Almost no data on what engaged all the destroyed tanks. The Ukraine made Stugna-P missile system has quite a few kills, it records the engagements.
Is this a new variant? Have they used up all the greek letters?
MikeN,
My understanding is the current variant causing the increase in cases is a sub-variant of omicron, .BA2 or something like that.
I’ve also seen them make a big deal about re-infections. But, like vaccination, when nearly everyone has been infected ( or vaccinated), then one would expect that the percentage of new cases from reinfection (or vaccination) would approach 100% as time goes by.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #212119): “I doubt that the Elon Musk recent political conversion has an intellectual basis. When he says, âIn the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness partyâ, I have to doubt there is any serious thinking about party differences.”
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Or maybe Twitter is not a good place for nuanced intellectual discussions.
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When I saw that, I assumed that Musk was simply needling Democrats about how their party has changed.
The media continues to pretend they are surprised, shocked even, when another covid wave hits. The BA.x variants are going around. As DeWitt mentioned the doubling times are pretty slow, well at least relative to omicron v1.0 rates. So far serious infections are looking lower but the lag has to be accounted for.
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95% of the US has antibodies from infection or vaccination.
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Natural immunity … don’t get me started, ha ha. Inquiring minds would be curious if infection from omicron is more protective than delta, vaccines, etc. Forbidden topic, the disinformation board is shutting me down.
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Taiwan finally broke from near zero and is under a massive siege but looks to be nearing peak in a few weeks. Their infection rates now are higher than the peak USA rates ever were. And North Korea … what a mess. Apparently they never vaccinated.
I should add that there are lots and lots of videos of tanks surviving missile hits. Almost every (propaganda) video that stops immediately after the tank is hit by a missile almost certainly survived the hit.
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Here’s a propaganda video with some subtitles, rather dark humor. The crew didn’t fair well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJg2mhwVpWI
Elon voted Democrat because Democrats were the ones eager to send government money to his companies.
I’m surprised they haven’t now started an investigation into the fraud he committed on California to the tune of hundreds of millions, pretending to demo a fast battery swap system.
So I’m reading a financial newsletter, The 10th Man “…It’s the duty of the 10th man to disagree.” (it’s free). The title of this particular email is How the Sausage is Made. In the second paragraph is this gem:
The author, Jared Dillian, writes well and seems to have his head on straight. You can find it on line easily. I have a link in the newsletter that I could embed, but it’s one of those bazillion seemingly random characters thing that I don’t entirely trust.
Change of topic.
Going to do a bread and butter pudding tonight with a stale Panettone from Xmas.
Never realized pudding was custard.
reports about Putin taking overall command on the battlefield are coming in. And the entire strategic focus is changing.
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Reports are major advances are ongoing by bypassing the fortified towns with the main assault groups, using following 2nd line troops to encircle and besige, and concentrate on envelopment of major sections of the line.
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Russia is moving to a war of maneuver.
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This will be confirmed as working or not in the next several days
One interesting take on this
https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-19-20-may-2022-58432b03f40?source=user_profile———0—————————-
Ed Forbes
âreports of Putin taking over command of the battlefieldâ
I remember the same kind of reports about HitlerâŚ.. particularly after his generals tried to kill him.
I think the “Russia is going to encircle Ukrainian troops very soon” prediction is growing a bit thin now, ha ha. It may eventually happen, but I doubt it will happen fast unless Russia is willing to risk very large losses.
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Putin running the battlefield would be a blessing for obvious reasons. All armchair generals fantasize they would be good battlefield commanders, almost all of them are seriously wrong. If Putin did take over it would signal he is very dissatisfied with progress and also this is indeed a vanity project for him. Russia starting to perceptually lose this war is dangerous because of Putin’s vanity. It’s not an existential threat to Russia, but it is an existential threat to Putin’s rule.
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So strangely enough the best outcome may be to allow Russia to barely “win” the war but suffer mightily along the way. That’s a tough needle to thread. I really don’t want to see the actions of a humiliated Putin and the west have become class A shamers lately.
Russia has freed up about twenty percent of its troops by taking Mariupol. Holding out that long gave Ukraine the edge elsewhere to the point where the front has shrunk to only Russian advances in the east. Even the encirclement line coming south has not advanced.
Ukraine will be bringing in more troops to the east soon, while Russia is focused on small gains all along its front. Ukraine has also replaced a top general, with no reason given.
Update, the link above shows Russians have been making advances on what looked like stalled areas before.
I saw an 80 day gif that shrank the red area down considerably.
Finland and Sweden joining NATO is being vetoed by Turkey.
So now in addition to bankrolling defense of Finland and Sweden, Turkey must be paid off as well.
I think Turkey is just looking for some short term political payoff. They want some “terrorists” sent to Turkey for prosecution apparently. I think Finland and Sweden have competent armed forces already. It’s a plus for NATO overall.
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Russia says they are going to cutoff Finland’s gas. That may be emotionally satisfying for them but sends a really bad message to other Russian gas customers. Not wise. Russia just can’t be trusted.
MikeN,
If it were only that simple. At this point I don’t think we can trust Erdogan to stay bought. I suspect Erdogan, like Putin, has imperial dreams.
Sports is not a popular topic here, but college sports is undergoing a major transition: âWithout most realizing it, college sports have moved from Communism to capitalism. This is the dynamic undergirding virtually everything youâre seeing happen in college sports right now. Weâve seen a fundamental paradigm shift in college athletic governance, moving from Communism to nearly unfettered capitalism. That has massive consequences for all the stakeholders in college sports â the players, the coaches, the fans, and the schools.âFox Sports: College football moves from communism to capitalism overnight, chaos ensues
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/college-football-communism-capitalism-chaos.amp
It came to a head with a public feud between Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher over football recruiting and BIG money going to players:
âAlabama coach Nick Saban set the college football world abuzz Wednesday night when he told a gathering of business leaders in the state that Texas A&M assembled the top-ranked recruiting class in the country because it “bought every player” with name, image and likeness deals.â
ESPN Nick Saban-Jimbo Fisher feud — Coaches, ADs on what happened and what’s next
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/33946571/nick-saban-jimbo-fisher-feud-coaches-ads-happened-next
College football players can now be paid for their jersey numbers and so forth. This just started. What has happened in the offseason is that players are switching teams / local areas that will give them higher “contracts”. This is fairer to the player for reasons we have discussed previously, it is not good for the sport.
The remaining troops holed up in Mariupol have now surrendered (been evacuated? ha) including three top commanders who say only the dead remain. Looks to be about 2500 in custody.
RT links I have recently used if anyone is interested.
https://www.rt.com/on-air/rumble/ may not work for all.
or this one
https://odysee.com/@RT:fd/RTLivestream:8
!/2 Hour of news on the hour about 16 hours per day. Remaining time is documentarys about 2014-2021 and occasional talk shows.
College football will become more like professional football with the college players having more free reign.
I somehow have never seen why college sports should become an important part of institutions that purport to exist for academic teaching and learning.
Colleges provide the fans and rivalry interest for these players to earn a scholarship and now perhaps a healthy reimbursement. Very few college players become professional players but the college system does operate somewhat like a minor league in baseball.
I have often thought about what would happen if colleges that currently are big into sports and particularly football deemphasized it in favor of academics. How would the feeder system for professional sports handle the situation? How would the college sport fans react? I suspect that the attending fans would remain the same as it did before the great emphasis on sports, but would the media stay as interested as they are currently.
Now the above is all hypothetical and not likely to happen anytime soon, but I am curious how colleges will handle the new pay for play given that they will tend to look at it differently than professional sport owners. What if the college players unionized and how would college administrations react to it?
Oliver Stone, a Putin sympathizer, is interviewed on the war. He also has a 4 hour interview series with Putin from 2017.
https://youtu.be/Ov567pDEMEM
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It’s interesting, a different perspective we rarely get, but a bit incoherent at times. “Russia had to attack because Ukraine was about to invade Donbass”. Ummmmm … no. Evidence – Ukraine started firing artillery in Donbass the day before the war (officially) started.
Kenneth,
Baseball has a complicated farm system that feeds the best players to the majors. College football and basketball serve the same purpose. If colleges did not offer scholarships and did not emphasize sports, then professional football and basketball would have to adopt something like the baseball model.
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I note that nearly all top prospects in baseball sign with a team long before they would have graduated from college (often in high school), and ‘signing bonuses’ can reach a couple million dollars. Of course, most minor league players don’t get a hefty signing bonus, make a pittance in the minors, and are never promoted to the majors.
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Minor league football and basketball would likely be much the same. The difference is that top pro baseball prospects are generously compensated, while top pro prospects in college football and basketball make nothing (outside rare endorsements). The colleges that have big sports programs make a fortune from ticket sales and TV rights…. IMO it is the colleges that are taking advantage of the kids.
The Russians have finally got their thumbs out of their ***.
Firing the previous incompetent commanders have made all the difference.
This is well worth a read.
https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-20-21-may-2022-9b21e72d911e
A Russian site on the Russian advance. As usual, a bit over the top, but worth reading. The numbers of Ukraine troops trapped in the several encirclements feels about right and the maps look to agree somewhat with the ISW version of events.
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https://seemorerocks.is/rout-of-the-ukrainian-army-in-donbass/
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This action will take several days to play out before we see how accurate this is.
Tom Scharf (Comment #212139)
âThis is fairer to the player for reasons we have discussed previously, it is not good for the sport.â
I disagree. Sports is entertainment and I am being thoroughly entertainedâŚâŚ and itâs not even football season yet. Watching Texas A&M steal talent from Alabama, and the resulting feud between Sabin and Fisher, was priceless.
Iâm not sure where this will end up but I have my hope: Two college football leagues develop. One, schools with money have a league more like the NFL where the players are getting rich [aka the big black kids league] and one for schools with no money more like a traditional amateur league [aka the little white kids league].
The NCAA has a monopoly on the farm system to the NFL. There is no reason for this, and if you created an independent (and highly compensated) team it will not be allowed to compete against college teams for reasons valid and invalid. The actual connection now between academia and the NFL farm league is frivolous.
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I should add that I love college football and have been a big fan for 30+ years. I really like the tradition, the rivalries, the great enthusiasm, the meaningfulness of the games, and so on. I hate to see this broken but the players are getting screwed. Everyone else makes actual money except them, it’s indefensible.
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The irony never failed to amaze me that the rampant exploitation of college sports players in a hugely profitable sports league happened right under the noses of wokest people on earth, academia. Because this was never a high profile issue for them it indicates their wokeness is more of a tribal performance against their out group to impress their peers. Big surprise.
For the record, I’ll trade Turkey for Finland and Sweden and I suspect the rest of NATO will as well. Erdogan probably needs to tread carefully here. He will get a few bones thrown his way but shouldn’t press that advantage too far.
Russel
Same here! Besides that, I’m not sure what “good for the sport” really means. I do know what “good for the players” means.
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So what if teams start ‘stealing’ talent? I don’t see how that will make the sport less competitive. Talent will move from school to school and each school figures out how to lure kids.
Tom,
lucia,
Baseball used to have the players as effectively indentured servants and they were paid accordingly. The advantage to the fans was that tickets to games were cheap. Now we have free agency and multi-year contracts in the hundreds of millions. Cheap tickets are a thing of the past. The games also last twice as long and it’s not just TV commercial breaks.
When I was in college we used to go to Dodger games and sit in the nosebleed section for a few bucks. But then again, I also went to a few NBA championship games between the Lakers and the Celtics and it didn’t break the bank. Bob Cousy (end of career) and Bill Russell (early career) were playing for the Celtics and Jerry West and Elgin Baylor for the Lakers.
In my mind there is something missing in these discussions of college sports and that is that several big-name sports colleges are sponsoring the activity of sports which is far afield from academics. With the recent increased recruitment of college athletes which will now become much larger with pay for play, it becomes obvious that many athletes are only connected to the college through an enrollment process and in many cases attending classes with lower academic standing to retain eligibility for their sport teams.
Would not it be more honest simply to hire promising athletes to play under the college name with enrollment academically and attending classes being optional? Such arrangements could be made in other fields of endeavor, and particularly where there is the entertainment orientation, e.g., to the extent of producing TV shows and movies.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-30-sp-617-story.html
DeWitt,
I know there have been changes. I’m not sure if that is supposed to describe how the changes have been “bad” for baseball.
You can still go to watch minor league game for cheap. I want with my Dad in Sarasota. We’ve gone to the minor league games in the West Suburbs too. So cheap baseball is still available.
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People prefer watching more competitive games. So they pay more. I’m not seeing how people paying for more competitive games hurts “the game” of baseball.
Besides which, the owners might have charged whatever the market would bear even if players were still indentured servants. People tend to assume the changes are because players are paid. But owners would be motivated to sell tv advertising and put the extra money in their pockets regardless.
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As for other non-advertising factors making games long, I don’t know what they are. But unless someone tells me what they are I won’t assume that was because players are paid. It could easily be something else. Other than breaks for advertising I don’t see any connection between games being longer and players getting paid!
Kenneth
Yes. The truth becomes obvious. But it was already true.
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Honestly, if the NCAA and schools wanted to keep sports and academic connected, they could make rules to force the connection. They liked to pretend not paying players was the connection. But that’s a farce.
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Nothing about the courts ruling prevents the NCAA from making rules to enforce the “being a real student” part of rules. They didn’t really do so in the past likely because the NCAA, the schools and the coaches made big money and they liked it that way. So they all colluded to be really lax about making kids be “real scholars” which let them make more money by admitting some kids who couldn’t remotely participate in the academic programs on in any normal way.
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If much of the money is now going straight to students, the NCAA may suddenly be motivated to actually create and enforce rules about majors, grades, progress to graduation, admission standards being comparable for athletes and non-athletic student and so on.
Lucia,
“If much of the money is now going straight to students, the NCAA may suddenly be motivated to actually create and enforce rules about majors, grades, progress to graduation, admission standards being comparable for athletes and non-athletic student and so on.”
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My understanding is that it is not the colleges themselves that can compensate star athletes, but “alumni boosters”, donors, etc. The only impact on the college is that some wealthy alumni may choose to support star athletes rather than donate to the school. Any school that requires the star athletes *actually* be scholars as well as athletes is going to find itself with terrible teams very quickly. I doubt that will happen. There is far too much money to be made by top tier athletic programs for colleges to shoot themselves in the foot that way. Academic programs in “sports administration” and the like will continue…. as a fig leaf. I expect the NCAA will ultimately accept hefty compensation of star athletes without much disruption. Will there be grumbling? Sure, plenty, because schools with lots of rich alumni who support sports are going to dominate schools that don’t have so many rich alumni.
A lot of colleges are really just sports teams that teach some classes.
Some of them also operate a hedge fund.
Several of these conferences have started their own TV networks to get even more money.
Lucia, paying the players will not subtract from the pot of money available to the NCAA or TV contracts and there will be less motivation for scholarship for the athletes. There are many supporters of college sports out there who cannot wait to provide more funds and now do it without bending or ignoring the rules.
Actually , it is the college administration who can impose any academic standards they might chose. They are not going to do it because of alumni resistance and fear it might appear to be discrimination against minorities.
The college sport enterprise with a large labor component will become more like a business than it currently is and I doubt very much that college administrations are prepared to handle it. I look for colleges and government to get involved in unhelpful ways.
So million dollar college football players run into Title IX. That is not going to be pretty. Will the Supreme Court get involved and demand the alumni also make millionaires of the girls on the softball team? Itâs the law isnât it?
A corollary, assuming college football is a zero sum game [I know itâs not] but assuming it is. If some of the big bucks going to the players is coming out of the school’s share of the pie are they gonna cut back on some of the money that goes to women’s scholarships and facilities? No, that would be illegal. They might have a problem.
Right now flying over the Sea of Japan off the coast of North Korea at 32,000 feet is a US Air Force Boeing RC-135S âCobra Ballâ call sign BREAK99. I have never seen one of these before. âThe RC-135S Cobra Ball is a rapidly deployable aircraft, which flies Joint Chiefs of Staff-directed missions of national priority to collect optical and electronic data on ballistic targets.â I suppose they expect Lilâ Kim may be up to something.
If it has landed, I posted a screenshot here: https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1528180076054970369?s=20&t=gb8TI36MocrzTjz-2kMrkg
The aircraft scoop: https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104498/rc-135s-cobra-ball/
Live Tracking:
https://www.flightradar24.com/BREAK99/2bf2c726
College football and basketball in many cases provide all, or nearly all, funding for the entire athletic department, including scholarships for participants (both men and women) who participate in sports that will never generate profits from TV rights and gate ticket sales. Colleges will want to preserve that arrangement by keeping “name, image, likeness” compensation for star athletes outside college expenditures (funded by outside ‘investors’ who happen to be wealthy alumni boosters, and who will temporarily own the NIL rights of the stars). A bit like ‘independent’ political action committees that exist to fund preferred candidates, but are not ‘controlled’ by the candidates they support. Colleges could demand that scholarship players sign over their NIL rights to the college…. but that would just mean star athletes go elsewhere.
…and it’s not just me saying this:
âCOLLEGE SPORTS NIL IS HEADED FOR A COLLISION WITH TITLE IXâ
https://www.sportico.com/law/analysis/2021/college-sports-nil-title-ix-1234645328/
âName, Image And Likeness Legislation May Cause Significant Title IX Turmoilâ
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristidosh/2020/01/21/name-image-and-likeness-legislation-may-cause-significant-title-ix-turmoil/
SteveF
Could they? I think I’d have to read the legal ruling to see if that would be permitted.
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But if they can, then students might just turn away the scholarship once they get enough based on NIL.
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And the ruling also allows the students outside jobs that were often blocked. (On human interest story discussed a young man in some sports who was working toward a business degree that required an internship. But the sports team was blocking many internships on the claim that if they had any aspect of sales of any sort they were just “cush jobs” he would be getting because he was on the team. But many jobs in “business” have some aspect of sale. (And yes, sometimes businesses hire people who are in some way a celebrity because it does help sales.) But these were internships other non-athlete students took and valued. It was certainly wrong to actually bar the athletes who needed an internship both for future employment and to fulfill their degree!!
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The “real jobs” aren’t something people are worrying about. But some NIL money could end up disguised as a “real job”. And if the schools start taking the NIL money, they might want to get their grubby little hands on money from a “real job”.
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It’s going to be interesting to see what schools do.
Russel,
Yeah. There’s a law. But some of this things are ‘so what?’ It shouldn’t be any more difficult to comply that before. (Admittedly, schools often did their best to argue interpretation of rules or failing that, skirt them, to get money earned in football to stay in football. But that’s not new.)
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I also think the article is written with excessive certainty about things courts have probably not ruled on.
Example https://www.sportico.com/law/analysis/2021/college-sports-nil-title-ix-1234645328/
I’m pretty sure it’s true the universities themselves will need to treat males and females equally. I don’t think they should have any trouble doing so.
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I’m not sure that the schools will have trouble if a booster club helps the athletes provided the booster club is distinct from the university. So booster clubs who want to help students will need to make sure they aren’t in anyway “part” of the university. Until some case is adjudicated we don’t know how the courts would interpret help from booster clubs. Whether there is any title VIII problem may be fact specific based on the degree of legal association with a booster club and the school.
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Booster clubs are clubs. It should be easy enough for booster clubs to make themselves entirely independent of the university.
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These are sort of just “of course, yawn”. Needing to treat men and women equally under title VII is not new and I don’t think any schools that want to comply should have any trouble here.
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Easy: just train both. Or neither.
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Easy peasy. Let the women’s teams use the brand too. A school would have to have rocks in their heads to not let women’s gymnastics use the logo!
.
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Tell the apparel partner to offer names of female athletes too. Some for women’s gynmastics will sell.
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Manufacturing is nimble enough the manufacturer won’t be stuck with many unsellable items.
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Tell the sponsor or agent talk the to the player directly. The coach doesn’t need to be involved. Train the coach to turn away any sponsor or agent and say “I can’t be involved in that.”
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Lucia,
I envision a pack of hairy feminist attorneys chasing the NIL money like a pack of hyenas chasing a wounded gazelle. They are not interested in the girls having equal âopportunityâ to make money; they want equal results. The girls softball team had equal opportunity to bring in revenues from gate receipts, TV contracts and jersey sales as boys football. But the results were not the same and Title IX was passed to change that. I am not predicting the outcome of the coming legal battles, but if the hairy feminist attorneys do not win I expect Title IX.5 to be enacted. This should be fun to watch.
The hyenas smell money in the air.
Lucia, I believe that the judicial view will be that the college will always be involved. That the college provides enrollment, facilities, training, scholarships, a supporting fan base and brand, would be a high hurdle for claiming non involvement.
Government will get more involved through the college involvement. Colleges will acquiesce and, in effect, it will be government calling the shots in these matters through legislation and judicial review.
I would look for players unions, minimum pay levels and other college student areas of interest, starting with those related to entertainment, looking for similar arrangements.
In my view it is good that colleges might be forced to change their business models and concepts of education in preparing students for life after college. The problem I see is government involvement in shaping these changes and primarily with its one size fits all approach and discouraging creative thinking.
Russell, I get the hyena reference since in the hyena world it is the female that rules and outward genetilia differences between male and female are difficult to make, but all hyenas are hairy.
US soccer players reached a deal where the men and women are paid equally. Essentially the men were bullied in the name of equality to hand over some of their money to the women. In certain years, I think the men would have made more money like 2018, but most likely it is the other way around, with the current FIFA payouts.
Kenneth, you give me far to much credit. I think hyenas are ugly and hairy feminist attorneys are ugly, so I put them together.
My guess is Title IX will be struck down before it is used to regulate the earnings of star college athletes. This law never made sense legally. If women can get lots of people to watch their sports then they will reap the rewards. They.don’t. If college professors can fill football stadiums on Saturday to watch them work and get huge television contracts then they will get paid as much as coaches. I’d rather watch women’s gymnastics and figure skating than men’s so it isn’t always clear cut.
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There aren’t any other businesses I am aware of where the law requires a redistribution of wealth based on gender and other loosely correlated side businesses (other college sports). This case is really not “discrimination”, it is the free choice of fans to pay for what they want.
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I think every time the NCAA ends up at the SC they will lose. The players should unionize here because they are getting MONUMENTALLY ripped off. I have never seen such a clear cut case.
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“good for the sport” mostly means “good for growing interest and enthusiasm for the sport” and/or “good for the fans”.
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Unrestricted free agency in the NFL is good for the players but not good for the sport IMO. The first thing is teams start to lose their identity with large roster changes every year which affects fan appeal. The second thing is large market teams like NYC and LA can dominate a sport because of larger budgets. The Yankees spend about 3X more than the Tampa Rays and it would be much more if baseball didn’t have some redistribution going on. This redistribution is to try to maintain competitiveness in the market, thus fan appeal. There are trade-offs here, it’s not easy.
Russell
I know what ‘they’ want. Some certainly want that.
But I think these cases have already been adjudicated. Universities are not required to reduce the public’s enthusiasm for football down to the size that exists for women’s ice skating.
Tom
I hear that used as a reason to indentured servitude for players in the past. But they are more free to roam now. Baseball, football and basket ball all seemed to retain fan support despite the constantly changing rosters.
Didn’t the Yankee’s dominate back when Babe Ruth played? Rich cities dominating has always happened. I don’t think that’s related to free agency of the players.
ââŚ. with Russian warships policing the Levantine Basin and Black Sea, Putin can squeeze Ukraine economically, preventing maritime exports, and force the West to sustain Ukraine or risk its bankruptcy and collapse.
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The obvious policy response for NATO, as retired U.S. naval officer Adm. James Stavridis proposed in a recent Bloomberg News column, is an âescortâ system akin to Operation Earnest Will, the U.S. response to the Iraqi-Iranian tanker war of 1986-87. During it, the U.S. âreflaggedâ Kuwaiti tankers and escorted them with U.S. warships while de-mining the Persian Gulf and confronting Iranian naval forcesâŚ.â
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https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3497038-the-turkish-question-on-nato-a-larger-strategic-opportunity-in-the-black-sea/
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And the clock ticking towards nuclear war moves closer.
Ed Forbes
Sure. Since Putin seems to keep making elliptic references to using them and is perhaps willing to do so to get his way.
Lucia,
“Could they? I think Iâd have to read the legal ruling to see if that would be permitted.”
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I should have been more clear. Restricting NIL rights only works if signing over NIL rights to the college is a condition of being on *any* NCAA the team. Want to play for ‘Bama? Then sign over your NIL rights. The NCAA could try to make that a requirement for participation in NCAA competitions. If they do, then the NCAA is likely doomed as a governing organization, and the SC will gleefully and forcefully smack them down.
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The truth is that the NCAA and big-time sports colleges have taken advantage of the best-of-the-best athletes for many decades. That is going to change.
ISW has confirmed the Russian breakthrough at Popasaya.
. https://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Severodonetsk%20Battle%20Map%20Draft%20May%2022%2C2022.png
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The next week will be critical for Ukraine. If Ukraine counterattacks canât force open the supply lines, or open a route for the Ukraine garrisons in the pockets to retreat out through, the Ukraine army will lose a major portion of its better veteran troops.
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As Russian supply lines in the Popasaya breakout are by rail directly to the front, Russia is not in danger of overextended supply that forced a pause as in prior actions.
I get the impression that many here look at Russia as an extension of the Soviet Union and that the evil of the Soviet Union is directly transferable to Russia.
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A couple of points on this view.
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1) the 2 most famous of Soviet leaders after Lenin, Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, were not Russian.
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2) Russia led the revolt that brought down the Soviet Union.
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Russia has issues, but the transfer of the sins of the Soviets directly to Russia is a logical failure of breathtaking proportions.
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If one were to go strictly by body count in wars since the downfall of the Soviets, the US wins hands down.
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War is âDiplomacy by Other Means â. Ukraine and Russia have opposing and deep set differences that has produced thousands of casualties prior to the current war.
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At some point, war is required to ratify diplomacy on the battlefield. This view is supported by most the major and minor powers of the world as a listing of all the wars produced from the 1990âs to date confirm.
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OkâŚI just saw this one
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âDIPLOMACY IS SAYING âNICE DOGGIEâ WHILE YOU SEARCH FOR A ROCK.â
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“The evil of the Soviet Union is directly transferable to Russia”
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Yes. Nothing has changed. Obviously. Read the news lately?
Ed
Uh. No.
But good try at avoiding discussing what Russia itself has elected to do in recent times.
Ed Forbes (Comment #212184): “If Ukraine counterattacks canât force open the supply lines, or open a route for the Ukraine garrisons in the pockets to retreat out through, the Ukraine army will lose a major portion of its better veteran troops.”
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I don’t see where you get that claim. The Ukraine troops still in Luhansk are surely at some risk, but that is a modest portion of the line of contact. So I don’t see that as a “major portion”. And given the glacial rate of Russian advance, it seem unlikely that most of those troops will be captured.
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But the breakthrough would seem to have the potential to force Ukraine to abandon Luhansk.
Ed Forbes (Comment #212185): “I get the impression that many here look at Russia as an extension of the Soviet Union and that the evil of the Soviet Union is directly transferable to Russia.”
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Nope. As lucia has said, Russia has earned condemnation all on their own.
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Ed Forbes: “the 2 most famous of Soviet leaders after Lenin, Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, were not Russian.”
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Khrushchev is more famous than Brezhnev or Gorbachev? Maybe to those of us old enough to remember when Khrushchev was boss.
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Ed Forbes: “Russia led the revolt that brought down the Soviet Union.”
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Really? Do you mean the coup attempt that precipitated the final collapse?
My guess is that endgame for Ukraine is to concede Luhansk, but no before pulverizing enough of Russian army to get concessions. I am not sure they will be give up on Kherson while they still have means to attack.
But good try at avoiding discussing what Russia itself has elected to do in recent times.
More accurately what Putin has done in recent times, eg to dissenters, journalists, opposition leaders. Saving the butt of other ruthless dictators.
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Admiration of Putin by some “Republicans” is pretty worrying. I hope they are not wishing for similar leader in US that can keep Democrats out of power no matter what the public wish.
Phil,
Putin is a murderous thug. Nobody I know wants a murderous thug to be president of the USA. You are mistaken if you think any more than a lunatic fringe admires Putin.
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A lot of people on the left in the USA *do* in fact admire other murderous thugs like Che’, Fidel, and Hugo Chavez. If there is any danger of non-democratic subversion of government in the USA, it comes from the extreme left, not the right. I think it is important to remember that the right mostly wants government to leave them alone, which is why the Constitution spends so much time describing what the government is not allowed to do. The left wants government to control virtually everything individuals are allowed to do and say. It is why the left is so relentless in its pursuit of power, and why it is more than willing to subvert the plain meaning of the Constitution to institute greater control over the individual.
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I want Democrats out of power because they are damaging the country in countless ways. They will get tossed out by voters in November because of their destructive policies; murderous thugs are not needed.
Phil Scadden (Comment #212192): “Admiration of Putin by some âRepublicansâ is pretty worrying.”
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Such people are virtually non-existent; especially among those with power and influence. The worrying thing is skill at spreading lies exhibited bythe Left and their allies in corporate media.
This is darling! A pic of a two seater ATV with an anti-tank guided missile launcher mounted on top. I have heard the Ukrainian tactics described as âhit and runâ or âshoot and scootâ. This seems perfect.
This is not my area of expertise, but modern tank warfare has changed forever. Since the German blitzkrieg of the 1930s European war plans have been tank-centric. Something else needs to replace it.
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1528730909285007366?s=20&t=oyvWVJQHu_q1_vl9MgJSMQ
Phil,
The Kherson region has a major canal that used to supply water to the Crimea. The Ukrainians blocked the canal after the Russians annexed Crimea, leading to severe water shortages in dry summer months. The Russians are not going to give back that region without a guarantee of water via the canal.
“My guess is Title IX will be struck down before it is used to regulate the earnings of star college athletes. ”
Title IX does not mention sports. It bans discrimination based on sex by educational institutions that receive federal funds.
John Tower proposed an amendment that would exempt athletics.
Bush Administration passed a regulation that gave colleges an out on fewer women athletes by conducting surveys rather than axing mens’ teams.
For those of you who still believe that there is no evidence of vote fraud in the 2020 election: https://spectator.org/this-opinion-just-in-2000-mules-offers-vivid-proof-of-vote-fraud/
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Video of people, often wearing gloves in warm weather, stuffing drop boxes with ballots. Hundreds of thousands of them. And the investigators have the cell phone numbers of the criminals.
Mike,
FWIW, I don’t dispute that fraud occurred. I objected to the illegal remedy Trump wanted to apply to it.
Mike M,
I think that delivery of ballots by third parties is allowed in some places, but not in others. I don’t think the film draws that very critical distinction. If there is some kind of conspiracy to swing close states to Biden, then the film should prove (at a minimum) 1) that there was nothing comparable happening in any states where the outcome was never in doubt (say Massachusetts or Alabama), and 2) that the delivery of ballots was in fact unlawful in each of the swing states where it might have made a difference.
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If the film makers can show that, then they will have my attention. Until then, not so much. What is very clear is that covid inspired laxity on enforcing voting laws in many places increased the total number of votes quite dramatically, and may well have swung the election to Biden in some states. But claims of a giant conspiracy need extraordinary proof.
Mike M,
This site: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-10-who-can-collect-and-return-an-absentee-ballot-other-than-the-voter.aspx
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Shows that ballot “mules” are not allowed in the swing states….. but it does not address if those rules were suspended for the 2020 election.
The above is Title IX. I don’t think that most know how simplistic the original legislation was. It was specifically targeted directly at womens right to be educated. Everything else was appended via the courts, other legislation, or most frequently executive orders from the Office of Civil rights. More verbiage was spent on defining the entities to whom it applied to than the rule itself. Recieving federal assistance has since been defined to mean any school that accepts students with Federal student loans & grants or almost any educational institution K-PHD. It wasn’t until the late 80s that the guidelines for enforcing compliance surrounding womens sports were put in place. Title IX is also what is used to require university’s to adjuticate sexual assaults involving their students. It requires that each have a designated Title IX coordinator to monitor it’s compliance with the act and serve as a notification point for sexual discrimination, harrashment, or assault. Quite a bit of power came from those simple 37 words.
Russia was doing fine after the Cold War ended, and then Putin took power. He openly pines for the Soviet prestige days and acts just like a prototypical USSR thug that he is. It’s the same belligerence, saber rattling, and general menace that the Soviets continuously trafficked in for decades. I lived through it.
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As for the contention the US has killed more people, that is probably both true and false. 100K’s of people died in Iraq / Afghanistan / Syria. Many of them were victims of sectarian violence. What is different is we aren’t in any of these countries as a war of conquest, in fact we have left, intentionally.
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Russia is conquering Ukraine because they believe it is “Russian”. One can only wonder what the world would look like with Russia as the only superpower. The whole world would be “Russians” to them. Their neighbors fear them for good reasons. Do you think Mexico and Canada feel the same? Why is that?
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If Russia wants a better future, Putin and his ilk needs to go.
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In unrelated news, Biden said today we would militarily defend Taiwan, ha ha. It’s a complicated world.
Phil,
The Republicans love Putin is a partisan talking point. It really means they don’t denounce them as loudly and reflexively this week as the left does. This is all leftovers from the “Russians elected Trump” madness from 2016.
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Hilary Clinton / Obama called for a Russian reset in relations and there is this infamous moment where Obama denounces the Republicans for being too hard on Russia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0IWe11RWOM
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What I have seen is more along the lines of Russia must be respected and not dismissed. Putin and Xi keep their countries in line and are (allegedly) actually liked by their own people. Comparisons between these systems against the west, where it is now a stray cat fight 24/7, are up for debate. Are Putin / Xi better leaders than Biden or Trump beyond a debate on the political systems? One can easily argue that.
The voting fraud should be investigated, I’d like to hear the other side of the story. Right now it is activist assertions.
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It depends on whether these âvote harvestingâ efforts are legal votes or not. Iâm not a fan of vote harvesting, this is why authenticated in person voting is favored by some people. Personally Iâm OK with authenticated mail-in voting, but vote harvesting would be even easier this way.
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I also donât believe these type of efforts can be effective on national races. One would first need to have an extremely close race within a 1000 votes which is really rare, then have pre-selected the correct state(s) for the fraud effort, and then taken a very high risk for little chance of changing results. It also takes a lot of effort if the ballots canât be easily forged.
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This thing could be effective for city council races and other hyper local politics where voting takes place on odd days where other big races arenât happening.
SteveF (Comment #212202): “I think that delivery of ballots by third parties is allowed in some places, but not in others. I donât think the film draws that very critical distinction.”
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Do you have any information as to what the film actually says about that? I don’t. I saw the True The Vote person interviewed and I *think* she said that harvesting is illegal in those states.
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I have not seen the film. From what I have read, it seems clear that the “mules” were acting in a surreptitious manner. Going to many different drop boxes, in the wee hours, wearing gloves. That strongly implies guilty knowledge.
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I do not think the film makers need to prove anything. Probable cause is more than enough to get the police and prosecutors involved. They have the tools to obtain proof.
If a paid activist knocks on a door and asks “Have you voted yet? Do you need help? I’ll deliver the vote for you”. Should that be legal? Gray area for me. If the activist fills in the ballot, gives gifts, or does political promotion, or “loses” some votes when delivering them then this would clearly cross a line. They can still pass muster and be effective if they only vote harvest in politically favorable areas for them. Do we really know this is only primarily happening on one side?
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I’d say both I doubt this will be effective and it should be banned anyway because we need to keep the voting process as reasonably squeaky clean as possible.
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If it was to be legal then I think vote harvesters would need to be registered and all votes they harvested should be traceable for a possible future investigation.
Tom,
I don’t really understand why you say this. Why do you believe this type of fraud would be limited to affecting a race to within 1000 votes? It seems to me that the putative scheme would scale depending on the number of operatives / harvesters working on it. But maybe I am missing something, so I thought I’d ask.
Regarding pre-selecting the correct states for the fraud effort, it does not seem insane to me to speculate that such an effort would target all of the swing states.
I don’t think you recruit people saying ‘Hey, we’re going to rig an election, can you keep it secret? Are you in?’ You just recruit activists who care enough to involve themselves and let them make personal decisions to exploit a situation where nobody is watching closely and the rules can be easily broken without consequence. Something along those lines anyway.
Mike M.,
How would the police and prosecutors prove anything after the fact? Real question. Once the ballots are in the drop box, there is, AFAICT, no way that one could distinguish legitimate from illegitimate ballots. How do we even know that the video in 2,000 Mules is real or deep fake? It is so easy now to create real looking but fake video that unless it’s something like George Floyd where there also a lot of witnesses, I would have serious doubts.
I do have serious doubts about the validity of 2,000 Mules. It’s not something that I have any interest in watching. That being said, drop boxes are, IMO, a really bad idea. If you’re worried about leaving a ballot in your mail box, take it to the local post office.
And I seriously doubt that a conspiracy that large wouldn’t have attracted someone who was a plant and blows a whistle. As the saying goes, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
“The Russians are not going to give back that region without a guarantee of water via the canal.”
Absolutely a talking point – just as Ukraine doesnt want Russion blockading access to Dnieper.
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If there are not people in the US right that are Putin admirers, then all I can say is that Russian are doing a very fine job of imitating them in rightwing channels. However, I put “Republican” in quotes because I find it hard to believe subscribers to traditional Republican values could own such views.
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I dont buy that US right are libertarians that just want the government to leave them alone. As far as I can see social conservatives, especially Christians, are very keen for government to regulate behaviour in line with their moral positions.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #212213): “How would the police and prosecutors prove anything after the fact? Real question. Once the ballots are in the drop box, there is, AFAICT, no way that one could distinguish legitimate from illegitimate ballots.”
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If ballot harvesting is illegal and someone puts multiple ballots in the box, then they are breaking the law. All the more so if they distribute 100 ballots among a dozen boxes.
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DeWitt Payne: “How do we even know that the video in 2,000 Mules is real or deep fake?”
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Why would the government create fake video?
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But it should be easily provable. You have cell phone data placing a particular phone at certain drop boxes at certain times. You have video showing the owner of the phone putting ballots in those boxes at those times. Send him to prison.
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Or better yet, do what they do with low level drug dealers: flip them and follow the thread as far up the food chain as possible.
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I find it amazing the lengths people go to so as to convince themselves that the election was fair. But then, I grew up in a place where it was widely assumed that elections were rigged.
I’d be very surprised if Phil can name a prominent voice on the right who is a Putin admirer. There sure aren’t any on Fox News.
“BALLOT HARVESTER ON CAMERA EXCHANGING CASH FOR GENERAL ELECTION BALLOTâŚâSHE’S [ILHAN OMAR] THE ONE WHO CAME UP WITH ALL THIS ⌠WE ARE TAKING THE MONEY AND WEâLL VOTE FOR YOU ⌠WE DONâT CARE ILLEGAL.â
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https://www.projectveritas.com/news/caught-in-the-act-ballot-harvester-on-camera-exchanging-cash-for-general/
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“Texas âBallot Chaserâ Pressures Voter to Change Vote from Cornyn to Hegar: âThatâs My Jobâ ⌠âI Can Honestly Say I’m Bringing at Least 7,000 Votes to The Pollsâ ⌠Said Garza Gave Her $2,500 Gift Budget”
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https://www.projectveritas.com/news/texas-ballot-chaser-pressures-voter-to-change-vote-from-cornyn-to-hegar/
Phil,
Odd how from afar you can see the tremendous support for Putin on the right, while those of us who live here don’t see it. Please point to a few well known (or even slightly known) people who admire Putin.
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WRT those on the religious right trying to force they views on everyone: I suspect you are reading way too much into the possible reversal of Roe V Wade, which is fundamentally a constitutional question. Roe is a unique case, where the clear majority of voters (about 2/3) favor substantially restricting abortions after the first trimester (much like in most countries). The evangelical right simply does not have much support for their faith driven policy preferences beyond abortion.
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And yes, most people in the States just want to be left alone…. lots are not even very political. But when a bunch of incompetents really screw things up (like President Alzheimer de Imbeciles and his band of loonies) voters are motivated to throw the bums out…. and they will in November. You may have seen video clips of spontaneous cheering on planes when a judge struck Biden’s mask mandate for travelers…. that pretty well sums up most people in the States.
I do not claim “tremendous” support. I claim “some”. I cannot judge how common, nor do I claim they are well known from anonymous handles.
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Abortion is complicated because it arguably involves another “person” rather than individual liberty. I was more thinking of Moral Majority type issues – eg school prayer, LBGT legalization, which figured so heavily when I read “Time” in the 1980s.
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By the way, does 51% translate as “most” people?
A large scale voting fraud of the harvesting type would very likely be detected. Too many people actually care about vote integrity, too many people would be involved in the fraud, and it would be relatively easy to get people to admit it under pressure. Large scale fraud would need to be in the counting and tallying room IMO. I’m not saying its impossible, just unlikely, and assertions require extraordinary evidence for me.
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Also guessing where the vital states would be is unpredictable.
Republicans are not mostly libertarians, but libertarians mostly vote Republican rather than Democrat if they choose between the two. A large sector of the US would struggle to define what libertarian views actually are because they don’t pay close attention to politics.
Phil,
“By the way, does 51% translate as âmostâ people?”
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Is that a trick question? By definition, it clearly does. In the specific case I was talking about, I don’t have exact numbers, but I do know (personal observation at multiple US airports and on multiple US flights), that somewhere between 90% and 95% of people are not wearing masks…. in spite of endless “recommendations” from Anthony Fauci. The pandemic is ending for most everyone….. except the Biden administration. The USA is one of the very few countries that still demands a negative covid test before boarding a plane for the USA…. a truly demented, just like Biden himself and the rest of his administration’s policies.
Mike M,
“I grew up in a place where it was widely assumed that elections were rigged.”
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Chicago? Or outside the States?
Northeast PA. When I lived in Chicago, the politics felt familiar.
Tom Scharf (Comment #212220): “A large scale voting fraud of the harvesting type would very likely be detected. Too many people actually care about vote integrity, too many people would be involved in the fraud, and it would be relatively easy to get people to admit it under pressure.”
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Only if actually investigated.
Steve, sorry, I should have explained my context immediately. You said “most people in the States just want to be left alone”. But you tend to imply frequently that Democrats are busy bodies who just want to control you, and voting percentage would then say that applies to lots of people. “most” to me usually means a considerable majority which the voting figures would not support.
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I think you would struggle to find a person on the planet that actually likes wearing a surgical mask. I certainly look forward to not having to wear one, but not yet!
> but libertarians mostly vote Republican rather than Democrat if they choose between the two.
I’m not so sure about that. Maybe libertarians do, but Libertarians are all about drugs.
Ann Coulter wanted to run 3rd party to take out a Republican incumbent, and the Libertarian Party refused her their ballot line because she wouldn’t support legalizing drugs.
While I approve of the general skepticism being exhibited here regarding election fraud, I do not particularly agree with the arguments presented [supporting said skepticism]. But arguing the point is not interesting enough to pursue, so, just let it be noted for the record that I don’t really agree.
Shrug.
mark bofill,
ditto.
I guess what I have perceived as recent radio silence on vaccine effectiveness data and omicron is explained. Expected, but not exactly being broadcast by the usual suspects.
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Recent CDC info on vaccines/omicron
https://www.fda.gov/media/157475/download
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Page 8:
2 dose Pfizer vaccination, after 3 months, provides * 0% * protection against omicron symptomatic infection in a recent study. That’s right. None. Even stranger it provides * negative protection * after 7 months, let’s hope that is a statistical fluke.
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Page 16:
Vaccine effectiveness against omicron emergency room visits at only 37% after 5 months. Half that of delta.
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This document starts parsing out way better results for “immunocompetent” adults which is new to me. I suspect this is a bit of desperation analysis.
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NEJM, April, Omicron:
“Among those who had received two BNT162b2 doses, vaccine effectiveness was 65.5% (95% CI, 63.9 to 67.0) 2 to 4 weeks after the second dose, dropping to 15.4% (95% CI, 14.2 to 16.6) after 15 to 19 weeks and dropping further to 8.8% (95% CI, 7.0 to 10.5) after 25 or more weeks”
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Omicron vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization is 50% to 70% depending on doses and how long since. It is noted that omicron produces less severe disease overall, but we are no longer in the 10X better world, more like 2X.
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Moderna has an omicron specific version with availability expected in the autumn. They say the improved version has a 2.2x improvement in antibody response for current variants.
“Libertarians are all about drugs.”
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There are (L)iberterians and (l)iberterians. The US’s Libertarian Party is is a bit nutty which is why I don’t vote that way. If drug use is the single issue then that might be a Democrat vote, otherwise freedom of speech, small government, lower taxes, less nanny state, etc. will sway towards Republicans. Hard core libertarians will find a lot to dislike in both parties today.
Phil,
“But you tend to imply frequently that Democrats are busy bodies who just want to control you, and voting percentage would then say that applies to lots of people.”
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Um, I don’t make any implications, I come right out and say it: people of the left want to control everyone: what they are allowed to do and what they are allowed to say. They want to tax income at astronomical rates (75% to 80% is often suggested as “fair”), confiscate a fraction of “excess wealth” each year, and confiscate ~100% of wealth at death. Voting does not necessarily imply support for the philosophy of the left; the motivation could be as simple as voting for people who claim they will improve your personal financial circumstances. About 1/3 of US adults almost never vote at all.
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Surgical masks are covid theater, not effective. N-95 masks are potentially effective, but horribly uncomfortable if properly fitted, so are rarely properly fitted. If covid presented grave personal danger, then well fitted N-95 masks would be prudent, but covid does not present that grave personal danger for most people (young people, triply vaccinated people, people who already had the illness… remember that 60% of the population in the USA already recovered from the virus), and the masks people were being forced to use on planes were not remotely effective. Covid theater, nothing more. But for the left, theater with government directing individuals is critically important. So of course there were spontaneous celebrations on planes when a judge struck the regulation as illegal. It wasn’t just illegal (which it probably was) it was stupid lefty nonsense, and the vast majority of travelers recognized that.
Phil/Steve,
I think both progressive and religious leaning conservatives will indulge in busy-body-ness when they think they can win. Both embrace “keep the government out” when they think they can’t.
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The 70s and early 80s had a lot of conservatives who thought they could win forcing kids to say the pledge of allegience, making gays shut up and stay in the closet. The tide turned on all that, and now the forcing in from the other side and has extended even to a NY mayor wanting to ban “Big Gulp” beverages to force better diets. And of course we do get rather forced “education” on the job to right think about gay rights, sexual harassment and so on. And some of the later have crept into schools.
(I’m for gay rights and anti harassment. But by the 90s and 00s some of the training really went past don’t harass. Which sometimes put employees in the weird situation of both being talked at but not actually being above to get HR departments to take action.)
âState Farm donating ‘LGBTQ+ books’ to Florida schools for students ages 5 and upâ
I’m on a mission. So far this AM I have sent six communications to various State Farm offices through email, Twitter and Facebook. My message; âThis is Russell Klier. I have been a customer for 49 years. Cari Fallon is my State Farm agent. Tell be more about this transgender project State Farm is undertaking.â
I read on Twitter that they canceled the program overnight, but Iâm gonna complete my mission.
https://weartv.com/news/local/state-farm-donating-lgbtq-books-to-florida-schools-for-students-ages-5-and-up-insurance-trans-transgender-gay-lesbian-students-children-ron-desantis-dont-say-parental-rights-law
Lucia,
I disagree with any “both are guilty” claims.
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Kids are not required to say the pledge. People can burn as many flags as they want, and sleep with pretty much whoever they want. Those efforts to insist on conservative, mostly religiously inspired morality were blocked as unconstitutional. In response, did conservatives threaten the SC justices with court packing? No. Did conservatives “protest” outside the homes of SC justices? No.
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But the left wants total control, and will subvert the Constitution to get it. Court packing is broadly supported on the extreme left. The tactics of the two sides are fundamentally different in nature: Accept the constitutional order, or reject it. The left rejects it. Accept and enforce laws, or ignore them. The left ignores them. Obama was a thoroughly lawless President. The Biden administration is just Obama 3.0 with Alzheimer’s added.
I thought Bloomberg already banned the large drinks.
Courts threw out the ban pretty quickly by reason of NYC Health board exceeding it’s authority.
Steve,
I don’t know. I think a fair number of the religious goobers where I live would be only too happy to regulate other peoples lives via government if they could. It’s just that in the current environment they have very limited opportunity to do so.
Shrug. I think it varies regionally.
Steve,
I should have added, I agree with you about the lawlessness / lawfulness thing. IMO the religious right will do what it can to boss people around within the confines of the law generally speaking. I agree with you that modern leftists seem to have less respect for law.
I think the theocratic society depicted in The Handmaids Tale (I read the book, I had zero interest in the TV show), is not beyond the realm of possibility. One only has to look at the Taliban in Afghanistan to see that there are people who think that way and I don’t think they are all Muslims in the rest of the world. Robert Heinlein in his future history timeline included a theocracy in the US at some point.
However, I think the probability of that happening in the US is vanishingly small. Something like Venezuela, OTOH, is much more likely. IMO, the only way we get a right wing authoritarian government would be a situation like Chile after Allende or Franco in Spain, a reaction to a left wing takeover attempt.
SteveF
No. But it took a SCOTUS ruling to not require it (1943). And various schools kept trying to have work arounds (moment of silence etc.) And as recently as 2004, a father had to challenge the right of his daughter to not listen to a recitation, which was required of teachers. See https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-1624 .
(The dad was found to not have standing.)
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So the fact that conservatives lost when they tried to force this doesn’t mean they won’t try to force certain behaviors.
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The rest of your list also contains behaviors that conservatives tried to prevent or enforce.
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Both sides do try to enforce their preferred behavior to the extent they can. They change their tune when the other side gets the upper hand and starts trying to force opposite behaviors.
We are all genetically programmed to form tribes, seek tribal leadership, control the herd through force, and procreate. This evolutionary path is beneficial to the survival of the species. Many animals do the same thing. It is not derived or sourced by a political party but it sure is expressed that way.
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The moral majority was pretty controlling in their time. One of the reasons, the main reason IMO, that party control changes as often as it does is that this controlling instinct goes wrong immediately once the ability to control is obtained. The urgent need to suppress dissent, by force if necessary, is just a paper thin veneer over evolutionary programming.
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I believe this is one of the reasons the US political system for all its faults is enduring, because it was designed specifically to counteract these behavioral impulses. Even in the 1700’s people knew that leaders would feel compelled to restrict Big Gulps eventually, ha ha.
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The fight is against this evolutionary impulse, not one group who has it. There are times when this tribal behavior works great, maybe most of the time, but it has to be guarded against continuously from overreach.
Preventing abortion is a pretty controlling behavior. The left has had the better of cultural power for a while and has mismanaged it badly, but of course I would think that. The thing is that people who have this sort of power just.never.stop.using.it. It starts to become entirely about exercising the control, and not about a preferred preestablished outcome.
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The language control madness on the left is an example, who know what today’s rules are? What is a Latinx and how do you even pronounce that? 3 eighth graders were charged with sexual harassment in Kiel, WI for not using they/them pronouns with a non-binary classmate. If everyone agreed today’s rules are fine, it wouldn’t stop changing because it’s not about that, it’s about some deep instinct of exercising control. Thus, the crazy people who can’t get that under psychological control get removed from power so another set of crazies get put in power.
I should add that it is entirely possible that people who have a large impulse to control others will naturally gravitate to the political party that expresses the most desire to control. That would be the left today.
Tom Scharf,
It’s not just political parties. Have you had any experience with home owners associations perchance? There are overly officious people everywhere. There was even an ad that featured an HOA enforcer who took a chain saw to a mailbox post because it was too high. That was, of course, an exaggeration, but it wouldn’t have resonated if there weren’t some truth to it.
None of the tribalistic instincts of the human being are required for survival in the modern world. Humans are distinct from animals in their ability to reason. Forcing your ideas/actions or ideas/actions of your group on others has as its nexus the power of government to do the forcing. Without government using its monopoly on force to do the forcing, convincing others of the reasonableness of your ideas would require using persuasion and evidence in the place of force.
When governments imply that only they can solve real (or imagined problems) and citizens are convinced of this power, then it follows that using the force of government appears to some superior to persuasion and evidence. If citizens were convinced that government could be severely limited in these matters and if the government were limited, citizens would hardly waste their time attempting to get the government to do their forcing. Politicians and political parties would have limited involvement in these matters.
Unfortunately, in todayâs world politicians and political parties are mightily involved in these matters since government power is not limited and in fact some politicians are obviously of the mind that their power comes from convincing the public that their well being depends mainly on government actions. Their reach extends to sorting out minorities of all manner and maintaining that minority status and dependence on government to secure a majority of their votes to keep them in power.
A great example of this is the Democrat party and politicians maintaining urban Blacks as dependent on government and securing a high portion of their votes. The situation for urban Blacks does not appear to get better and government people keep their power whether they be white, Hispanic or Black.
That Kiel, WI incident was a Title IX investigation. That be would using the monopoly power of government force to change things and doing it from the Federal government down to the local level.
Major election fraud in Michigan, according to the state Bureau of Elections: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/michigan-bureau-of-elections-top-gop-gubernatorial-candidates-ineligible-ballot#&_intcmp=hp1bt2,hp1bt
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Approximately 36 fraudsters were paid to collect signatures required for candidates to get on the ballot. They submitted nothing but invalid signatures. So now half the Republican candidates for governor, including the two top contenders, are ineligible.
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It is not clear if the fraudsters were motivated by politics or by money. Hopefully, they will go to prison either way.
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Michigan law does not provide candidates with a way to check signature validity.
Interesting story Mike. The claim appears to be that the fraudsters vicitimized or sabotaged the candidates by supplying the fraudulent signatures, specifically in order to later disqualify the candidates.
Sounds like a clever dirty trick.
mark bofill,
“Sounds like a clever dirty trick.”
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Sounds like they hired Hillary as a consultant.
Kissinger is the reasonable one ?
This spins my Vietnam anti-war days upside down. Article is worth a full read.
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â.. Kissinger warned that continued violence in Ukraine will imperil long-term stability in Europe, causing potential âupheavalsâ and conflicts across the continent.â
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â.On the eve of his 99th birthday and barely alive, Henry Kissinger has finally reached the point of cosmic transcendence where he sounds vastly more reasonable than almost anyone else who’s currently in power
â Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 24, 20âŚ.â
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â You know the political class has really fallen to shit when Henry Kissinger is the reasonable one in the room.
â Dave Smith (@ComicDaveSmith) May 24, 2022â
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https://bigleaguepolitics.com/kissinger-warns-of-fatal-consequences-if-zelenskyy-wont-negotiate/
Oh, don’t say that Steve! I like you. I don’t want to read that you shot yourself twice in the back of the head by accident. đ
Ed,
That was long. Not sure what your point is. Perhaps you could state it directly.
I hate this time of evening on election night. Alabama primaries only about 10% counted, too early to tell anything I didn’t already know. I’m so impatient…
Main points:
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Ukraine should make concessions to end the conflict with Russia and avoid a full-scale war with the geopolitical giant that Kyiv wonât be able to win.
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attempts to âinflict a crushing defeatâ on Russian troops in Ukraine would leave no exit for Putin.
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pushing further with embargoes or military might would risk sparking an all-out war with Russia.
Lucia, response went into moderation
Ed,
I get that might be what you want Ukraine to do. But I’m not seeing what benefit Kyiv gets by making significant concession. Maybe you can suggest how Kyiv falling on it’s sword and dying is good for Kyiv, but it appear to me you haven’t tried.
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Sure, it’s possible not giving Russia what it wants now would risk all out war. But giving it what it wants also risk all out war– just a few years more down the line when Putin decides winning in Ukraine is a good reason to go for Poland, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland and so on.
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When you do risk assessment, you need to look at all the risk, not just select one.
I am pretty sure Kyiv understands that they have to give Putin something, but I am also pretty sure that they want to increase their hand at the bargaining table. Like access to Dneiper if not Kherson city, clear the Khakiv omblast etc. which may be achievable. Getting a good hunk on Donbas even if in total ruins will give Putin a win.
The noose on 30,000 Ukraine troops is tightening. They are now in no position to run for the exits without being chopped to pieces.
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They are in the same position as the Germans running from Normandy through the Falaise pocket.
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If Ukraine counter attacks donât open the pocket, they are doomed.
Bagging this many Ukraine troops will add impetus to peace talks if the counter attacks fail.
FWIW:
Even the NYT is now calling for the Ukraine to sacrifice territory for an end to the war. Since the NYT is essentially Pravda for the Democrats, I expect the Biden administration is already on board and wants Zelensky to understand NATO is not going to save it from continued destruction. Russia has paid a very dear price in treasure and blood for their invasion, and is unlikely to do the same thing again; I just don’t see Poland or other NATO countries are in any danger from Putin, short of all-out nuclear war.
Day 7 of the Michael Flynn [sorry, Sussman] rerun trial.
Sussman looks likely to get off on account of Jury selection and Washington?
Love the way Durham has expertly brought in good witnesses and hostile witnesses from the FBI.
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He has tied together Elias, Sussman and Hilary in gentle nets then attached lead weights in the form of Baker. J, Preistap. Bill and the Operation Crossfire team.
All very surprised to be called up against their old legal buddy.
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The best is Mr Preistap, Head of Counter Intelligence who did a true sergeant Schultz.
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How can anyone lay claim to the job he did and then, with the aid of the defense attorneys, claim absolutely no knowledge of the most important operation he ever carried out to investigate his President?
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A shame he gets off as if convicted it would open up a lot more doors.
Regarding Russia and Ukraine, it’s the grind portion of the war in my opinion. Russia can continue to grind away as long as they can afford the cost in money and materiel and lives, Ukraine can continue to resist and endure as long as they’ve got the will to. I think concessions are a function of the question ‘who will have had enough first’. Who knows.
The limiting factor for Russia might be a shortage of officers. The Ukrainians have killed a lot of them, they are not easy to replace, and the Russian army is very top down.
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Peace will not come until both sides conclude that they have little to gain by continued fighting. Clearly not there yet.
Mike,
Could be. I read here that Russia is getting rid of the upper age limit of 40 for military service. Clearly they want more men.
mark bofill,
Yeah. [sarc] I bet there are just tons of men over 40 who want to sign up for this war. [/sarc]
Lucia,
~grins~ I’m sure they’re lining up. Come fight in Ukraine; get the mad pay, flexible hours, and fantastic free army food!
The age limit would not apply to officers. But it does indicate that Russia has manpower issues in the ranks. And enlisted men are much easier to replace than officers.
Mike,
I don’t know how it works in Russia, but in the US I think the age limit would apply to officers:
https://work.chron.com/can-40yearold-army-24393.html
Russia has already taken land in the Donbass, it’s not something Ukraine can choose to give away. They can choose to not continue to fight over it. A recent Ukraine poll had 80% saying give Russia no land in Ukraine, at all. Only 10% said give land for peace. The Russian occupied lands were not part of the poll.
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To the extent this poll is accurate then the opinion of the NYT and Kissinger means exactly squat. Russia can roll over more land and Ukraine can choose to go down the insurgency route which was really their Plan A to start with.
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The death rate of Russians may go up in an occupation with a motivated fighting force. To say the least, the Russians have likely highly motivated Ukraine with the wholesale destruction of civilian areas and the large number of casualties both military and civilian.
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At what point Ukraine may get demoralized from continuous fighting is unclear, but they show no signs of this happening yet.
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From the Russian viewpoint the worst outcome is … what happens if Ukraine just says NO and keeps fighting, and fighting, and fighting more. This may actually happen, this is exactly what is currently happening. This appears to be a classic case of willing to die for their country, as hokey as that sounds.
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I cannot tell you how many interviews with people and soldiers in Ukraine used the phrase “we never invited them here”. Perhaps this is propaganda, but it might be real. If it is, then Russia will pay a heavy price.
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In any event, until Russia shows some sign of willingness to negotiate this debate is pointless.
angech,
Almost certainly the jury will ‘nullify’ the case, in spite of clear evidence of willfully misleading the FBI. Donald Trump has no supporters in Washington, and most people loath him.
The west is not going to cutoff weapons to Ukraine to force an end to the war, there are no incentives to do that. If Ukraine wants to end the war that is fine. Otherwise keep killing Russians is a good thing. Sorry, but I have very little sympathy for them. They are in a foreign land in a war of conquest which has very little justification. I have empathy for them on an individual basis, they all have families. But as a group following Putin I have almost none. This thing is a travesty.
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The war is entering a dangerous phase. The west may need to decide whether to let Russian win or escalate military support. Neither of those are particularly good options.
I suspect that this is the biggest factor influencing Ukraine to make peace:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Ukrainian_refugee_crisis
That was two months ago. It might well be that by now half the children have left the country.
SteveF (Comment #212272): “Almost certainly the jury will ânullifyâ the case, in spite of clear evidence of willfully misleading the FBI.”
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I do not believe your cynicism is warranted. Most Americans, even Democrats, care about the law and justice. But a hung jury would not surprise me.
The Ukrainians are currently returning in droves, to the western area I assume.
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Millions of Ukrainians rushed to leave â the line to return home stretches for miles
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/23/1100655593/millions-of-ukrainians-rushed-to-leave-the-line-to-return-home-stretches-for-mil
https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/05/24/as-russias-invasion-stalls-ukraines-refugees-return-home
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So it seems more like going back ton visit rather than returning home. A net 100K returning over two weeks is a change in direction, but with 3.5M in Poland, it is hardly returning in droves.
mike M,
We will see, of course. Whether a hung jury or an outright acquittal: I do not believe a jury in DC will convict someone who was trying to keep Trump from being elected president, no matter how obviously criminal the effort was.
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WRT cynicism: I would be delighted to be proven wrong, but my expectation is that for many people on the left, the law is just a way to punish those you disagree with, and protect those you agree with, and what the law actually days is irrelevant. You only need look at the treatment of people charged with nothing more than trespassing (Jan 6) to understand the mindset of the left. Father of 4, 45 years old, never arrested in his life, sits in solitary for a year for trespassing? It is like a sick joke, but the prosecutors, all lefties, of course, are deadly serious.
It’s going to be tough to get any kind of political convictions either way. If there are 12 jurors then it seems likely there will be a couple partisans in each direction on the jury. Seating a jury of one party would likely not pass muster. They might convict him because nobody likes overly clever lawyers. We shall see.
Mike M: #212275)
May 25th, 2022 at 11:41 am
SteveF (Comment #212272): âAlmost certainly the jury will ânullifyâ the case, in spite of clear evidence of willfully misleading the FBI.â
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I do not believe your cynicism is warranted. Most Americans, even Democrats, care about the law and justice. But a hung jury would not surprise me.”
I think it has been clearly proven that Sussmann lied about not acting for a client. I thought FBI counsel, James Baker might try to muck it up by saying that his memory was hazy about what Sussmann said. However, Baker said that he was 100% sure that Sussman said he was coming as a private citizen. From a purely factual standpoint this is close to dispositive of the case when combined with other evidence, such as texts.
Here is Andrew McCarthy’s summary of Sussmann’s defense [That Hillary didn’t trust the FBI so he was acting on his own]
“So why did Sussmannâs lawyers do it? I believe it was done in the service of the preposterous defense they are trying to sell the jury.
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Sussmann would like to have been in a position to challenge the allegation that he represented the Clinton campaign at the relevant time. But he canât. The evidence is overwhelming. He was billing his time to the Clinton campaign. He was strategizing with the campaignâs operatives on campaign initiatives. And the defense concedes that Sussmann was working on the campaignâs behalf when he tried to get the New York Times interested in the back-channel claim.
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Consequently, since Sussmann canât credibly deny that he was representing the Clinton campaign, he is trying to parse what the scope of that representation was. Under this theory, even if he is working for the campaign, and being paid by the campaign, he shouldnât be seen as representing the campaignâs interests if he did things that the campaign supposedly opposed.
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Consistent with this spin, Sussmannâs defense claims that the campaign did not want anyone to bring the FBI the back-channel information. Sussmannâs counsel theorizes that if the information were brought to the FBI, the bureau would then have leaned on the Times to delay publication of the TrumpâRussia back-channel story to give agents time to investigate. That, weâre to believe, would disserve the campaignâs interests because the campaign wanted the Times to publish the story.
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In this telling, Sussmann essentially betrayed the campaign, out of personal loyalty to the FBI and a personal, patriotic sense of duty developed in his years as a Justice Department national-security lawyer. ” https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-did-sussmanns-attorneys-put-robby-mook-on-the-witness-stand/
…..
Personally I believe there is at least a one-third chance that there will be jury nullification. Some people hate Trump so much they just can’t get past it. DC has a horrible jury pool for this case.
jd ohio,
“Some people hate Trump so much they just canât get past it.”
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Yup. A lot of people, and especially in Washington DC. I don’t believe there is even a 10% chance for conviction. Everyone involved (Hillary’s campaign, Sussmann’s law firm, people “creating” false stories about Trump, the FBI, the Justice Department, the entire Obama administration, etc.) was working in coordination to keep Trump from getting elected, and the means used to do it didn’t seem to matter much to any of them. After Trump won election, those same people worked to undermine the legitimacy of his election, disrupt the new administration, and drive him from office. If someone honestly believes Trump is as bad as Hitler, then they can easily justify lies, distortions, illegal acts, forging of documents, and more to keep him out of power. The only doubt I have is if those involved honestly believed Trump is as bad as Hitler, or if they are all just typical, utterly dishonest, lefty hacks. I think the weight of the evidence supports the later.
TDS is alive and well, and is an epidemic in DC. The WashPost still runs multiple stories a day related to Trump. I’m not sure who is interested in these, but apparently a lot of people are in DC.
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It’s a bit curious that conservatives are not outraged at these revelations, but I think that Clinton and the media had it in for Trump was baked in and nobody is the least bit surprised. This just isn’t news for conservatives.
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Trump is the new Hitler as far as the media is concerned, ha ha. Everyone up for election on the right is tied to Trump. The NYT is going down the new Mega-MAGA, Ultra-MAGA, etc. talking point route. They found that running against the not even on the ballot Trump in VA didn’t work, so now they are trying this out. It is so infantile, but that is US politics.