“Coal, No Longer Shunned, Keeps Europe’s Lights on Through Frigid Weather”
Merry Christmas, Greta Thunberg! And all Germans. 🙂
Who saw this coming ( when Merkle closed down the nukes?) 🙂
Open Thread.
492 thoughts on “Open Thread! Dec 23, 2022”
Comments are closed.
lucia (Comment #217428): “My quibble with that is that it suggests the Russians were ever interested in negotiating an end to the war (on any basis other than complete surrender and subjugation of Ukraine.)”
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There are credible reports of a tentative peace deal last March/April. It is not at all clear how close that deal was to going into effect. Maybe the negotiators thought they had agreement on the big stuff, but things fell apart over details. Or maybe Ukrainska Pravda is correct in their claim that both Kiev and Moscow were ready to sign until NATO nixed the deal. Or something in between. Someday we may know.
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I agree that at present there is no chance of a negotiated end of the war. But that could change. As Russell Klier (Comment #217429) documents, the war has been a catastrophe for the Russian army and has been very hard on the populace. If Ukraine can launch a successful winter offensive, it might become impractical for Russia to continue.
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Of course, a negotiated peace with the situation similar to the start of the war would amount to Moscow admitting to a massive blunder. That could well mean the end of Putin, so as long as he is in power, it probably won’t happen. But Putin may not be long for this world and his successor will have a handy scapegoat for the blunder.
MikeM
Or maybe things were bound to fall apart because Russia was just stalling for time when they saw Ukraine’s counter-offensive was making headway.
Lucia,
The 10-point peace plant is nonsense. Here are (a few of) my objections to the plan:
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“Radiation and nuclear safety”
OK no blowing up nuclear reactors… utterly irrelevant; of course if Russia uses tactical nuclear weapons, then it is a bit irrelevant.
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“Food security”
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Um, not sure what that means. The Ukraine is a large net food exporter… but in any case probably irrelevant for any negotiation.
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“Energy security”
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Not sure what that means…. if it is “stop bombing our electrical grid”, then it is ridiculous as a condition for negotiation.
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“Release of prisoners and deportees”
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Ummm….. prisoners? OK. “deportees”? details needed.
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“Implementation of the UN Charter”
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Please. If we are all good little boys and girls then we will all get a blue ribbon. The UN doesn’t even follow the UN charter, and neither does anybody else. What this really means is: give us all the land we claim, including Crimea. It is not realistic, not a plausible condition for negotiations, and not going to happen.
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“Withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities”
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Ridiculous. The point of negotiations is an end to hostilities. It is not going to happen as a condition for negotiations.
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“Justice”
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I assume this means war criminal prosecutions, Putin being hung in Kiev’s central plaza and hundreds of billions of dollars for reparations for damage. Not going to happen. As John Kennedy once noted: “life is unfair”. So will be any negotiated settlement…. from the perspective of both sides.
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“Ecocide and the protection of the environment”
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Sop to the sensibilities of the green left, and stoooooopid, like all of the green left.
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“Prevention of escalation”
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Negotiation is meant to prevent escalation. And good health is a cure for cancer. Once again, stooooopid.
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“Confirmation of the end of the war.”
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Ummm…. isn’t that the point of negotiations not a precondition for negotiations?
Here are some of the real issues (not an exhaustive list):
1) Will the Ukraine be allowed to join NATO?
2) Will the Ukraine be allowed to joint the EC?
2) Will Russia remain in control of the Crimea?
3) Who will control lands Russia occupied since February 2022? Since 2014?
4) What security guarantees will each side receive and how will those guarantees be ensured?
5) How will Russia be brought back into the graces of Europe and the USA, including stopping sanctions and releasing confiscated Russian funds?
6) What measures need to be taken to ensure Russia and all their east European neighbors are confident in their security?
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I could add to this, and I have plenty of suggestions about how to proceed, but I hope you get the idea. The Ukrainian plant is a joke; not even slightly serious. It is propaganda, not a start of negotiations. So long as they say this is the starting condition for negotiation, then the war will continue….. to the very last Ukrainian.
First: I’m not sure why you think the 10 point list Zelensky discussed with Macron represents a precondition to negotiations, rather than the hope for outcome of negotiation. It’s rather obvious that failure to meet some coditions are going to be deal breakers. And, in context, I’m not seeing how these items are “ridiculous”. And I’m also not reading anything saying they are preconditions.
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Lots of articles aren’t elaborating, but none of this strikes me as ridiculous to bring up as what one would want in the outcome of negotiations.
Irrelevant? I would think this clause would be totally relevant to Russia’s use of tactical nuclear weapns. Getting Russia to stop threatening to use them seems pretty essential to having any real peace.
They are to not use them. But also: Russia soldiers have really messed up Chernobyl which is a radiation hazard.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/unprotected-russian-soldiers-disturbed-radioactive-dust-chernobyls-red-forest-2022-03-28/
Seems like a not-ridiculous demand the Russians not do things that put people’s health in danger from radiation.
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Russia has been blockading food exports from the Ukraine– which imperils food security for the world. In context of what Russia is doing, this seems like a reasonable hoped for outcome.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63632161
Elaborates
Asking that Russian not block food exports and imperilling the world doesn’t sound ridiculous to me. Russia doesn’t want to do it and calls it ridiculous. Which merely tells us they do want to use world hunger as a weapon.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63632161
The bbc elaborates what Zelensky said
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It’s a list. Sure– vague. The newspapers aren’t reporting the details that accompany this. But that’s the nature of lists. And modern day newspapers.
But I should think it refers to Ukrains who were forcibly deported from the occupied territories to Russia. Ukrainians– and the kids parents– would like them back. (I don’t really know why Russia should want to keep them if they are really at peace with Uk. But then, Russia took them in the first place. )
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Once again: It’s a list. And it may or may not mean Ukraine getting back all the territories seized by Russia over time — including the Crimea. Russia doesn’t want to return it. That doesn’t mean it’s ridiculous to want Russia to do so.
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Ceassing hostlities is a fairly frequent pre-condition of negotiations. You can have an armistice. Happens.
I’m not sure why you consider proposing an armistice is ridiculous. Russia didn’t agree to it– but it’s not a ridiculous pre-condition for negotiations.
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Maybe. I don’t know what it means unless we find a paper that elaborates. Zelensky didn’t just post a list.
Once gain: It’s a summary list.
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I would suspect this is a reference to the behavior of the Russian troops in Chernobyl. I’m not the green left and I sure as shooting would like to see them stop that.
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Not a reason to not agree to this. Just as there is no reason to not have an armistice– as is frequently done.
I should think confirming the war is over is a condition for the war to be over.
I’m not entirely sure why you think these are pre-conditions to negotiations. They do seem like a list of goals of what would be necessary for the war to be over.
Lucia,
Wow, I can’t say we are not on the same page on Ukraine, I think we are not in the same library.
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“Withdrawal of Russian troops and cessation of hostilities”
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You ignore the key words: ‘withdrawal of Russian troops’. Not going to happen. OK, a cease fire is reasonable. That is NOT what Zelinsky asks for.
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Here are the basic conditions that Zelensky has laid out many times for the start of negotiations (from the Wall Street Journal a few days ago):
So let’s break that down: “You give us everything we want, send your leadership for war crimes prosecution, and we will start negotiations”.
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It is a joke. It is not serious, and only an impediment to the start of negotiations. Same with every other of the Zelensky “10 conditions” for negotiations (and they are in fact all conditions for the start of negotiations, even the sop to the greens). These are neither serious nor are they going to happen.
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That is perfectly OK with me, the Ukrainians have so far, and can forever, refuse to negotiate with the Russians, and it appears they have already decided to do just that, whether on their own or in consultation with the Biden administration and NATO.
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But if/when the consequences of that choice are very bad for the Ukraine (and I believe they will indeed be very bad for the Ukraine) there will be no way to recover from those consequences.
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I fear for the Ukrainian people, and I think their leadership is making some terrible choices that will cost many Ukrainian lives and impoverish millions more for no perceptible gain.
SteveF
Never ever? You may be right. That’s because Russia doesn’t want peace.
SteveF,
No need to guess at what Zelensky proposed. And they do not seem to be preconditions. Here is the official translation: https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-zavzhdi-bula-liderom-mirotvorchih-zusil-yaksho-rosi-79141
Lucia
“That’s because Russia doesn’t want peace.”
That statement seems a little too broad. Perhaps putin, the kremlin and maybe even some of the residents of Moscow do not want peace. But there are many thousands of Babushkas out in the hinterlands who want peace. Their sons are freezing and starving and being used as cannon fodder in Ukraine.
Russia has come to acknowledge that it is at war with both Ukraine and the EU. As such, it has moved to mobilize both its economy and its military to a war footing to address this fact.
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As has been pointed out here before, NATO production of ammunition is far less than is being expended in Ukraine. NATO weapon and ammunition stockpiles are also becoming low. Russia, on the other hand, started the war with immense stockpiles of ammunition left over from the Soviet era and still has the open production lines open to be able to immediately increase their rate of ammunition production.
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Taking Kiev will not end the war as this will not end their war with NATO and the EU. As such, I do not see any “big arrow” attacks to take Kiev this winter. It would be pointless.
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I see the current policy of grinding down of Ukraine by continuing pressure along the entire line until after the spring thaw. This is a logistical advantage for Russia as they are on a short logistical line where the logistical line for NATO now starts in the US, many thousands of miles away from the front lines.
By spring, the ammunition shortfalls the west is providing Ukraine will become critical shortages at the front. This is the point where I believe the situation in Ukraine will become the most dangerous to the world in general. The destruction of Ukraine will be imminent and the US will face a choice, let Ukraine go or escalate to nuclear. Conventional force intervention would be impossible at this point due to their lack of ammunition stocks.
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And lets not forget about China, who is patiently waiting in the wings
Lucia
“Coal, No Longer Shunned, Keeps Europe’s Lights on Through Frigid Weather”
“Merry Christmas, Greta Thunberg!”
Only in a democracy could energy policy be set to placate an angry high-schooler in a foreign land.
SteveF (Comment #217433): ” The Ukrainian plan … is propaganda, not a start of negotiations.”
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Of course it is not the start of negotiations. There are no negotiations. There is no immediate prospect of negotiations. Zelensky would be a fool to make concessions to an empty chair. It is unreasonable to criticize him for not being a fool.
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-zavzhdi-bula-liderom-mirotvorchih-zusil-yaksho-rosi-79141
I agree with you those don’t seem to be preconditions.
Zelensky presents “our vision”. A “path for peace”. I’m not seeing anything that says it is a pre-condition to negotiations. As far as I can tell, he is describing what he thinks is necessary to make any aggreement be something other than a chimera.
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He is describing what he thinks should be the goals of the negotation.
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And in many instances, it’s literally impossible to say peace is achieved if those goals aren’t met.
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I get that some of you might think it’s impossible to get such an agreement. It might be impossible. The reason it might be impossible is either (a) Russia wants war or (b) Russian wants to absorb Ukraine and remain in a position to dominate and impose it’s will on the EU, Europe and other regios in general– as much as it thinks it can.
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I don’t know how this is going to end. But one thing I’m pretty sure of: No matter how much suffering this war is causing Ukraine, giving in will not reduce their suffering.
Ed Forbes,
I have to say that at this point, nothing gives me more hope for Ukraine than your constant proclamations that Russia will win… instantly… soon, is winning now…. any day now…. eventually…..
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Sure Russia could still win. But it’s not been going well for them.
MikeM/SteveF
Zelensky doesn’t claim it’s the start of negotiations! He calls it a proposal– his proposal as President of the Ukraine.
Lucia,
“That’s because Russia doesn’t want peace.”
ISW December 22 Assessment:
“Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to refuse to treat Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as an equal and sovereign counterpart, further indicating that Putin is not interested in serious negotiations with Ukraine.”
This update is a lengthy treatise on the current russian duplicity and gyrations around the peace narrative.
“The Kremlin’s information operation is also likely meant to focus blame for ”protracting” the war on Zelensky’s supposed intransigence and thereby wear down US and European willingness to continue supporting Ukrainian efforts to liberate occupied Ukrainian land.”
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-22
Also:
#BakhmutStands ! Five months of relentless frontal assaults by Wagner’s mercenaries and they still haven’t entered the town.
From WarMapper:
“A close-up map of the approximate situation around the city of Bakhmut.
There have been no confirmed changes to control since the last update.”
https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1606447585320996864?s=20&t=A3EwPiQGCSYlN4OtZrH9Zg
[But it’s still a bloodbath]
Currently, the aircraft on radar with the greatest number of people watching it has a call sign of “SANTA1/R3DN053”
Aircraft type: Sleigh
Registration: HOHOHO
Heading 148 degrees
Alt.: 38,000 ft.
LATITUDE:1.1409
LONGITUDE:177.5092
[currently, it is East of the Marshall Islands and 17,412 people worldwide are tracking it]
Link: https://www.flightradar24.com/R3DN053/2ea2ef9b
Tomorrow’s WSJ:
“Putin, Isolated and Distrustful, Leans on Handful of Hard-Line Advisers”
I think putin believes the crap his PR people are telling us:
“This article is based on months of interviews with current and former Russian officials and people close to the Kremlin who broadly described an isolated leader who was unable, or unwilling, to believe that Ukraine would successfully resist. The president, these people said, spent 22 years constructing a system to flatter him by withholding or sugarcoating discouraging data points.”
“Vladimir Vladimirovich, everything is going to plan,” said Mr. Shoigu. “We report this to you every day.”
Free link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-russia-ukraine-war-advisers-11671815184?st=5gj4csqocpgpgez&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I think a good way to defeat Russia is to to tell China you have no objection if they go after mineral rich land in Russia.
A taste of the green eco-paradise to come:
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2022/12/23/why-tennessee-valley-authority-ordered-rolling-blackouts-in-nashville/69754538007/
Nothing like waking up to rolling blackouts when it’s 10 F outside. I’m going to buy a generator.
[Edit: I didn’t link it or say, but there’s rolling power outages here in North Alabama too. In fact, I woke up to no power. Just got it back.]
Lucia,
I have read dozens of Ukrainian pronouncements on negotiations, and it seems to me that each time the desired outcomes are demanded as starting conditions. Maybe my reading comprehension fails me, but oddly enough, I am not alone in my understanding: the Wall Street Journal, just a couple days ago said pretty much the same thing. I get that is what the Ukraine wants, and they see those outcomes as the only “fair” results of any negotiation. But the Russians don’t agree, so stating what you want as a condition to begin negotiations means you are not going to start negotiations. Which, I am pretty sure is the desired result: no negotiations.
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Mike M,
I do not say and have never said that Zelensky should give anything away before starting negotiations. That would be stupid. Something like “I am willing to send representatives to meet with Russian, UN, and Turkish representatives in Turkey to discuss ending the war” gives nothing away. As I am sure you are aware, public pronouncements about the nobility and justice in your sides demands are unrelated to actual negotiations; they are propaganda. But in this case, the public pronouncements are blocking the possibility of negotiations by mixing desired outcomes with conditions to start negotiations. Russia has, naturally, replied with equally outrageous conditions to begin negotiations, mixing their desired outcomes with conditions to start negotiations.
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I fear this war will not end any time soon, and that Ukrainian leaders may soon be targeted by the Russians.
The part that really boggles my mind is that it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s not like we don’t have the technology or resources for plentiful power. No, we freely choose wind and solar, knowing perfectly well what the consequences will be. Like smacking ourselves in the face with a hammer.
I’m not saying the current outages are due to wind and solar, to be clear. I doubt they are. I am saying that pursuing wind and solar and neglecting coal, oil, and nuclear lead directly to situations like this.
Mark,
You can get a quiet “whole house” 8.5 KW, 240 VAC from Harbor Freight for $2300. 19 hours typical runtime on 7.5 gallons. Big time noise makers of similar capacity are much cheaper of course.
Thanks Steve. I’ll look for that or something similar. Merry Christmas Eve.
mark,
For a few thousand more you get an automatic start/transfer set with 12KW capacity that runs on natural gas or propane.
SteveF, you write, “I have read dozens of Ukrainian pronouncements on negotiations, and it seems to me that each time the desired outcomes are demanded as starting conditions.”
First rule of negotiations. Don’t negotiate against yourself. Come in with a maximum ask and move downwards when forced.
Happy holidays to all.
SteveF,
Putin says he will never return the four annexed regions. He annexed these during war. He obviously does not want peace– or at least not a peace that involves Ukraine reamaining Ukraine. And he’s demanded demilitarization of Ukraine (a country he invaded.), he Ukraine recognize Crimea is Russias. His conditions are pretty much he runs Ukraine and takes over at least parts of it.
He doesn’t want peace. And bear in mind: He is the one who invaded.
Yeah. Ukraine doesn’t want peace at the cost of pretty much becoming a Russian oblast or puppet with no ability to defend itself against Russian invasion. Russia wants to be given all that to stop invading.
Yeah. Negotiations are going nowhere. But my view it’s because Russia doesn’t want “peace” unless they get generous fruits of conquest– and Ukraine’s expense. Ukraine doesn’t want that sort of peace. Ok.
Mark,
Thankfully, I have power. Jim, the cats and I are doing fine.
Thomas,
“First rule of negotiations. Don’t negotiate against yourself. Come in with a maximum ask and move downwards when forced.”
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I know something about negotiations. Of course you do not negotiate against yourself, and I have never suggest that. If you think I have suggest that anywhere on this thread, then you need to read more carefully.
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Neither do you make the start of negotiations impossible by demanding starting conditions that you know the other side will not accept as conditions to start negotiations. Unless, of course, you don’t want negotiations to start. Which, sadly, seems to be the case. “I will begin negotiation peace when your army surrenders and you deliver the severed head of your king on a golden platter.” That just It doesn’t work at all, unless you don’t really want negotiations.
MikeN (Comment #217449): “I think a good way to defeat Russia is to to tell China you have no objection if they go after mineral rich land in Russia.”
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Sounds to me like a recipe for nuclear war.
Lucia,
Yes, the Russians have become outrageous in their conditions to start negotiations as well. Of course, negotiations will never start under those conditions, nor under the conditions the Ukraine demands.
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We at least agree on one thing: negotiations are not going to happen any time soon.
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The difference is I think both sides should drop all pre-conditions and start talking, while my impression is you don’t think anything but (essentially) complete Russia surrender is acceptable to start talking. Please tell me if I am mistaken about that.
Russell Klier (Comment #217446), quoting ISW: “Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to refuse to treat Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as an equal and sovereign counterpart, further indicating that Putin is not interested in serious negotiations with Ukraine.”
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Putin won’t treat Zelensky as an equal since he claims that Zelensky is illegitimate; that is a key part of Putin’s casus belli.
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Of course, if Putin is so isolated as to think he is winning, as claimed in comment #217446, then he would have no reason to want negotiations.
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At this point in time, conditions for negotiation do not exist. So neither side is interested in starting pointless talks. One can not reasonably extrapolate to conclude what either side might do when conditions change.
Good to hear it Lucia. Stay warm!
No Steve. I don’t think and didn’t say they need to surrender before anyone can talk. Neither did Zelenky. Nor anyone.
And both sides have had talks– in March, April, September etc. So it’s pretty obvious those aren’t Ukrainian preconditions to talk.
But I do think any ultimate agreement that allows Russia to keep troops in Ukraine is by definition, not real peace. It’s occupation (of Ukraine by Russia.) Saying that any peace treaty needs to have Russia’s troops leave Ukraine is rather obvious.
If Russia’s goal is to sit down for talks with the goal of having the outcome of keeping the four oblasts, having troops remain in Ukraine, demilitarizing Ukraine and so on, reality is there is little point in “talking”.
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It’s worth pointing out that Russia had not been invaded. All “surrender” means is “desist with your invasion”. No one has is suggesting they give up anything that was actually theirs before the invasion.
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I’m not sure I would characterize Russia not giving up anything that was actually theirs before the invasion and merely withdrawing as “surrender”.
Mike M., “At this point in time, conditions for negotiation do not exist. So neither side is interested in starting pointless talks”
I don’t know about international diplomacy or even business negotiations, but where I come from this phase is where you try to inflict maximum pain on your adversary. Chatting would be nothing but a distraction.
Lucia,
“No one has is suggesting they give up anything that was actually theirs before the invasion.”
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Many Russians actually believe, based on history, that the Crimea and much of the “left bank” of the Dnipro was in fact Russian territory starting in the mid 1600’s. I am not saying they are right, I am saying that is what many Russians appear to believe.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.
Alaska was russian territory, back in the 1600’s.
SteveF
Sure. I’m not disputing some russiand believe Crimea is theres.
When my sister was in Guatemala in the 70s, they all believed the Yucatan penninsula really belonged to Guatemala. I bet some Guatemalans still think Yucatan “belongs” to Guatemala. (Heck, I’ve met Mexican’s who grouse that California is “theirs”.)
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But the fact is: Crimea was claimed by Russia in 1774. But claims are claims– they only got control in 1783– getting it from the ottomans in the battle of Kozludzha. It had a checkered ownership and status. In 1921 it was an ASSR– which is not an oblast. And tons of ASSRs are now republics– not “part of Russia”.
In WWII, the German’s occupied it. In 1995, it was under control of Ukraine and so on. But then Russia wanted it back.
Whatever beliefs all those Russian’s have the notion that Crimean rightfully belongs to Russia is not an objective fact. Austrians and Hungarians could, if they so wished, believe tons of places in Europe are rightfully “theirs” based on past periods when the controlled certain areas. That doesn’t make those regions “theirs”.
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If your point is: Russia doesn’t and many Russians don’t want to give up the portions of Crimea they seized from Ukraine: I agree. That doesn’t mean that should be off the table in discussions. Though, Russian would like the notion it be returned to Ukraine to be off the table.
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Russel
Yep. Evidently part of the reason they were willing to sell it for peanuts was the French pummeled them in the Crimean war. Obviously, Alaska is no longer part of Russia. Though any argument that suggested whoever “held” it in the 1600 holds it now would make it Russia.
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We could of course go back to the 1400 when the Mongols controlled it. If that were the magic time for determining ownership maybe Mongolia should own it. There have been settlement in that area for a long, long, long time. Kahzars, Bulgers, Huns, Goths? All could lay claim (if they existed.) So could Greece. Or Italy.
We could go back further. But I’m guessing the Neanderthals aren’t going to claim ownership as they seem to have gone extinct.
Evolution of national borders in Europe….
This web page lets you click on 100 year increments to see how the borders change. Most places changed their national allegiance as often as a French whore changes her underwear.
https://www.euratlas.net/history/europe/1600/index.html
I didn’t know French whores wore underwear. Link?
[Nevermind, I got it.]
As they say, the best defense is a good offense. NATO is not purely defensive in strategy and this would not really make sense strategically. NATO has the moral high ground in my view because they aren’t engaging in wars of conquest such as what is happening in Ukraine although there is plenty of gray area here. NATO expansion makes NATO stronger and weakens Russia. To the extent this threatens Russia my response is tough sh**. If Russia wasn’t effectively a mob organization they might have more friends. They don’t and that is their fault. Putting down a mob is going to have costs but is a necessary endeavor.
A main point of disagreement is the speculation on what Russia’s behavior will be if they aren’t resisted. It may very well be worth a trillion dollars to put Russia down for a few decades given some alternate future timelines. This is the most important decision to be made regarding strategy. Russia chose to leave its borders and it is reasonable to believe it will continue to do so if not resisted.
There is absolutely strategy in the war plan. It is just not public. Many a war strategy fails to survive contact with the enemy though, just ask Russia. NATO was likely planning for an insurgency at the beginning before being given this “opportunity”. Wars have real costs but the question is whether the effort avoids even worse outcomes if one chose a passive approach such as Crimea. This is difficult to answer definitively.
An early Merry Christmas to all from Australia! The people from down under have the strangest time zones on earth, and I thought the US was weird, ha ha. G’day mate.
Lucia,
Actually, Russia controlled Crimean and the left bank of the Dnipro starting (IIRC) in about 1662.
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But my point is actually much simpler: Conflict resolution by anything but straight military conquest…. AKA negotiation…. will always require both sides to consider the views of their opponents. Else there can be no negotiated settlement.
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My personal view is that Russia (right or wrong) actually believes it is threatened by NATO expansion. Russia, right or wrong, believes it has strong historical claims to eastern Ukraine and the Crimea. So long as Russian beliefs are dismissed completely, negotiations will not happen.
SteveF,
Heck, they also controlled all of Ukraine at times.
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If Russia had been controlling Crimea since 1662, it’s rather marvelous that Catherine the great ordered an invasion into Crimea in 1776.
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She invaded because it was controlled by the Crimean Khanate, which was not Russia, did not consider itself Russia and which Catherine did not consider Russia.
I agree that Russia’s behavior post war is a critical factor and can be used for rationalizing unlimited funding for the proxy war effort. Rationalizing the Viet Nam war was that we had to stop Communism from taking over the world and so there are similarities here with the Ukraine war. I would not be so sure that a defeated Russia facing a world that wants to destroy its standing in the world would not be even more belligerent. There is always the thought that Russian remaining Russia but engaging the rest of the world would not have at least an opportunity to throw off its authoritarian modus operandi. Russia is currently not without allies and economic partners and the thrust of sanctions does not appear to be having the promised effects.
Interesting, Tom, that you somehow know there is a strategy even though no one has stated one. That is really letting the involved politicians off the hook. Some of us do not have the faith you appear to have in these people. A strategy that cannot survive the fortitudes of war over short periods of time is probably not well termed as a strategy. If I heard the strategy was to react on weekly basis to the ups and downs of the war I would give that reveal some credit for honesty. Biden’s comment of “as long as it takes” appears to be a strategy that stands up to the real world evidence of that we do not know how long or the costs in life, limb, property and dollars but we are willing to sacrifice and spend without limits.
I do not think that we, here in our relatively safe environment, can do a good job of conjecturing the terms of a peace settlement, but do, unfortunately, appear to agree that war will become much extended from what most once thought would occur.
I would be interested in hearing from the posters here about alternative and most likely ways in which the Ukraine war could end.
I see secession as a right of a territory, region or group of people to chose their own course. If the citizens of Crimea chose to become part of Russia that is a legitimate choice. They became part of Ukraine under the regime of Khrushchev in the Soviet Union. I am not sure what the outcome would have been with a proper plebiscite for Crimea or the parts of Ukraine with informal ties to Russia, but that could be part of a peace agreement.
Kenneth,
I have no idea how it can or will end.
No one seems to be asking them. At the time of the transfer to Ukraine, it appeared to be what Krushev wanted. There were some BS statements (of the sort politicians– especially dictatorial ones) make. My understanding is no one asked Crimeans.
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I read an article (didn’t save link), that part of Krushev’s “plan” was to increase the % of Russian population in Ukraine under the theory that this would make Ukraine more pro-russian.
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I’ve thought of your suggestion that Crimea be allowed to decide. That doesn’t appear to be something either the Russians or Ukrainians are suggesting. The difficulty in fair elections would be a problem.
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I’m pretty sure Russia would no more want an independent Crimea than they want it to remain part of Ukraine. Ukraine might not either. (Same for the other regions– but especially Crimea.)
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And those in Crimea might fear that as an “independent” they just being invaded the way Ukraine was. So for them to pick that they would want protection against it.
Ken Fritsch,
” I would not be so sure that a defeated Russia facing a world that wants to destroy its standing in the world would not be even more belligerent.”
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I agree. Isolating a nuclear armed adversary may not be the most prudent path.
SteveF,
I don’t think anyone disagrees with you that Russia thinks it has strong historical claims. And that that affects what it will do and accept. I don’t disagree with you.
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It doesn’t mean anyone else needs to agree with their many of these historical claims which are– honestly– demented. I mean… so yeah Ukraine didn’t exist during the Russo-Poland war. And Russia got what was called left-bank Ukraine from Poland, while Poland kept right bank Ukraine. And Poland included Lithuania.
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And Crimea and Zapohrizia underwent constant battles with different sides holding different bits — often for evanescent periods and/or as “protectorates”. (And being a “protectorate” is not quite the same as being part of the country.)
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And Control of the bank of the Dnipro have changed in the north and south. Over and over. Sometimes, Russia controlled bits (and often they did not.)
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Sure, Russia can “think” all sorts of things about these claims.
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This doesn’t mean everyone else has to say, “Well! Ok! Russia must be allowed to keep everything they think they want. Any other way is off the table!”
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Look…. Germany could start claiming Alsace is rightfully theirs because they annexed it during the Franco-Prussian war! And it’s “culturally” like Germany. The claim would be demented. No one else would be required to say if Germany says so, then it is so.
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Fortunately, Germany hasn’t developed that level of dementia. (Recently.)
Lucia,
“This doesn’t mean everyone else has to say, “Well! Ok! Russia must be allowed to keep everything they think they want. Any other way is off the table!”
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I have nowhere suggested that. What I have suggested, here and in other threads, is that the history of the region is not simple. Yes, if someone were to actually drive Russia from all the territories Ukraine claims, then they could impose the kind of terms Zelensky is insisting on. But that seems to me wildly disconnected from reality. Russia would likely resort to nuclear weapons before giving up the Crimea (and their main navy port) or being driven from the Donbas regions now controlled by Russia. Could it happen? Sure, but it seems to me very, very unlikely. Far more likely is a long, costly, bloody stalemate. So far, the Ukraine has been clear: ‘we will accept nothing but complete Russian withdrawal’, etc, etc. It is a formula for a very long conflict. I think the Ukrainians are making a mistake.
SteveF (Comment #217475): “Actually, Russia controlled Crimean and the left bank of the Dnipro starting (IIRC) in about 1662.”
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Russian influence over the Hetmanate started in 1663 with full incorporation, along with Crimea in 1783. But conquest does not make it “Russia”.
Ken,
The Pentagon is full of people who do nothing but worry about war strategy. However it is another exercise in decision making under uncertainty. There is no benefit to making this public. In the end somebody has to make decisions that may be right or wrong The hope is they make reasonable decisions based on available evidence.
If an HOA wants to secede from the US they cannot do so. We do not allow individuals to be their own sovereign country. 1000 Russians could conquer most of Alaska without a shot by declaring it Russian under this model. I’m all for self determination but it does need boundaries.
All wars are not Vietnam. Communism did not expand and one should ponder what would have happened if the democratic side unilaterally disarmed while Russia’s stated aims were to spread communism around the world. The belief that the only thing stopping these silly wars is the dismantling of the military industrial complex is betrayed by every history book. Humans will form tribal groups and attack their neighbors for their resources. If you don’t defend against this then you may be living under the rule of a tyrant soon. Tribes arm up because other tribes arm up. There is no simple answer here.
SteveF
This is a point on which no one has disagreed.
They might. But that has little to do with whether Russian’s “think” it’s always been part of Russia. Russians have valued it as an important port– which is important to them militariliy and economically. That’s precisely why nearly all and sundry have fought over it and claimed it.
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The difficulty with the things you are saying is you are making it sound like Ukraine is the only stubborn immovable object. Russia is accepting nothing other than Ukraine handing over everything Russia wants. In fact: Russia doesn’t want to budge an inch. They say they are not going to give back the 4 regions they seized (for a while) after rolling into the Ukrane. They don’t want to budge on NATO memebership. They don’t want to budge on demilitarizing Ukraine. They want a whole bunch of ridiculous things that either amount to (a) seizing Ukrainina territority or (b) dictating the internal and external affairs of Ukraine. And Ukraine isn’t relying on some strange historical mytholology to justify it’s wants which are just normal wants.
Mike M.
Correct. And Russia didn’t treat it as “Russia”. (England didn’t treat Ireland and Scotland as England. Heck, we’ve had protectorates. They aren’t all “THE USA”. )
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Countries dominating other countries as “colonies” “protectorates” and various other entities has been pretty common throughout history. Roman’s held Palastine/Israel. No one thought those places were Rome itself and the inhabitants weren’t “Roman”.
Kenneth,
I think the most likely endings (in order of decreasing chance):
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1) Another 2 plus years of war with little movement and the Ukraine’s infrastructure gradually destroyed. Russia stops bombing/shelling in a cease-fire that ends up lasting indefinitely. The rump of the Ukraine begs the West for several hundred billion in rebuilding funds; the Ukraine remains a dangerous flash point because no formal end of hostilities is ever agreed to.
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2) In another 6 to 8 months, negotiations start under a cease fire, and last 2 years…. ending somewhere near the terms considered in March 2022.
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3) Russia expands its occupied lands significantly, and NATO either creates a no-fly zone or sends troops into the Ukraine to support the Ukrainians. Russia responds with tactical nuclear weapons. The US and NATO respond in kind….. within 2 weeks the USA, the EC and Russia lose 400 million citizens and every significant city and town in Russia, the USA, and Europe is completely destroyed.
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4) Same as 3) but the USA does not retaliate with tactical nuclear weapons and tells the Ukrainians it is time to negotiate land for peace.
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5) Putin is driven from office and some other Russian politician withdraws from everywhere but the Crimea.
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6) Putin is driven from office and some other Russian politician withdraws from all of the Ukraine.
Lucia,
“The difficulty with the things you are saying is you are making it sound like Ukraine is the only stubborn immovable object. Russia is accepting nothing other than Ukraine handing over everything Russia wants.”
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The Russians have been equally stubborn, and if anything, appear to have become more so since about April as their battlefield costs have escalated. I think it would be helpful if both Russia and the Ukraine spent a lot less time listing their demands for starting negotiations, and a lot more time working to forge a settlement both can live with. Any settlement won’t be pretty (nor ‘fair’ in the view of many), that is the nature of negotiated settlements. Some of the thorniest issues could be finessed buy putting final resolution in the distant future, contingent on future events. I am not confident at all this is going to happen (see my list of potential endings above), but it still could happen.
In historical times wars are started and instigated by controlling governments and not some tribal instinct of their subjects. Governments go to great lengths to create crises followed by pleas to nationalism and patriotism and finally using propoganda and outright lies to keep the populace aboard.
That is not my model. In my model it is those seceeding who have to agree in a formal manner to secede as an independent entity or be accepted by another sovereign. In the situation under discussion here such actions could have potentially avoided a war, but if wars are inevitable than why even consider such an alternative – just let the parties go at each other like other members of the animal kingdom do it.
SteveF, I vote for the likelihoods of your scenarios in this order #6, #5, #2, #1, #4, #3.
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The main reason IMO for Russia’s poor showing to date is lack of ground level support for the conquest. It’s exactly as Ken stated where the operation is mainly a product of Putin’s personal appetite, not the average Russian soldier’s. Putin is in a precarious situation notwithstanding his iron grip on power. He has to think of how to escape from his mess. The best I think he could hope for is a concentrated effort to gain some successful objective, like Bakhmut, and then dig in a defensive posture and declare that he is ready for peace. This allows him to keep up domestic appearances of being in the driver’s seat (as much as possible). Then at the negotiating table he can give up a little of the annexed territory and declare limited victory by creating a permanent resolution of the Donbas as an addition to Russia.
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Scenarios involving use of nukes are the least likely due to the chance for Putin’s order to be refused, which would likely be followed by a general mutiny and removal. Without such an order Putin’s rivals have no galvanizing impetus for which they can make their move.
Both sides want to fight. So they will until they are worn out. The US will not pull the rug out from Ukraine nor will they win the war for them either. Lots of people will needlessly die until enough internal pressure is put on Putin to end the war. He is not immune to internal strife. Russia could make battlefield progress but occupying western Ukraine and purging it of dissent looks rather dim. An agreement could be made to keep Ukraine out of NATO but allow them to join the EU. 20 years from now things will look much the same in Ukraine and both sides will see this war as an epic mistake for little gained or lost. Russia won’t invade a neighbor to the west and NATO will tread carefully arming anyone on Russia’s border. The chances of a nuclear war over Ukraine are very small unless US weapons are used in Russia territory accidentally or intentionally. Russia is integrated back into the global community once Putin is out of office.
Tom Scharf,
“Russia could make battlefield progress but occupying western Ukraine and purging it of dissent looks rather dim.”
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Did you mean to say ‘occupying eastern Ukraine’?
We already knew russia was the good guy in this affair; he didn’t need to tell us this:
MOSCOW, Dec 25 (Reuters) – Russia is ready to negotiate with all parties involved in the war in Ukraine but Kyiv and its Western backers have refused to engage in talks, President Vladimir Putin said in an interview aired on Sunday.
Also:
“I believe that we are acting in the right direction, we are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people. And we have no other choice but to protect our citizens,”
I think he actually believes this, according to the WSJ, Putin is daft and only fed only stories that reinforce his beliefs.
So in Moscow there is a delusional tyrant and in Washington there is an angry guy in his dotage and they both have access to the nuclear codes. What could possibly go wrong.
Rusell
https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-war-vladimir-putin-says-deal-may-be-needed-to-end-conflict-as-he-admits-mistakes-were-made-over-mobilisation-12764819
I notice he hasn’t actually suggested any change in that pre-condition.
Khrystos rodyvsya!
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Or in English: Christ is born! The traditional Ukrainian Christmas greeting that I remember from my youth.
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Ukraine does not want war. War has been thrust upon them. They just regard war as the less bad option when the alternative is subjugation.
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Putin is not serious about peace talks. What he wants is a cease fire to allow his forces to regroup and train new conscripts while Ukraine continues to bleed.
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There is a possibility that nobody above (except maybe Russell) seems to be considering: Ukraine might regain substantial territory during the winter. You might think that implausible, but the Ukrainians have already confounded the experts four times: by not collapsing, by driving the Russians away from Kiev, by regaining substantial territory in the east, and by fully regaining the right bank of the Dnieper.
Mike M,
“You might think that implausible…”
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Yes, that is exactly what I think.
Merry Christmas.
The Ukrainians really, really reject all things russian; They even adopted their own brand of Orthodox Christianity:
“Like many other Ukrainians, she has switched to celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25, as in most of the Western world, rather than Jan. 7, as in Russia. It is part of a broader shift in Ukraine since the war began to move away from cultural traditions that reflect Russia’s centurieslong hegemony over its neighbor.”
“One of the biggest changes came in 2019, when Ukraine was granted its own Orthodox church by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the foremost leader of the global Orthodox Christian community. The new Orthodox Church of Ukraine quickly overtook a Russian-affiliated church as the country’s most popular, according to polls.”
WSJ free link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-christmas-many-christians-in-ukraine-turn-away-from-russia-11671933223?st=pzavq1j5hcszxay&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
lucia (Comment #217493)
“I notice he hasn’t actually suggested any change in that pre-condition.”
…[continuing my theme of putin as delusional tyrant]
In his goofy view of reality, Ukraine rightly is part of and subject to russia. It’s obvious to him, so what the rest of the world thinks is of no importance.
One of my sons spent his toddler years dealing with the rest of the family in the same manner.
Something mysterious happened at Engels Strategic Air Force Base, approximately 400 miles inside russia.
OSINTtechnical [a reliable source]:
“Something appears to be heavily burning at Engels Airbase”
Videos and preliminary info in this thread:
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1607208688506257408?s=20&t=0BAWPDrdoBWDyP6b-26Xeg
The Moscow Times [a non reliable source]: “Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed Monday that an overnight Ukrainian drone attack on the Engels strategic bomber airfield left three soldiers dead, saying they were killed by fallen debris of a shot down unmanned aircraft.”
One of my reasons for thinking Ukraine will make headway this winter; they have been winterized and are much better supplied than the russians.
There are constant reports of russian army being ill equipped on the battlefield:
December 26, Wagner mercenary leaders video attack on Gerassimov ….“Russian MoD’s Chief of Staff piece of shit” ……“We have no shells anymore here [at Bahmut]” Video and translation follows:
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1607355691551064064?s=20&t=X67YLK5YeGinvyyFyidXXw
December 24, [Gruesome] Videos and pictures of bodies of russian soldiers littering the fields outside Bakhmut dressed in a ragtag assortment of summer clothes.
https://twitter.com/just_whatever/status/1606708349709361152?s=20&t=X67YLK5YeGinvyyFyidXXw
On the contrary there have been winter supply preparations going on on the Ukrainian side for months. Generators for heat, insulated trenches, winter sleeping bags [even a sauna in a trench]. There has been a huge crowd source effort to supplement the official channels:
December 19, “Generators are much needed close to the front lines. Lets finish this fundraiser and get the troops heat and electricity.”
https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1604772696692514816?s=20&t=X67YLK5YeGinvyyFyidXXw
I predicted a Christmas offensive by Ukraine. Remember, russian Christmas starts on January 7, so I think they may get some surprise presents.
Another of my reasons for thinking Ukraine will make headway this winter:
Discipline. Russian encampment pictures and videos are very similar to homeless encampments in LA. They are messy s*it houses. Here is an example:
https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1607442638579302401?s=20&t=FPrAVm8oWQ24gpmcg8uEfA
Ukrainian trenches and encampment are much more ship-shape and it seems are always being improved with timbers roofs and other enhancements, including a Christmas tree:
https://twitter.com/Mykola65109280/status/1604508455959756802?s=20&t=FPrAVm8oWQ24gpmcg8uEfA
https://twitter.com/reuterspictures/status/1607414879123537920?s=20&t=FPrAVm8oWQ24gpmcg8uEfA
The russians look a bunch of dirty hippies; the Ukrainians look like professional soldiers.
russian banks are running out of money. I am seeing increasing citations of depositors not being able to withdraw their money. Nothing official, and it might be a hoax, but I’m helping to spread the panic here.
https://twitter.com/chuckpfarrer/status/1607390758935449604?s=61&t=tocssq6pgXj-FhSOQJDzcQ
https://twitter.com/thedeaddistrict/status/1607332029581987842?s=61&t=tocssq6pgXj-FhSOQJDzcQ
On a related note, I am seeing reports of the power coming back on in multiple locals in Ukraine. (Although, it appears that there may be another missile attack right now.)
https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1607710273389088768?s=61&t=tocssq6pgXj-FhSOQJDzcQ
Russian sausage tycoon falls out of a window at an Indian hotel 2 days after his friend died at the same hotel.
It’s as dangerous to fall out of favor with putin as it is to fall out of favor with Hillary.
From AG@aghamilton29. “Another accident!I think there have been at least 8 suspicious or accidental Russian oligarch deaths just this year. At least 2 where their entire families were also killed and one where an oil exec fell out of a 6th floor hospital window that normally doesn’t open.”
https://twitter.com/aghamilton29/status/1604325976623702016?s=61&t=EHC4qFWE8xUlBruw2hVRwA
No more waves…… Gerrymandering has seen to that.
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I looked at the number of competitive House seats across all 50 states. I defined “competitive” as a seat where in the 2022 election the difference between the winner and the loser was 8% of the total vote or less. That might not be the best figure, but seems to me reasonable; if you choose a larger or smaller value the number of competitive seats will change, but the change will not be huge. A very bad candidate of either party could (of course) lose a seat that is not really competitive, but while it happens, it is not at all common……unless Trump is endorsing primary candidates, of course.
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For 435 house seats, there are 26 competitive seats held by Democrats, and 24 competitive seats held by Republicans. 50 of 435 => 11.5% of seats are potentially competitive.
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The surprising thing in these numbers is that even after an expected “red-wave” in 2022, there are still more potentially vulnerable Democrats than Republicans in the House. Which suggests that the Republicans failed to capitalize on the most favorable election conditions imaginable. The Republicans need to look at their get-out-the-(early/mail) vote strategy, because they suck at that in most states. A better get-out-the-vote effort might have netted something closer to 228/207 in the House. If Trump had not been at all involved in 2022? Who knows, but he Republicans would have certainly have done better, IMHO.
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Finally, even in the wildest of fevered dreams of either party, under current divisive political conditions… manifested in district drawing….. it is very unlikely either party will hold a majority greater than 30 seats, and almost always it will be smaller than 20 seats.
The Republicans need to look at their strategy for having Trump accidentally fall out of a window.
“I’d like to do a song of great social and political import”….. Janis Joplin
Is it my imagination, or are the Hershey Kisses of Christmas Present smaller than the Hershey Kisses of Christmas Past?
Tom,
Ahh… Defenestration. Putin got rid of the Sausage King. But I’m guessing GOP won’t use it.
I thought you could get in trouble for talking, even obliquely, about harming a president?
Thankfully, Trump seems to be fading on his own.
The best way to get rid of Trump is at the ballot box. I’d say that now looks very likely.
Russell,
Well…. he’s a former president which is not the same thing.
I don’t want Trump even influencing races he’s not part of. I keep hoping one of these Democrat inditements will stick.
Russel,
The indictments sticking won’t prevent him from influencing races.
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MikeM,
Yes. The ballot box is the best way to get rid of Trump. I don’t think serious people would seriously consider defenestrating him.
We have been joking about lightening bolts and Trump for ages here.
I feel confident that scads of progressives have wished death on the orange man online over the past several years. I don’t think the DOJ is going to come running.
Now, if we were protesters outside an abortion clinic say, that’d be a different matter. Much less safe.
Lucia
“The indictments sticking won’t prevent him from influencing races”
I beg to differ. It will not matter to the nut-job devotees; heck, an indictment will egg them on. But, maybe the powers-to-be will find the [whatevers] to publicly oppose him. I still am stuck on needing Republicans to come out, en masse, against Trump.
[indictments sticking mean conviction]
Russel,
If by “powers that be” you mean top-GOP organizers, I very much doubt indictments will cause the “powers that be” to do anything at all. Moreover, it’s likely better they just remain silent vis-a-vis any indictments. Let the courts and justice department do whatever they are going to do.
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You ‘needing’ the GOP to do something isn’t going to make them do it. And I think you are mistaken in believing them doing it will work against Trump rather than for him. With regard to Trump: The less said by the GOP the better. Being ignored is his Kryptonite.
I find fault with the currently applied primary process of selecting candidates for political office with little direct influence from the political party that the candidate supposedly represents. There is nothing inherently good in my view or constitutional about primaries having the final say about candidates.
The current process has allowed the candidacy of a Donald Trump and a George Santos. That Santos is a more recent example of a complete phony.
As I have commented previously, I see no reason that charges should not be brought against Trump for his part in attempting to circumvent the results of a presidential election. I like that such an action could be a precedent for holding politicians to a very high standard. I believe that politicians are currently held to lower standards than ordinary citizens are.
Ken,
It bothers me that the FBI and DOJ appear to be political tools at this point. In such an environment, I would argue that politicians would not in fact be held to a very high standard, but rather that the political group in power at any given time would abuse the legal and judicial powers of the state to destroy political opponents. I think this is pretty clearly what is already happening today, where the FBI suppresses evidence of Biden wrongdoing and raids Mar-a-largo on what appears to be flimsy justification.
In some other world, maybe some other time, I might agree with you. In this one, I don’t think it would happen the way you think it would. It wouldn’t be politicians being held to some higher standard. It’d just be more banana republic type corruption, I suspect.
mark/Ken,
I think the issues of whether the process for charging Trump is proper, good or bad is separate from the issue of how candidates should be nominated.
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I know it Illinois voters can decide which primary to vote in on election day. We can change back and forth as we wish. On election day there no meaning to really being a Republican or Democrat (or independent, or Libertarian for that matter). It would be better for the parties to insist on some sort of real membership to vote for the party candidate. For example: it might be reasonable to insist that you register as one or the other and do so at least 3 months before the primary. That’s not very long, but sufficient to require people to decide which they actually are.
I suppose in that case the parties themselves might need to run their elections, but I think that would be fine.
The State of New York, Erie County and The City of Buffalo are all run by Democrats, so I suppose they will get a pass in the media on their abysmal snow storm preparation and response. (The severity of that storm was predicted a week in advance.) At least 31 people died in Erie County alone.
lucia (Comment #217518): “With regard to Trump: The less said by the GOP the better. Being ignored is his Kryptonite.”
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Indeed.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #217519): “The current process has allowed the candidacy of a Donald Trump and a George Santos. That Santos is a more recent example of a complete phony.
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I think that Santos ran unopposed in the primary, so you can’t blame the current system for that.
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Trump getting nominated is a big plus for the current system. The *people* are supposed to choose. That means that the likes of Trump and Sanders must be given a chance to seek the votes of the people, not excluded by shadowy figures who decide who the people get to choose between.
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What you advocate pretty much happened in 2020 and gave us Joe Biden. Definitely a big minus for your approach.
I guess Buffalo has been hit by more than two feet of blowing and drifting Global Warming.
How so, Mike? Biden and Trump won the primaries.
The political parties should be responsible for vetting their candidates and having a major influence in who represents their parties. Maybe George Santos was given a pass because he is gay. His lies were rather obviously going to be easy to find by the opposition and by his own party through vetting.
I would also like to see more parties represented in government. Currently both major parties are a complete mess when it comes to informing the voters of their political philosophies and discussing such without getting personal.
With a two party system we have the example of the recent spending spree where the compromise is if you let me spend mightily on my favorite sink holes you can do the same with your sink holes. Further we have the voters acting more like fans of a given party whereby the sway is you cannot convict my party’s crooks because your party’s crooks are not convicted. This will eventually end very badly unless alternative approaches are considered and tried.
The Twitter Files on censoring of covid “misinformation”
https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1607378386338340867
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I still find it interesting that the legacy media continues to flood the zone on everything negative on Musk (Breaking News: Anonymous Musk employee doesn’t like him!) but won’t even cover the Twitter Files. The current excuse they are using is they can’t confirm the data and it hasn’t been released to all journalists. This never stopped them with poorly sourced rumors on Trump somehow.
Going after Trump criminally will make him a victim and likely harden his supporter’s view further. I think Trump is a clown and unworthy of office (now…I did vote for him) but also simultaneously think he is being picked on a bit too much. If they applied the same level of scrutiny on everyone else in DC the entire town would be in jail.
The pollical parties are private organizations, they can do what they want. I’m not sure about the laws, but is it the case that only the final state elections are regulated? The primary process is up to these private organizations and can be as much smoky back rooms as they please. Super delegates and so forth. It’s only corrupt in the sense that it is misleading to think the primary process is fair to start with.
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A low bar for criminal prosecution of politicians is going to result in whoever holds the power utilizing those tools to their advantage. This abuse of power can become rampant. That a “high standard” would be fairly applied is a fantasy in my view. Prosecutorial discretion and selective prosecution. Prosecutors are appointed by politicians in many cases. The FBI has been tarred by injecting themselves in the election process, this has resulted in their trust declining significantly.
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Let’s say a politician says people should “fight” over a close election outcome, there are those who think this is essentially insurrection if a protest occurs. Political prosecutions need a high bar because the potential for abuse is much higher due to the incentives in place and the power to influence these decisions.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #217526): “Biden and Trump won the primaries.”
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Trump won the primaries. Biden was gifted the nomination when the party powers that be forced everyone else except Sanders to withdraw.
Tom, my suggestion for political parties to relax the importance of primaries is under the full understanding that they exist as private entities.
Holding politicians to a standard that befits the control they have over people’s lives means adjudication as it applies to ordinary people. It is the judicial system that is used in this process and whereby the process becomes more transparent than some hidden dealings of the DOJ and the FBI or congressional show trials – as is the current case.
Trump did admittedly attempt to actively change the result of a presidential election and he did more than simply lying about the outcome. I do not see how he should not be held accountable. Whatever effect that might have on his supporters has and should not have any bearing on the matter. Otherwise successfully threatening actions before someone is brought to trial would make a mockery of the entire system.
Ken Fritsch,
I think that prosecuting Trump on the basis of Jan 6 riots would be a terrible mistake. Yes he behaved badly, but he is (finally) of diminished public interest, and becoming ever less likely to gain the nomination in 2024. Prosecution based on Jan 6 will only give Trump the attention he so obviously craves and will enrage his diehard supporters. The House show-trial, without even a hind of fairness, or even honest inquiry into the lack of adequate security on Jan 6, poisoned the well, and any prosecution will be viewed by many as simple political vendetta. I hope for the country’s sake that the DOJ lets it go.
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Potential prosecution for not turning over presidential documents is silly. Trump got to see and hear all the secrets. If he was trying to do harm by disclosing secrets, he sure as heck wouldn’t need any documents. Like all things Trump, refusing to turn over all presidential documents was stupid and childish. But worth widening an already terrible political divide? I don’t think so.
Ken,
Thanks for your comments. I can’t say I believe you’re wrong; Trump should be held accountable. Unhappily, I’m forced to state that I don’t believe our system is currently healthy enough to survive such a thing. I personally believe Trump engaged in election fraud with the Eastman scheme and he ought to pay for that. But I don’t believe our system would do justice regarding Trump in any event. It’s like a moral choice between two competing criminal gangs, which is no moral choice at all of course.
Maybe I’m wrong (I often am). I don’t think seeking justice on Trump is worth the cost in damage to our system I suspect we’d incur. I am not proud of this viewpoint for various reasons but I do honestly believe it.
Shrug.
If you think you can get 6 Trump voters to agree on a crime that involves mind reading Trump’s intent then go for it. If not, it is not worth it. I don’t think they have that case.
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Trump has been subjected to the highest level of scrutiny I have ever seen, even more than the Clintons combined. The House panel is going to release Trump’s tax returns against his wishes because “the presidential audit program failed to work as intended”, or something. I don’t see the justification for public release here, but Orange Man Bad, therefore special handling and exceptions apply. Does anybody care about privacy? No. The Mueller investigation. The Jan 6th committee (changed public opinion exactly zero). Endless hyperventilation. Let it go.
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I think it very likely a prosecution will backfire in almost every way imaginable. No conviction. Perceived as politically motivated and politically biased in execution. Trust in institutions further eroded. Trump’s stature elevated. Politically motivated prosecutions in return by the opposing side. Etc.
China has finally given up on trying to contain covid. Their uniquely Chinese response was to stop officially reporting statistics.
“China’s National Health Commission said in a statement that it would no longer publish the data daily beginning Sunday and that “from now on, the Chinese CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) will release relevant COVID information for reference and research.””
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Two flights from China to Italy had 45% of passengers testing positive on entry. China has officially reported about 5,000 cases a day this week. Financial Times estimates 250M people got covid in China in first 20 days of December. China’s death tolls only counts people who died from respiratory failure as a direct result of covid as determined by a committee. Somehow I’m not sure I trust their numbers, but at least they might have toilet paper in their stores as a result of complete information control. Nobody knows what is happening.
Perhaps, maybe, the bloody battle of Bakhmut is winding down. Several OSINT sites and the ISW are saying there are signs that it may be near over. Ukraine is still in control of the town [or what’s left of it]. The devastation to the town and human carnage [particularly to the Wagner mercenaries] is horrific.
ISW:
“The #Russian offensive against #Bakhmut is likely culminating as ISW forecasted on December 27. Culminated Russian forces could continue to carry out assaults but would be very unlikely to make operationally significant gains.
“https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1608285680526036993?s=20&t=WvNwyYr-s39Kmz0gY4YlDw
War Mapper @War_Mapper
A close-up look at the map in Bakhmut today. There have been no changes here since the last update.
https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1608289593765265418?s=20&t=WvNwyYr-s39Kmz0gY4YlDw
Also another missile assault on Ukrainian cities today. The Kyiv Independent @KyivIndependent “Air raid alert sounds across Ukraine. Air raid alerts sounded across every Ukrainian oblast, including occupied Crimea, on Dec. 29”.
Lots of reports of air defense shooting down missiles. How many got through is unknown.
Tom Scharf
Heh! In the early ’00s I read a story in the WSJ about valiant Chinese in the street taking photos of thermometers through out Beijing to show the temperature was above 40C and posting on the internet.
The Chinese weather board refused to admit it ever went above 40C for…. reasons….
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(OK, the reason for lying was also hilarious. Evidently, there was a common “myth” that it was illegal to make people work if it was above 40C. According to the myth, the law required people to be given the day off.
In fact, there was no such law. But instead of just reminding people there was no such law, the PRC weather authorities just lied about the temperature! One they were no longer able to surpress the truth because of the internet, the PRC explained there was no such law, never had been yada, yada. The government has NEVER pass such a law to spare the proletariat laborers of grueling work in ridiculously hot conditions.
“The people” still needed to work even if it was over 40C.)
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Yeah… Of course they aren’t going to admit how bad their covid problems are!
Tom, Trump made his intentions and his acting on them perfectly clear – no mind reading required.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217535): “I think it very likely a prosecution will backfire in almost every way imaginable. No conviction. Perceived as politically motivated and politically biased in execution. Trust in institutions further eroded. Trump’s stature elevated. Politically motivated prosecutions in return by the opposing side.”
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Indeed. If the Dems go ahead with persecution, it will be for one of two reasons. One is that their thinking has been hopelessly impaired by TDS. The other is that they hope to boost a damaged Trump to the Republican nomination. Either would be evidence of why no sensible person should ever vote for a Democrat.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #217539): “Trump made his intentions and his acting on them perfectly clear – no mind reading required.”
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You can reasonably make that statement if you are accusing Trump of pettiness and poor judgement. But there is zero evidence of any crime committed or intended.
Far be it from me to spread malicious rumors about the russian leader… When a 69 year old fat russian apparatchik dies suddenly of illness, it certainly could be from natural causes…. But this apparatchik had recently fallen out of favor with putin.
https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/alexei-maslov-is-the-latest-high-profile-russian-to-die-suddenly-whats-going-on-11895411.html
Mike M,
“Indeed. If the Dems go ahead with persecution, it will be for one of two reasons.”
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There may be a Freudian slip in there. 😉
“obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, making knowingly and willfully materially false statements to the federal government, and inciting or assisting an insurrection”
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Conspiracy and insurrection requiring proving intent. The other two seem trivial. “Knowingly” requires proving he knew the statements to be false, more mind reading. I’m not sure what the obstruction charges are about, but pinning them on Trump specifically may be difficult.
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The prosecution will need to overcome the story that clown boy really believed the election was rigged (he might have) and he was exhausting all legal means to change the fraudulent results. His story will be he believed his schemes were legal because lawyers smarter than him told him so. Being legally wrong and advancing dubious legal theories is not typically a crime. The judicial system rejected these crazy schemes and the system worked.
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Many people believe Orange Man Bad about everything, they will need to prove the charges to the over half of the country (they haven’t so far) or rig the trial to exclude these people. A show trial with no defense failed to move the needle, I don’t predict a trial with an actual defense will do better.
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I want Trump to go away, but let the voters do it. Using political charges and process crimes will not be helpful. Too many believe that there is a vendetta against Trump by the media and DC governing class. The governing class consistently overestimate their persuasive power.
Russell,
I read a joke,
“I got an Orthodox advent calendar. Every time I open a window an Oligarch falls out.”
On the unifying topic of genetics. The NIH now blocks access to certain genetics databases if it believes the research may stigmatize groups.
https://www.city-journal.org/nih-blocks-access-to-genetics-database
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The Flynn effect is evident in gaps in global intelligence over the past 20 years.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289622000897
Lucia,
When I worked for government, I developed the following guiding principle: “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean ‘They’ are not out to get you.”
I am hopeful that putin may be paranoid but ‘They’ really are out to assassinate him.
Twitter is a lot more fun these days… Going viral: ‘White Girl Avenger’ also called ‘Becky with the Good Hands’. Little blond cook with a ponytail at Waffle House riot deflects an incoming chair and throws a couple hooks and a nice upper cut. https://twitter.com/TonyPeric/status/1607829321539895296?s=20&t=GkYUmydamRLleUqrvKyYdg
Hilarious:
“I never claimed to be Jewish,” he explained. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.'”
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That one will go down in infamy. What baffles me is that none of his opponents ever did a background check on him, I thought that would be the first thing you would do in a political contest.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: CHURCHILL ON “EXPERT” RULE
Churchill, writing in 1901 with advice clearly relevant for 2022:
Nothing would be more fatal than for the government of States to get into the hands of the experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge: and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows only what hurts is a safer guide, than any vigorous direction of a specialised character. Why should you assume that all except doctors, engineers etc., are drones or worse?
To manage men, to explain difficult things to simple people, to reconcile opposite interests, to weigh the evidence of disputing experts, to deal with the clamorous emergency of the hour; are not these things in themselves worth the consideration and labour of a lifetime? If the Ruler is to be an expert in anything he should be an expert in everything; and that is plainly impossible. Wherefore I say from the dominion of all specialists (particularly military specialists) good Lord deliver us.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/12/thought-for-the-day-churchill-on-expert-rule.php
Tom,
Yeah… you’d think someone would have caught the whoppers
https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/12/27/i-said-i-was-jew-ish-george-santos-admits-to-lying-about-background/
Claimed to have gone to Baruch College. When did you graduate? What major? Does anyone know him?
Evidently he claimed he worked Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. (Well… lots of people work for Citigroup in some way.) Now he sais never “directly”. So… did he work for Travellers? A subsidiary? Primerica?
Tom Scharf,
“I want Trump to go away, but let the voters do it.”
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Of course. Trump is a fool, and most sensible people understand that. But if there is a politically motivated vendetta against Trump, then lots of people (even people who don’t like Trump, including me) will be motivated to defend Trump against improper prosecution, even though he is an insufferable a$$hole. Trump is a jerk, and as emotionally mature and self aware as your typical 4 year old. He is someone I wish would ride off to the sunset, to never be seen or heard from again. Alas, that probably won’t happen. But the less we hear from Trump the better.
“ Russia launches barrage of more than 120 missiles at major Ukrainian cities”
https://thehill.com/policy/international/3791639-russia-launches-barrage-of-more-than-120-missiles-at-major-ukrainian-cities/
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Russian production of missiles are increasing over time as seen in the continuing increase in the numbers seen in the strikes.
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Current strikes are continuing to target electrical power systems, mainly to disrupt Ukraine railway systems that move supplies and reserves, and to hunt down air defense systems (ADS).
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Once the Ukraine Soviet era S300 ADS is either destroyed or have run out of irreplaceable ammunition, the Russians will be able to run accurate high level air attacks as close air support (CAS) against Ukraine front line positions high out of the range of infantry man pack ADS.
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Western ADS systems, such as the Patriot, are short range point defense systems and will be used to try and protect high value targets, not in close range support of the front lines.
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This ability of Russian air to fly CAS directly over the front lines outside of the range of Ukraine ADS will put additional pressure on the ability of Ukraine artillery positions to hide from Russian counter battery actions.
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As most of the casualties seen on both sides are from artillery, and Russia is currently at 10:1 superiority in artillery fire, the imbalance in losses will continue to increase once the Ukraine long range ADS is eliminated to allow Russian CAS.
Ed Forbes, A prior comment from Lucia is appropriate here ….
lucia (Comment #217444) Ed Forbes,
I have to say that at this point, nothing gives me more hope for Ukraine than your constant proclamations that Russia will win… instantly… soon, is winning now…. any day now…. eventually……
Sure Russia could still win. But it’s not been going well for them.
As Fonsi once said [almost] ‘I was wrong’. You CAN see the effect of the russian missile attacks on the Ukraine nighttime electrical grid. My previous posts were misusing the NASA pics. Compare Ukraine to its neighbors Poland and russia in December 2021 [before the war] here:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1608842769040302083?s=20&t=lDACxYl_P3OX0CZrUybPCg
To Ukraine and neighbors Poland and russia in December 2022 here:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1608843959811592198?s=20&t=lDACxYl_P3OX0CZrUybPCg
I guess there are about 50% fewer lit areas this year. Keep in mind, Eastern Ukraine is a war zone, so darkness is the norm.
If you want to toy around yourself with NASA’s Black Marble, here:
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
It’s day 311 of the war, and Russia … might … be able to provide close air support using their secret new tech called “airplanes” soon.
And in other news, inserting various red products in frozen form up your whatsit confirms that transwomen have periods. I await the first accusation of discrimination and hate leveled against a biology teacher, for denying that women bleed tomato products, with trepidation…
Robert Reich (ironic name): “Elon Musk and his enablers have turned this website into a torrent of ad hominem attacks, lies floated as jokes, and blatent misinformation.
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This isn’t freedom of speech. It’s just dangerous.”
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….
Dave,
I hesitate to ask, because do I really want to know? (doubtful), but, what products are you talking about? Would you link to one?
~wince~
It seems the search is still on for the ideal product, but tomato based seems to be a favorite. Gives new meaning to the “bloody mary”…
Tom Scharf,
“It’s day 311 of the war, and Russia … might … be able to provide close air support using their secret new tech called “airplanes” soon.”
The russian air force has been MIA over the battlefield since the early weeks of the invasion:
“For the first time in the five decades since the Vietnam War, air power has been emasculated by air defense, to the point that all the Russians can now achieve is firing cruise missiles from bombers within their own territory.”
https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/2022/12/07/russian-air-force-fails-to-dominate-ukraines-skies/
It makes no sense to me. The Ukrainian air force is vastly outgunned. The ground air defenses must be the difference I suppose. It is a particular mystery that they failed to appear during the Ukrainian Army rapid advances during the Fall. Given the terrain, I would think the Ukrainian mechanized units should have been a turkey shoot for a modern air force. But the mighty russian war birds were hiding in their bunkers.
I do not think it is Trump himself who worries some posters here but rather his supporters and potential voters in primaries that are a bigger worry. Another related worry is or at least should be the lack of numbers of Republicans who vocally revoke Trump’s standing in the Republican party. None of this will go quietly into the night by ignoring the situation.
I have no affection for the lady from Wyoming or her VP daddy who said deficits don’t matter anymore and never passed up an opportunity for going to war, but when she says Trump should never hold office again, I totally agree.
The Trump loyalists present the calculus of the trade-off of a loss of a portion of those voters for those who would not vote for a Republican because of Trump. Even though a democracy shows the fickleness of voters, there could be a loss well into the future of potential Republican voters due to the Trump experience from Trump himself and the Republican party excusers. The Republicans better get their heads out of the sand and forget the thinking that a bad economy will get them elected and, further, honestly find out where they stand with the voters. It would also help if they could go against the political tendency and spell out philosophically where they stand.
It is not: Its the economy “stupid”, but rather it is the stupid “stupid”.
Missile systems are cheaper and faster to design than advanced aircraft. They can theoretically stay ahead of the curve. It looks like Russia has voluntarily decided to not make use of its air force. They use it occasionally but mostly fire weapons from within their own borders like it is mostly just weapons testing. Losing very expensive aircraft to cheap missiles is not an economically viable way to conduct a war.
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I’m only speculating but it is either that Russia doesn’t want to expose their capabilities to NATO or that they just can’t take out mobile air defense systems effectively and their aircraft are vulnerable to them.
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Once an air defense radar turns on it is like shining a flashlight in a dark room. Easy to find and radar seeking missiles like the HARM can easily strike them … if they stay on. Some HARM’s were given to Ukraine. You need to turn around that anti-missile system missile launch quickly. Either that or you need to be able to track the mobile missile system after the launch and strike it later while it is moving or where it parks. Having integrated systems is a key here and it is hard and expensive to do.
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The US has been using groups of aircraft with different capabilities in initial strikes such as the Gulf War. Some have electronic counter measures, some carry things like HARM, some are the strike aircraft, AWACS, etc. Once the airspace is more secure then they can loiter and wait for anti-air systems to turn on locally and take them out. AWACS are being phased out because a giant radar in the sky is very easy to take out. Fixed air defenses are also easy to take out now with advanced cruise missiles. They won’t last terribly long. Older cruise missiles can be shot down pretty easily but not in large quantities.
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Nobody knows how well the air offense of the US vs air defense of Russia will stack up. All things equal the air defense should have the advantage defending their own territory, but things aren’t equal. The US will certainly take some losses there in the initial engagements. If air superiority or dominance can be achieved it is a huge advantage. Dropping inexpensive guided 500 lb bombs on artillery tubes will render an artillery advantage pretty useless. Iraq had an artillery advantage but it was almost completely taken out, as was armor, by air before the ground war started.
Liz Cheney’s statement is more akin to Trump should be *prevented* from running for office via the use of government power. The operating theory of a democracy is that the voters get to decide who holds office, not Liz Cheney or entitled congressional committees in DC. Anti-establishment voters aren’t fans of this type of behavior.
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However the RNC effectively can veto who runs under their name, the complicated part is that if they chose to veto Trump by any means necessary then the outcome will likely be Trump running as an independent and dragging enough Trump loyalists with him to doom the RNC’s chances of success. They seem to be trying to balance on a knife’s edge to let Trump run, not help him, and hope he loses in the primary or eventually drops enough support to no longer matter. It’s a big problem, Trump represents the anti-establishment vote which has a lot of adherents lately.
Tom wrote: “Trump represents the anti-establishment vote which has a lot of adherents lately.”
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Exactly, can’t imagine why though. Throughout Trump’s tenure, the establishment showed themselves to be highly ethical people of upstanding moral character who wouldn’t think about spreading lies, misinformation, or ignoring/breaking the law if the ends justified it, while pointing at everyone else as the problem.
You can never spread misinformation if you get to define it.
I think things about Trump get confused by observers who need a foil that fits what they believe in. If acting like a jerk is anti establishment then Trump is that in spades, but then so are most other politicians.
Trump has never been motivated by antiestablishmentism, but rather what he foolishly considers what is good for himself. He was a useful idiot when guided by others, but when led by his native instincts, invariably the outcomes were bad. If I judge Trump by my standards for being antiestablishment he is not even in the ball park.
Also being currently hated by the establishment does not somehow make one antiestabishment. He well might be hated for being a jerk and an insufferable a$$hole.
Tom Scharf,
“Liz Cheney is more akin to Trump should be *prevented* from running for office via the use of government power.”
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Liz Cheney is an unmitigated idiot. The fact she is given voice by the lefty MSM is an indictment of both Cheney and the MSM. She, as a certifiable idiot, has not the slight lest clue what she is talking about. Conservative’s need to ignore her.
Ken-
Absolutely correct. Trump is not “anti-establishment”. People hate him because he is a jerk. Some of the people who hate him are in the establishment. Plenty are not. They hate him because he is a A**hole jerk.
I am amazed that some of you guys can read Trump’s mind. His actions, at least prior to Nov. 2020, were consistently what was good for the country. I am not aware of any actions prior to then that were motivated by, or had the effect of, specifically benefiting Trump.
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“By their works you shall know them.” Trump’s works say he was a patriot acting for the good of the USA.
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You might argue that his actions were self-serving in that they gratified his ego in various ways. But that is true of everyone who seeks the job of President. I suppose it might not actually be a requirement for the job, but it is a requirement for seeking the job.
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The country would be better off with Trump in office rather than Biden. So in a sense, Trump’s extreme reluctance to accept the result of the election could be claimed to have been for the good of the country. That would be foolish and short sighted since such actions are very destructive in the long run. Trump’s ego led him to some very bad judgement and destroyed him. Or at least destroyed his reputation.
Frequently Trump did what the establishment wanted, particularly endorsing candidates like Mitt Romney.
They are against his agenda of trade, enforcing the border, and being a little less eager for war.
I don’t think Trump even cares that much about immigration.
This same animosity is what drove McConnell to agree to an omnibus instead of waiting for a Republican majority. They don’t want to put up much of a fight on a number of issues, and definitely don’t want to fight on those issues.
Kevin McCarthy has offered a compromise to get votes for speaker, lowering the number of votes required to challenge the speaker’s position. Pelosi had gotten rid of this rule, which caused Boehner to resign.
Various members want to make sure that McCarthy will not be making deals with Democrats over their objections, and are refusing to vote for him unless he agrees to various rules.
Lowering the threshold for vacating the speakership gives them assurance that he will stay on board.
I thought it had something to do with Ukraine, but it looks like Lubos Motl took down his blog because he was threatened with a lawsuit by German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, who demanded ~$10000 and to stop posting about her to avoid a lawsuit.
MikeN
Looks like the story is here
https://www.hollywoodlanews.com/sabine-hossenfelder-physicist-lubos-motl-blogger/
https://web.archive.org/web/20190331190835/https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/03/hossenfelder-demands-10000-from-me.html
Intense war video [caution]
This video records a special Ukrainian unit, ‘Kraken’ storming a russian held town. The intense ground footage starts at 2:20 minutes. Most of it is a BWC [body worn camera] from the unit’s leader. It also shows using drones, artillery, armor, foot soldiers and medical evac, all as a single cohesive force. Again caution, it’s intense.
https://youtu.be/usRRNFXgRAo
Mike M. (Comment #217572)
“Trump’s works say he was a patriot acting for the good of the USA.”
I do not disagree. When he first ran, I was a Never Trumper. Then the Dems nominated Hillary and I held my nose and voted for Trump. But I was very pleasantly surprised. His policies were Reaganesque. Then Covid came and he became a daily afternoon soap opera caricature…beating his own drum. I went back to being a Never Trumper. Then the Dems nominated Biden and I held my nose and voted for Trump. But his actions after the election made me glad he lost. I am not glad Biden won mind you, just glad he lost.
That is an interesting way of describing Trump’s actions after the election. He was not passively moaning about the results, but rather was very actively attempting to change the results. That difference is what makes his actions actionable.
I should add that my definition of the establishment is the power base of the current intelligentsia which I view as leftwing statism. I further add that an individual who is out of favor with the establishment does not automatically become my beloved friend.
Trump’s disfavor with the establishment was and is two pronged. One is their reflexive reaction to anyone of influence they consider not in line with their current leftwing agenda and that includes a wide range of the political spectrum from moderate left to libertarian. The other is Trump’s many character flaws. It is those flaws that allowed the establishment to paint an unflattering picture of those in opposition to their agenda. Those ignoring or excusing Trump’s flaws and flawed actions reinforces that unflattering picture.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #217581): “Trump’s disfavor with the establishment was and is two pronged. One is their reflexive reaction to anyone of influence they consider not in line with their current leftwing agenda and that includes a wide range of the political spectrum from moderate left to libertarian. The other is Trump’s many character flaws. It is those flaws that allowed the establishment to paint an unflattering picture of those in opposition to their agenda.”
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That is almost exactly right. My one quibble is that the Establishment does not actually care about Trump’s character flaws other than as a lever they could use against him. As evidence, consider the fact that they do not care one whit about Biden’s manifest flaws of character, judgement, and intellectual capability. DeSantis does not display Trump’s flaws, but he will get the same treatment.
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I do not ignore or excuse Trump’s flaws so much as I accept them. The country desperately needed Trump and his flaws were part of the package.
MikeM
Maybe not. But many outside the intelligensia do and should care about them. By your definition, I’m well outside”intelligensia” and I do care that he’s an a**hat jerk.
I accept them. And I accept that they mean he should not be president and the GOP would be better of if he vanished into the mists.
No True Scotsman in spades.
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Trump vs HRC
Trump vs Biden
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The press is the enemy of the people.
Drain the swamp.
Build the wall.
Lock her up.
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If you have anti-establishment leanings in your personal ideology then who are you voting for here? You can do the purity thing and vote for neither which a few did but the rest had a rather obvious choice. Biden and HRC were exemplars of the establishment and there was one clear choice to vote against the establishment. One can quibble with the magnitude of Trump’s anti-establishment governance in practice, particularly if your form of anti-establishment includes a large helping of anti-corporate ideology.
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Yes, the fact that the establishment loathes Trump is a real measurement of his anti-establishment bona fides in the eyes of his adherents. The right people hate him and that is a feature in his electability. Other people such as DeSantis can do this as well but in a less clownish and destructive way.
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Many people like him almost solely because the establishment hates him. It is more than just Trump being a clown, he ridicules and embarrasses them, he brings out the worst behavior in the establishment … such as trying to bring down citizens running for office by any means necessary while they self righteously worry about “dangers to democracy”. Trump makes himself look bad, but he also makes everyone else look bad simultaneously. This divisiveness is not good for society so he needs to go, but the establishment has not covered themselves in glory here. When they feel threatened (by Trump?, ha ha) they turn toward ugly self preservation rather quickly.
Anti-establishment is a rather vague concept that people can project their own feelings upon. There is left and right wing anti-establishment. Some combination of rejection of the centers of power:
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1. Legacy media
2. Academia
3. Federal governing, particularly those centered in DC
4. Large near monopoly corporations
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Sanders and Warren could be considered anti-establishment if you center it on corporations, but they want to use other establishment powers to fix those alleged problems. It’s best to probably use other words.
I would add that the single greatest “anti-establishment” achievement of Trump’s tenure was one one he didn’t really care much about, and that is the Supreme Court. There have been multiple rulings constraining limitations of speech and regulatory power since Trump took office. Expansion of state power by executive fiat has not fared well lately and the prospects are dim for any future attempts.
Tom Scharf,
“Expansion of state power by executive fiat has not fared well lately and the prospects are dim for any future attempts.”
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True, the SC has given the Biden administration a few slap-downs.
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But I note most of those were for the most egregious, and clearly unlawful, administrative rules/regulations (covid means no evictions. What?!?). The conservatives on the Court (excluding Roberts, who is not much of a conservative) have let Biden slide in a number of instances where I thought they would instantly block acts of very dubious legality. It seems to me the Court’s conservatives still give enormous deference to the administration, something I thought would never happen. I expected the conservatives to reverse the odious Chevron deference in several regulatory cases, but they did not, instead substituting the much weaker “major questions” doctrine, but leaving Chevron in place. This has allowed the Biden administration to promulgate ever more costly and pointless regulations….. because they can’t be effectively challenged in court.
Happy New Year all!
Happy New Year (feliz ano novo) to you too mark.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217585): “There is left and right wing anti-establishment. Some combination of rejection of the centers of power:
1. Legacy media
2. Academia
3. Federal governing, particularly those centered in DC
4. Large near monopoly corporations”
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There is a coherent Establishment that pervades all of those, with a relatively uniform world view. Conflicts within the Establishment are in no way anti-establishment. Warren is definitely establishment; a full-fledged member of the uniparty along with Romney, Biden, Bush, Clinton, etc. Sanders used to have some anti-establishment cred, but he abandoned that when he shifted to supporting open borders and identity politics.
Happy New Year all.
Thanks for helping make 2022 bearable.
I like predictions rather than resolutions.
None of mine worked out last year.
Not uncommon.
So 2023.
Putin will live forever and the war will still be going for for the second of its 10 years.
Trump will be made the new head of the United Nations.
No severe earthquakes or weather events for the first 3 months of the year.
No Stockmarket correction and collapse.
Tesla and Twitter will combine to form a super tech monster doubling in value.
Resolution a second 70 year plan better than the first.
Enjoy 2023!
Happy New Year!
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No significant new variants all year! Ukraine still standing! James Webb Telescope! My dog is still alive! Woo Hoo!
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Edit: I’m counting sleeping 23.5 hours a day as still alive.
Happy New Year to all posters here. I resolve that Lucia’s blog will never become an echo chamber. Too many issues where disagreements can be found.
I predict that a poster here in 2023 will make a correct prediction. I also predict that it probably will not be SteveF or me.
Happy New Year everyone! May the GOP find their balls, or feminine equivalent, next year!
I suffered a system crash running this in my mind.. Thanks Ken!
Ken Fritsch,
“I also predict that it probably will not be SteveF or me.”
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Ouch.
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I predict McCarthy will agree to most of the conservative’s demands and become speaker…. even if not as all-powerful as Nancy Pelosi.
SteveF (Comment #217596): “even if not as all-powerful as Nancy Pelosi.”
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A speaker who is not all powerful? That could lead to (gasp) … democracy!
Happy New Year!! 🙂
I did ring in the new year and beyond. I have not done that for a while, so 2023 make it worth my while.
angech,
“Tesla and Twitter will combine to form a super tech monster doubling in value.”
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Donno. Tesla has a current stock price to earnings ratio of above 25. While that is much lower than the astronomical ratios from a year ago, it is still pretty high, especially considering that Tesla now has stronger competition from thraditional car makers. With Musk’s purchase of Twitter (and obvious conversion to a MAGA-inspired-pseudo-Nazi), Tesla has lost the lefty-woke-cache that motivated wealthy progressives to buy a grossly overpriced Tesla. Tesla makes good cars, of course, but gasoline powered polluters are still a lot more convenient to own and much lower in total cost.
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I don’t see Musk continuing his personal efforts on Twitter….. loss of lefty nut customers, willing to pay a fortune to signal their virtue, has already cost him tens of $billions in lost value of Tesla stock. I expect he will put someone in charge of Twitter who will keep the woke lefties from silencing conservatives, and stop talking to the FBI (and CIA, DHS, Dept of Defence, etc). Then he will turn his focus to Tesla and SpaceX, where it should be.
FYI: I booked a 17 day Australia cruise in March. I figured Australia would be in summer, US in winter, and who know what covid would be doing. December came and Australia had higher covid rates than the US but nowhere near their previous Omicron highs. This happened about 2 weeks before I left, ha ha:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/australia/australia-covid-majestic-princess-cruise-passengers-intl-hnk/index.html
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Oh well. Not going to wait forever for covid to resolve itself. 52 hour travel time to Bali Indonesia because of cancelled flights. 2 hours in a packed immigration line. Packed airplanes, transportation busses, etc. The ship was near capacity. The cruise line I was on had an on board PCR tester. We were tested the first night because of Indonesia requirements but not after that. The Asia cruise before ours on same ship was PCR tested daily, everyone. The protocols are in constant flux, but if you test positive you are confined to your room for 5 days. The incentives are a bit backwards because if you are symptomatic then asking to get tested may wreck your vacation with forced isolation.
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This cruise line had an isolation wing so that one person could be isolated if only one of two people tested positive, otherwise you both are isolated in your stateroom. No paxlovid on board (???) but you could get a prescription at next port.
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People definitely tested positive, the exact amount is not disclosed. 5 people were taken off the ship the second day by a hazmat crew in Indonesia but that was likely due to visa problems. Getting stuck in third world Lombok Indonesia with covid may not be ideal.
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The guy in the room next to mine ran the $300K PCR tester. He says they can test the entire ship (1300 people) in about 4 hours. Daily testing limited any outbreaks but he says they saw a few clusters related to excursion busses. Running the tester every day costs more than the fuel for the ship, so they are only testing if local requirements mandate it.
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Masking on the ship in most areas was minimal, about 10%, the crew was masked all the time. Crowded areas like the theater or travel busses was about 30%. It was an older crowd. By the end of the cruise there was plenty of coughing going on. Someone we talked to had a persistent cough but was PCR tested and tested herself every 12 hours with a rapid test and was negative. She had no idea what she had. Some people likely chose to not do testing. RSV and flu going around too. There was a medical helicopter evacuation and several people taken off by ambulance on port days but medical issues on cruises are somewhat routine even in the non-covid era. Someone had a stroke near my wife halfway through the cruise.
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Crazy packed airlines during holiday travel return after the US blizzard (over 21 hours on a plane) with people hacking away, screaming kids, etc.
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I got the bivalent booster about 4 weeks before the vacation and wore a mask in crowded areas but not other places. We were asymptomatic the entire time and it was a very good vacation. It was a good thing to get back out “after” the pandemic, although a little unnerving at times. Definitely worth it. I came out less paranoid, no heart attacks every time somebody coughs, etc. You are likely going to get exposed during this type of thing, and it is just the luck of the draw.
Additionally, the second day a guy we were talking to says “things are not going well, my wife tested positive for covid and I did not, and she does.not.have.covid! I tested her myself and she was negative”. I was going to explain that PCR testers were way more sensitive and the gold standard but decided by the crazy look in his eyes that this wasn’t going to be a productive conversation.
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Apparently to keep PCR costs down they test 8 samples at a time, then test individually only if the combined test is positive.
Tom, that was going to be my question after hearing all the negatives. Was it worth because of all the adversities you experienced made you a better man and your wife a better woman or were there some positive experiences you can share? Real question, since I am not naturally a cruise guy and particularly so after my wife passed away.
It was good for me to overcome some of my covid paranoia and move on. My wife is less paranoid then I am. We like cruises (done maybe 8 to 10 of them) but they aren’t for everyone, and they aren’t optimal for the covid era. With cruises you don’t have to pack and unpack your bags and the big hotel moves to different ports every one to two days. Personally I like sea days where it is just relaxing with the sea going by your room and reading books. The food is always good and port excursions are interesting. On board entertainment is always there and the service is good. We did sailing and snorkeling near the Great Barrier Reef, stayed at a resort in an Indonesian rain forest. We sailed into Sydney harbor which was great. From an engineering point of view how the large ships are handled at port is always interesting to watch. Sea turtles, dolphins. The Australian Zoo in Brisbane was really good. Seeing the largest coal export port in the world was very interesting to me, but maybe not other cruisers, ha ha.
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My FYI was mostly just to inform how covid is being handled in one example, it does read pretty negative but it was a positive experience really. The covid cloud is still there, but the rest of it overcomes that.
Tom, the point of your FYI was clear, I just needed some some cruise talk to counter the doldrums of a Midwestern winter.
Tom Scharf,
“We like cruises (done maybe 8 to 10 of them) but they aren’t for everyone, and they aren’t optimal for the covid era.”
Not for me my friend. I’d rather be beaten with a stick each morning. I’m spoiled I guess by cruising in the Bahamas on my own boat for weeks at a time, mostly at uninhabited islands. My aversion to cruise ships has nothing to do with COVID.
Went on a cruise out of Florida a couple of years pre covid in February. Took a short cruise to experience one and found the cost of the cruise was cheeper per day than rooms on the keys (??).
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I can now say I have been on 2 cruises, my 1st and my last.
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One of the better points of this vacation was the keys. We had Sunday free and decided to take a drive down the keys. Traffic congestion on Sunday in high season was expected so we were just going down a bit and then turn around,
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it was 55mph all the way down to the end and almost no traffic. Same on the way back. On the way back, a sign on a tavern explained the lack of traffic: Watch the Supper Bowl here today
Happy NY all. I have been doing my deep dive on autism this last week It go started over on CE by Josh and Willard remembering that I had made an anti-vaxx comment three years ago. I took the bait and went to battle for Wakefield and his retracted paper. I know all about the whole story now but can’t tell it tonight.
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I did develop my own hunch on general causation of autism based in part on a clue in Wakefield’s paper. And tonight I found a paper by someone who obviously came down a similar track and published what I think is the best paper I have read all week explaining the causes and logical treatments for ASD.
Here is a link to it for KenF or SteveF’s potential interest. I investigational story later.
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BTW, the week before last my wife and I spent a week in Turks and Caicos on the island with the international airport, Providenciales. It was paradise. I highly recommend it for a winter getaway if you can book a good flight and resort. Every day was 80-83F and sunny. No rain, just a steady breeze. No insects, no rodents (thanks to some very adorable feral cats you can adopt). Beaches were perfect. Snorkeling and diving was decent, though not as good as St Croix or some Bahamas cays I’ve been to. (I love those Bohemians you know :). Construction booming there, so prices should come down. Seventy-five percent of the staff are on special work visas from Haiti, Jamaica and other islands. Everyone is super friendly. Drove from end to end on the island and saw no poverty. They have no natural water source but now they have an airport, power station several towns and a brewery. What else do you need?
Tom Scharf,
“Running the tester every day costs more than the fuel for the ship, so they are only testing if local requirements mandate it.”
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Typical large cruise ships under way will use between 20,000 and 80,000 gallons of fuel per day, depending on the size of the ship (the thousand+ passenger ships will be near the upper end of that range). Even at $2 per gallon, that’s $40,000 to $160,000 per day or more. That seems likely to be more than the cost for operating a high throughput PCR machine.
“He wasn’t your typical little girl. He would play with other boys and the parents would say he was more of a boy than their own children. After lots of expressing his feelings and emotions with me, he decided that he wanted a new wardrobe so we set out to find our new style.”
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“He refused to shop in the girl’s section, but was too nervous to shop in the boys … After lots of expressing his feelings and emotions with me, he decided that he wanted a new wardrobe so we set out to find our new style.”
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“Once they closed the road, Charlie strutted out with Grammy and they faced the sidelines and after a short struggle, the cannon exploded with blue smoke and biodegradable confetti … Charlie jumped with joy as the crowd cheered him on. He couldn’t believe the love and support he was shown from the bystanders.”
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4 year old girl becomes a “boy”…
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So, “it’s okay for boys to like girl things and girls to like boys things” but if girls like boy things it probably means they’re a boy, and vice versa, and should receive damaging, possibly irreversible, intervention to make it so. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. This also brings into question the whole legal status of children with regards to decision making. If they can decide to engage in life altering surgery at 4, what other things should they be allowed to agree to? Legalized child abuse.
DaveJR,
Where is that from?
Lucia,
I suspect your question was more to encourage DaveJR to link rather than requiring an interested reader to search. Still, I find the story he refers to here:
https://nypost.com/2022/08/08/4-year-old-announces-hes-a-boy-in-transgender-gender-reveal/
So – if gender is fluid and socially constructed, why is reassignment surgery ever necessary or important or a good idea? That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around. From one side of their mouths activists would have us believe that biology has nothing to do with gender, and from the other they insist that children be ‘affirmed’ when they stumble onto the proposition that they undergo surgery or hormone treatment. It doesn’t seem to me that one can have this both ways.
Shrug.
Canada, but it’s not like you can’t find examples in the US. It’s just the complete flipping of the script without an eyeblink that gets me. “Gender norms are bad”. I can buy that different people like different things. Tomboys are hardly a new phenomenon. “This kid is behaving according to these gender norms so they must need to become this gender”? Well, kids think and do all kinds of crazy things. Do we turn them into cats when they feel close to the family pet? I bet that’s in the pipeline. It’s like it’s so far off the insane-o-meter, people pretend it doesn’t exist, meanwhile, the people who do protest are the ones doing the harm.
Mark wrote: “So – if gender is fluid and socially constructed, why is reassignment surgery ever necessary or important or a good idea?”
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Exactly. This is another script flipping example and, like most of the rest of this nonsense posing as legitimate academic inquiry, both statements are assumed to be true at the same time.
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I think the problem is that we assume that legitimate points are attempting to be made. I don’t think that’s true. The phrase “there is no truth but power” indicates a particularly nihilistic version of “the ends justify the means”. They will simply say whatever they need to achieve whatever aims they have in mind.
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The most surprising, and disturbing, part of the whole thing is the lack of any real pushback and that all institutions seems to be onboard.
The retail cost for PCR tests is $100 to $160, so assuming about $125 per test then $125 x 1300 (crew and passenger) = $162K per day. I suspect they are leasing the $300K machine and they have to pay for technicians and so forth, reagents, etc. Maybe a $100K of direct costs. I only heard this second hand so perhaps it is not accurate, but the cost is in the same ballpark. Big ships have an operating cost of about $1M / day not counting paying for the ship, so $100K is a significant expense that they would want to avoid.
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PCR testing every 3 to 5 days might be enough to contain outbreaks.
Once you get out of the touristy parts of Indonesia, there is some abject poverty to behold. Curiously these tend to be the most interesting parts. It reinforces that if you are going to be poor, best to do that in the western world.
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If you think the economic costs of shutdowns were hard in the west, they were devastating to these areas of the world that depend on tourism. Every tour guide talked about it like the economic black death, and many places were shuttered. No government bail outs there.
Every area of activism tends to have its fair share of militant activists. These people push the boundaries for the sake of pushing boundaries. They get internal social cred for being more militant than their peers. What is missing many times is pushback from the rational people. I think this has gotten worse because of the creation of shaming armies on social media. Most of these things die on the vine but not all of them.
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Places like the NYT never flag these outrageous episodes because they have an internal dogma that *everything* gender is up for grabs and that criticizing these militants is giving comfort to the enemy. It’s socially destructive.
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A new term I learned recently is “argument as soldiers”. This is common, everyone will recognize the tiring behavior.
“Politics is the mind-killer. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back. If you abide within that pattern, policy debates will also appear one-sided to you—the costs and drawbacks of your favored policy are enemy soldiers, to be attacked by any means necessary.”
I’ve been moonlighting as a link supplier this afternoon 😉
https://www.lesswrong.com/
Interesting looking site, I’ll peruse when I get a minute.
Ah yes, been there many times, it’s been around a long time. The Rationalist Community will teach everyone a few things. It’s full of brainiacs telling you all about the very real flaws in your brain and deconstructing argument tropes. The Motte and Bailey is my favorite.
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This blog’s comments is full of them, and probably has the most uncorrupted comment section around. The last few articles on media “lies” were interesting.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/
I can certainly identify with this comment from that page, but I’d swap China for global warming.
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“Rachel A. Lott
Dec 30, 2022
Scott, I heartily echo what you say here. In 2019 I tried researching every bit of news I suspected was fake. It took a TON of time. Most of it turned out as you’ve said – factually true, but out of context (or sometimes completely true).
As a logic teacher, I appreciate your pointing out that we mostly lean on our priors when we evaluate “fakeness.” But I’m also uneasy about that, for the following reason.
My priors took a hit from the mother of all reality bombs 3 years ago. I’d heard for years, from questionable sources, that the government in China was harvesting organs from political prisoners. The story went that the Chinese Communist Party was rounding up minorities & dissidents in concentration camps, picking out the healthiest, and killing them for organ transplants – with or without anesthesia. By “questionable sources,” I mean elderly Asian people holding cardboard signs on street corners in the major city where I lived. They’d walk up to people and try, in broken English, to get signatures to stop the organ harvesting. I don’t usually believe people with signs on street corners, so I always ignored them.
Meanwhile, I was making Korean and Hong Konger friends at the university I worked at. Eventually enough of them insisted this story was true that I had to check it out. A little press was trickling out – for example, the “Bloody Harvest” report by Matas, Kilgour, and Gutmann (overview here: https://thediplomat.com/2016/06/organ-harvesting-in-china/), followed by an international tribunal report (overview here: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests-organs-detainees-tribunal-concludes-n1018646).
But fact-checking media is a pain. “I’ll go straight to the sources,” I thought. I booked appointments at the university with (1) a former ambassador to China, and (2) a professor from mainland China who specialized in CCP operations.
The results were shocking. Both the professor and the ambassador said the same thing. The worst was true. The CCP had been murdering for organs for about 20 years. The CCP put dissidents in concentration camps at massive rates. The healthiest prisoners were usually religious, from a group called the Falun Gong (indigenous Chinese), though there were also lots of Uighurs and Tibetans and house Christians. And the governments in the West had known all along. Political leaders, mainstream media, international corporations – they all knew. Democrats knew. Republicans knew. Bush knew. Obama knew. Everyone in a position to know, knew.
“Why hasn’t anyone kicked up a fuss?” I demanded. “This is outrageous!”
Both of them gave the same answer. Business interests. China is the world’s biggest trading partner. If you make the CCP mad by airing its dirty laundry, it will cut off your business relationships and bank accounts, after stealing your trade secrets. If you tell the American public about it, they’ll get mad and refuse to buy Made in China, and instead want Made in America or something else both ethical and inconvenient for large corporations.
These revelations destroyed my world. They were much more outrageous than anything in the fake news. If our elites were actually Lizard People, they couldn’t have more scales between their toes. It wasn’t just one person like Obama or Bush making a cold-blooded decision to ignore things worse than Hitler. It was an entire bipartisan sub-culture at the highest levels of our political, corporate, and journalistic classes, cooperating with and actively suppressing news about horrors as bad as the Holocaust, for financial reasons.
I mean the comparison with the Holocaust. Numbers-wise, the CCP is almost on par with the Nazis. The UN estimates 1 million prisoners in concentration camps in Xinjiang alone (recent overview of the UN report here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights-un-idUSKBN1KV1SU). But the Nazis genuinely seem not to have gotten into cannibalizing the organs of their enemies. Also, they didn’t really get into torturing people to death slowly with blood and gore. They liked the clean efficiency of gas chambers and ovens. But the CCP is strapping live humans to a stretcher, conscious and without painkiller, while a surgeon cuts out a fresh lung.
And even now, in almost 2023, most of our Western elite are just shrugging and going along with this.
This totally explodes the reliability of our priors regarding geopolitical realities. We were kept in the dark about THIS for 20 years. How much else are we in the dark about?
Did the CCP intentionally create Covid in a lab and then leak it? My priors alone are no help here. Except to say: Why not? They’ve been doing worse things for 20 years. I’d have to actually research the issue to find out.
Did the US government collude with Big Pharma to produce a rushed-and-ineffective Covid vaccine that would make them a billion dollars but that might accidentally end up killing more people than it helped? Why not? They’ve been colluding with worse-than-Hitler for 20 years to make a billion dollars. My priors are of no help here. I’d have to actually research the issue to find out.
Did a small cadre of Democrats steal the 2020 election? Why not? Both Democrats and Republicans have been colluding with worse-than-Hitler for 20 years. Why would they suddenly get all fair-and-ethical over elections at home? My priors are no help here. Etc.
Has the media been running cover for all this? Why not? They’ve been running cover for worse-than-Hitler for 20 years. Etc…
So our priors are no help. But before getting too paranoid, I should point out that this is why I read your blog. It’s why your work here is so crucial. It’s not just that you do deep dives on these types of issues. You show *how* to do the deep dives. You’re a master of identifying your own priors (and ours) and then looking at the data from all angles. And we all learn not just what to think but how to do it. That skill is what we need more of, in our current messes.
Also – please get involved with ending organ harvesting in China. This is my cardboard sign on the street corner of Astral Codex Ten.”
Can a PCR test be economized for a large group? For example, split each sample into multiple portions, then you test 100 passengers in a combined sample.
Combining samples is what China does, the cruise ship tested 8 samples at a time. One assumes the bulk testing people do the same thing. Diluting the test by 8x reduces its sensitivity so that also has to be taken into consideration. They might combine samples as much for speeding up results as for reducing cost.
If a person is negative the useable bit, the reactive portion is still there waiting to be activated. It might be diluted a little bit with repeated testing over time or not react to the diluted 1 in a hundred level of 100 combined tests burnt otherwise seems a reasonable way to go.
Now why did I chuck out those expensive negative tests?
“Epstein’s sex trafficking was aided by JPMorgan, a U.S. Virgin Islands lawsuit says”
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https://www.npr.org/2022/12/30/1146221454/epstein-jpmorgan-virgin-islands-lawsuit
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AP: Biden arrives in US Virgin Islands to relax between holidays
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“Virgin Islands Attorney General Loses Her Job Days After Suing JPMorgan Chase in Connection with the Jeffrey Epstein Probe”
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/virgin-islands-attorney-general-loses-her-job-days-after-suing-jpmorgan-chase-in-connection-with-the-jeffrey-epstein-probe/ar-AA15THZZ
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I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. Biden would never get a prosecutor fired!
Steve: “I predict McCarthy will agree to most of the conservative’s demands and become speaker…. even if not as all-powerful as Nancy Pelosi.”
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I guess he’s wishing he did a little more now, or maybe a little less before! I don’t think we can fault you for not seeing that one coming though!
DaveJR,
I think he probably still becomes speaker, but a very weak one with very limited power to control the actions of committees and legislation, and subject to a recall vote at any moment based on the demand of any single Republican representative.
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FWIW, I think the extreme right Republicans are making a terrible mistake here. They are even nuttier and more self-defeating than the “squad” in the Democrat caucus.
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The sticking points seem to be: 1) a single Republican vote is all that would be required to bring a full vote on removing McCarthy, 2) no vote to be allowed on any legislation in less that 3 days from when the full text is available, 3) promises to conduct many specific investigations of the Biden administration, the source of COVID, etc., and 4) promises to impeach specific Biden administration officials.
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McCarthy will probably buckle; IMHO he should have acted way sooner to aviod this debacle.
The other sticking point is complete prohibition on McCarthy and his superpac of funding opponents to conservatives in “open primaries”.
It does seem like the dissident Republicans are overplaying their hand. I thought they would get some concessions and let McCarthy become Speaker. Maybe they really think they can force McCarthy out and get someone better. That does not seem likely.
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I am no fan of McCarthy. But this is ridiculous.
SteveF (Comment #217628): “The sticking points seem to be: 1) a single Republican vote is all that would be required to bring a full vote on removing McCarthy”
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The claim seems to be that had already been the rule, until Pelosi changed it.
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“2) no vote to be allowed on any legislation in less that 3 days from when the full text is available”
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That seems perfectly reasonable.
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“3) promises to conduct many specific investigations of the Biden administration, the source of COVID, etc.”
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Whether that is reasonable all depends on the specific investigations.
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“4) promises to impeach specific Biden administration officials.”
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Do we know that is the case, from the horse’s mouth?
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I am not entirely unsympathetic to the rebels. It seems that leadership has a history of “you must do as we say, because unity”. So I am not entirely convinced that the rebels are the (only) unreasonable ones.
Mike M,
I think the issue is that McCarthy wants to have some semblance of the power that Pilose (and many other speakers) used to advance her agenda, even when opposed by the extremists squad. He is not going to get that, or anything close. I hope he has the good sense to recognize that sorry fact. Not sure he does; failure to elect a speaker with a Republican majority is a terrible commentary on the GOP’s Which would be bad for the GOP and for the country.
Chickens coming home to roost.
A bigger win would have seen Mitch and McCarthy gone.
RINO’s all.
McCarthy would do nothing against all the abuses done by the Democrats in the last 4 weeks.
McCarthy caving in would lead to an all out Republican assault.
Not goi9ng to happen.
The Democrat sand RINO’s will vote together so no house for 2 months or more.
Poor old Trump pretends to support McCarthy, just like Jordon.
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Apropos King Coal.
The Australian Government is restricting the coal price to 125 4 a ton for electricity production alone meaning they will give the coal powered electrical stations a 750 million dollar subsidy as compensation.
And take it back out of the taxpayer’s pocket while pretending to provide cheaper electricity.
Needless to say the export price is not limited.
https://babylonbee.com/news/clowns-debate-who-will-be-elected-next-king-of-the-clowns
Sad but true.
I decided to try to put myself in the place of a Republican Congressman who represents blue collar folks who voted for Trump because he would take on both the Swamp and the Establishment types who have been selling ordinary Americans down the river. I am determined to do right by them.
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So who am I going to support for Speaker? The first question I ask is: “If this guy has to choose between the Swamp and my supporters, whose side will he take?” If the answer is “the Swamp”, then I am not going to want to support anointing him as King of the Clowns (or of anything else). Would that make me an extremist or a kook? I don’t think so.
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So what might get me to support King McCarthy in spite of that? One of two things, I think. The first would be significant limits on his power. The other would be if he has a reasonable plan for how he will use that power to achieve the goals that my voters would support.
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So could I count on McCarthy to oppose the swamp? I think the answer is no. Is he willing to accept strong limits on his power? Again, no. Has he presented a plan to get where my voters want to go? I’d be willing to bet that is yet another no.
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In that case, I don’t see why I’d support McCarthy for Speaker. The big argument to do so would seem to be unity. But if that unity would be in service to the Swamp, then screw that.
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I think I *might* be starting to understand the problem.
This sad circus will end up serving the swamp just fine I think. Let’s wait and see what comes of it. It’s fertile ground for all sorts of crappy outcomes to grow out of I suspect.
A bigger win would not have seen McCarthy and McConnell gone.
What is happening now is evidence supporting the conservative case for passing the omnibus budget in December. Some number of Republicans would have voted no, forcing the Speaker to go to Democrats for votes to pass a budget.
mark bofill (Comment #217636): “This sad circus will end up serving the swamp just fine I think.”
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Likely so. But if just going along with McCarthy has a 100% chance of serving the swamp; then if the rebels have a 90% chance of serving the swamp, it is worth it.
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Interesting observation from Steven Hayward:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/01/breaking-the-drama-in-the-house.php
I think it is all inconsequential, but a bit unseemly and not confidence inspiring. The House is primarily a blocking action against crazy progressive legislation at this point so in the end this doesn’t matter. Whoever is speaker (I don’t care for McCarthy one way or the other) will have a hard time controlling a slim majority. McConnell is fine by me, he has handled the Supreme Court expertly IMO.
There is no requirement you get a majority of the House to become Speaker. If about 10 (now 30) Democrats vote present, then McCarthy wins.
McCarthy tried to lock up the vote by suggesting that some members might vote for the Democrat if it’s not McCarthy. He produced a letter signed by about 50 members that they would not vote for anyone else.
His path to victory is to have a few members vote present, and see if the holdouts blink if the alternative is a Jeffries becomes Speaker.
MikeN,
“His path to victory is to have a few members vote present, and see if the holdouts blink if the alternative is a Jeffries becomes Speaker.”
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That is like wearing a suicide vest bomb and threatening to kill yourself and everyone else near you. I hope McCarthy does not go along with that plan. He needs to listen to what the 20 want and see what will change their votes. Doing that will mean the House is operating under a very different set of rules than McCarthy wants, but the alternative is to cede power in both houses to the lunatic left.
It seems to me like those supporting McCarthy never actually make the case for why conservative Republicans should support him. They just lob insults at the rebels, accusing them of being childish or of embarrassing the GOP or, best of all, of being “hostage takers”.
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MikeN (Comment #217641): “McCarthy tried to lock up the vote by suggesting that some members might vote for the Democrat if it’s not McCarthy. He produced a letter signed by about 50 members that they would not vote for anyone else.”
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Sounds like hostage taking to me.
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Here is maybe the second best argument I have seen for McCarty:
https://nypost.com/2023/01/03/jim-jordan-is-exactly-right-on-re-nominating-kevin-mccarthy-for-speaker-of-the-house/
They say that the Republicans need to put differences aside and do three key things:
Amen to that. So will McCarthy actually do those things? The rebels seem to doubt it.
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The best case I have seen for McCarthy has been made by Tucker Carlson:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/01/04/tucker_carlson_ideologically_agnostic_kevin_mccarthy_needs_to_make_these_concessions_to_win_back_gop_hardliners.html
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Carlson suggests two things that McCarthy could do. One is to release ALL the Jan. 6 files and video. The second is to put Thomas Massie of Kentucky in charge a committee to investigate what the FBI and other intel agencies have been doing to meddle in domestic politics. Maybe that would do the trick, maybe not, but the key point is that McCarthy needs to give the rebels something real.
————
More and more it seems to me that the real issue is not whether McCarthy gets to be Speaker. It is whether he gets to be Speaker on his own terms.
Tucker Carlson also has a refreshing take on the “embarrassment” of the battle over Speaker:
Yeah, Tucker’s spin is soothing, but it just looks like spin to me. I don’t see how it’s more ‘democracy’ than ‘oligarchy’ for our reps not to already be prepared and have sorted out who can win, who needs what to vote what way, and who is going to be Speaker. Show me the citizens who are voting in this situation, and show me who’d be disenfranchised if the GOP had it’s act together.
‘This is what it’s supposed to be’, my left buttcheck. Don’t care for gaslighting from the general media and it’s not any more palatable from Tucker Carlson. When is the last time this happened, if this is ‘what it’s supposed to be’.
Puhleeze.
McCarthy has lost the fourth round of voting, with his opponents voting for first term Florida Rep. Donalds.
Yeah, the party of Stupid is playing with fire here.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-floats-coalition-government-mccarthy-fails-win-house-speaker-vote
It’s like a frigging Monty Python skit. Except it’s not funny.
McCarthy operatives are said to be negotiating with Democrats to vote present and give McCarthy the minimum number of votes needed to win. Of course, that would only happen with rules changes most Republicans would oppose. It is a mess, and as far as I can tell, the republicans who are voting against McCarthy have neither a serious alternative nor even can articulate a clear message on what they want to end the nightmare. I predict a bunch of these yo-yos are going to be bounced in primaries in 2024.
I’m not sure splitting the government duopoly would be a bad idea, although (AOC squad + Trump fanboys) isn’t what I had in mind.
Steve: “It is a mess, and as far as I can tell, the republicans who are voting against McCarthy have neither a serious alternative nor even can articulate a clear message on what they want to end the nightmare.”
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So the agreed upon narrative would appear to be “McCarthy is the best and only option, and only an idiot would disagree”. Generic.
Steve wrote: “McCarthy operatives are said to be negotiating with Democrats to vote present and give McCarthy the minimum number of votes needed to win.”
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I see that worked out well for him.
DaveJR,
“McCarthy is the best and only option, and only an idiot would disagree”
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Please don’t try to put words in my mouth. I wrote nothing like that. Those who are opposed to McCarthy have a duty to explain clearly about what they want, and it can’t be “never McCarthy”. They need to publicly state 1) exactly what they want in the House Rules, and 2) an alternative candidate who actually wants to be speaker. They have done neither.
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SteveF (Comment #217652): “They need to publicly state 1) exactly what they want in the House Rules, and 2) an alternative candidate who actually wants to be speaker. They have done neither.”
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I am not sure that they have not done the first. It may be just that it has not made it through the media filter. This seems reasonably clear, although Ms. Peek presumably does not speak for the rebels: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/mccarthy-opponents-cause-house-chaos-raise-valuable-objections-republicans-reboot#&_intcmp=hp1op_3,hp1op
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As to the second, would the alternate need also to be someone who can get the votes? McCarthy is making sure that can not happen. I am not sure that they need an alternate since a viable compromise candidate can not step forward as long as McCarthy insists he can win. I *think* the rebels are willing to accept McCarthy subject to conditions.
Steve wrote: “Please don’t try to put words in my mouth. I wrote nothing like that.”
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I’m not. You were giving your impression of the situation based, presumably, on the picture the media are painting. I was just commenting on the picture. “As far as I can tell” may be rephrased as, “as far as they will tell.” I’ll accept it’s a mess, but I strongly suspect an honest accounting of what happened will only occur sometime after the event, as usual.
DaveJR (Comment #217654): “I’ll accept it’s a mess, but I strongly suspect an honest accounting of what happened will only occur sometime after the event, as usual.”
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Indeed. The picture being painted is that the rebels are the unreasonable ones. There may well be some truth in that. But it seems to me that the norm in both parties has become that “leadership” bullies the rank-and-file into toeing the line chosen by the party bosses. So the truth might be that the rebels are merely refusing to be bullied. That would put a very different spin on things.
You know what, disregard. Lucia, if it’s not too inconvenient, I request you delete my comment 217656.
I don’t understand why my party can’t select a Speaker. Maybe they have absolutely fantastic reasons and the rebels are epic heroes. Somehow I doubt it. But there’s nothing really more for me to say, except: Sooner or later we’re going to have to get around this impasse, and I don’t think this is inspiring a lot of voter confidence in the GOP.
Shrug.
mark bofill,
“How do you decide who is being unreasonable? What is your criteria there?”
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Good questions. No good answers so far. If those opposing McCarthy wanted to hold a press conference and list exactly what they want, they could do that. They haven’t. Who was being unreasonable would then be clear.
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“I just don’t like the guy”, when 90% of the caucus supports him, isn’t being reasonable. “I don’t want McCarthy supporting a primary candidate against me” isn’t being reasonable.
Mike M,
Presumably conservative Rep. Dan Crenshaw has enough information to offer an assessment of whether or not the 20 holdouts are being reasonable: https://news.yahoo.com/crenshaw-blasts-gop-holdouts-house-191338505.html
Rick Singer, Ringleader of College Admissions Cheating Scheme, Sentenced to 3½ Years in Prison
https://www.wsj.com/articles/rick-singer-mastermind-of-college-admissions-cheating-scandal-faces-sentencing-11672794289?st=hfyxkhbwtvc75ve&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“Mr. Singer, 62 years old, pleaded guilty in 2019 to four felonies, admitting to running a complex operation that arranged for parents to fraudulently boost their teens’ ACT and SAT scores and to bribe college coaches to flag the clients as recruited athletes, all but guaranteeing their admission to schools including Georgetown University and the University of Southern California. Payments were often funneled through Mr. Singer’s sham charity, allowing parents to take tax write-offs for the bribes.
Though he was at the head of a conspiracy that prosecutors say brought in $25 million and tainted an admissions process that was intended to be based on merit, Mr. Singer also served as a key cooperator in the federal case.”
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Yet another white collar “criminal” sentenced lightly. I expect armed robbery is really a crime that justifies stiffer sentences but there is a long list of elite criminal behavior (particularly financial crimes) that is not punished on a scale that reflects the scope of the crime.
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As far as I am concerned Sam Bankman-Fried robbed a million 7-11’s and should be punished with that in mind. Billions of difficult to trace assets were “stolen” after FTX went under and he may personally still have access to it, in which case the crime may very well be worth it. On top of this the media gushes over these people as if they were celebrities. They don’t treat these people like criminals.
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Dumb people rob 7-11’s, smart people create bitcoin cons.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217660)
January 4th, 2023 at 3:42 pm
Tom, you might want to add politicians to your list of those deserving jail time. If you add up their mistakes that the taxed (robbed) citizens endure in dollars it would be a very large number.
I think that many observers and the media get overly concerned that government may not be able to perform for a few days. I think the involved politicians on both sides of the isle are having a grand time doing what politicians do. Politicians and governments get much too much credit for being a reasoning body doing the work of the people.
I say let them eat pizza until it comes out of their ears. And oh ya, one should not worry about the 5 or so % of citizens who still believe what they read in Civics 101 and might be upset with the showcasing of politicians.
Ken,
I’m with you. I only wish they would burn the ballots after each vote– like they do for popes. Add that stuff to make the smoke grey when they haven’t picked anyone.
I also think some have assigned too much power to the Republican House. It would not matter whether the Republicans had a 50 vote majority and a god like majority leader. They will be limited to passing legislation that will be promptly shot down by the Senate or in the miniscule potential cases of bills that pass with aid of two democrats will be vetoed by Biden. The best outcome would merely be getting the Democrats to take a position on a bill that might make a very few squirm. If bipartisan legislation passes you can bet it will favor the Democrat left wing.
The best the Republican House can do is investigate areas that the Democat House ignored. The problem there is going a bridge or two too far and losing credibility. Ignoring the fact that they are not simply dealing with an opposition party but an MSM that is in bed with opposition will be done at their peril.
I’d like to see the House pass reasonable legislation supported by a solid majority of the American people. Then dare the Red State Democrats (a bunch are up for reelection in 2024) to vote no.
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But with a narrow majority in the House, it will be hard to get reasonable legislation past the hard-liners. And of course the Dems will be obstructionist.
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It probably does not matter since I have my doubts as to whether McCarthy would be smart enough to pass reasonable legislation even with a large majority. And I have no confidence that McConnell would hold his Dem colleagues feet to the fire in the Senate.
Lucia,
I think setting off one firework over the Washington Monument after each vote would be better….. a single loud boom with no speaker elected and a garish red/white/blue starburst if a speaker is elected. 😉
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The House is not going to get to pass much legislation. The only things they can do are refusal to raise the national debt without some modest concessions, and investigate all the things the Democrats have refused to investigate.
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Won’t matter much who is the speaker, but not being able to choose one makes Republicans look disorganized and irresponsible. They have had 8 weeks to figure this out and avoid the spectacle, but didn’t.
SteveF,
That would be a good variation of the grey vs. white smoke.
I think the pols have it right about what to do after every House leadership vote and appropriately so: order more pizza.
Probably the largest impediment for the Republican House on voting down large government spending bills will be the shame game that Democrats and the MSM will play in pointing only to those who would gain from the spending and not those who will lose and other potential unintended consequences of the bill.
This strategy has worked well in the past in expanding an already big government and lots of Republicans have been susceptible to getting weak in the knees on being shamed. The alternative of pointing to those who will lose and potential unintended consequences appears often times too complicated for most Republicans to attempt versus throwing in the towel.
I see the media already doing some shaming based on some government benefits (handouts) being delayed because of the delay in voting in a House leader.
Twenty Republican holdouts is about 10 percent of the Republicans voting. Manchin was a Democrat holdout and was 2 percent of the Democrats voting.
I think how a minority holdout effects the voting outcome is viewed is a matter of whose horse is being gored.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #217671): “Twenty Republican holdouts is about 10 percent of the Republicans voting. Manchin was a Democrat holdout and was 2 percent of the Democrats voting.”
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Nice comparison. And just as Manchin was the reasonable one among the Democrat Senators, I am beginning to think the holdouts are the reasonable ones among the Republican Representives. An indicator is that it seems like all the violations of Reagan’s Commandment have been coming from McCarthy supporters.
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As near as I can tell, the holdouts are not intransigently opposed to McCarthy becoming Speaker. They are opposed in general to a Speaker having the sort of power Pelosi had and are opposed in particular to giving Kevin McCarthy that sort of power. Seems reasonable to me.
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The holdouts want changes to procedures such as no omnibus bills, at least 3 days to read any bill, and the right to propose amendments from the floor. Perfectly reasonable. It seems that McCarthy has made vague concessions on those points but has dug in his heels as to any restraints on the Speaker’s power. Of course, that would mean that there would be no way to hold him to his promises. That seems to be the real sticking point.
Ari Fleischer after showing disgust for the Republican holdouts was asked on Fox what was wrong about going back to the rules before Nancy Pelosi’s recent reign in the House and particularly about the single vote to ask for a vote on leadership.
Ari says good question, but on further questioning said times have changed since Pelosi changed the rule. What a bullsh!tter you are, Ari.
Mike M,
“The holdouts want changes to procedures such as no omnibus bills, at least 3 days to read any bill, and the right to propose amendments from the floor. Perfectly reasonable.”
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Can you point to a formal list of desired changes from the hold-outs? I have seen nothing but hear-say claims. As I said before, the hold-outs have an obligation to tell everyone exactly what it is they want. So far, they have not, and until they do, I must conclude they are only being obstructionist, not constructive.
Tom Scharf,
“What a bullsh!tter you are, Ari.”
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Indeed. He is as dishonest and obtuse as the day is long, and should be ignored.
A must read paper on the Russian Federation as it moves into the future past the Ukraine war.
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It reminds me of the changes seen in the US by the federal government and its populations after the American Civil War. A somewhat weak nation changed into a world supper power due to the requirements in wagging this civil war.
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Wars can either break nations or supercharge nations.
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https://gilbertdoctorow.com/
Ed Forbes,
Zero interest. Russia will no doubt tend to be less integrated into the rest of the world in the future and more self-sufficient, at least in terms of high technology products. Russia will maintain enough international trade (fossil fuels, fertilizer, food exports, mineral exports) to have access to most (but not all) technology for their weapons systems.
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I don’t view this as a good thing.
Ed Forbes,
I started reading that long winded slog. It doesn’t seem to be a “must read”. Can you give us the “readers digest” version and reveal what you think the main points — and evidence in favor of them are? I mean, maybe there is some thought there, but it just has the feeling of a polemic with little thinking behind it. I’m sure it has some correct claims (e.g. “wars change things”). But I’m not really seeing anything really thought provoking enough to divert me to concentrate on it.
New year, new 70 year plan.
Will do some work in the U3A educational field adding a moral compass to the science, maths, philosophy and history currently offered by our volunteers.
I hope to knock up an essay or two on gambling pros and cons with some probability theory in it and then present them to our older members.
Based on gamekeeper theory!
Meanwhile I realised there are only 23 months left until the end of the world, I mean the next elections.
Not Ukraine.
Who needs TV script writers and Dallas when we have a real life Dallas and Texas Ranger and House of cards scenario playing out in real life.
Twitter files expose massive Nixon style corruption in DOJ.
Law enforcement agencies CIA, FB1I and DOJ swing into action to uphold the law.
Not.
“Readers Digest “ version.
Western policy has been to use Ukraine in a proxy war to “bleed” Russia with the intention of Russian domestic collapse and regime change.
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This policy has a very good chance of backfIring in a spectacular fashion. Russia may very well come out of this conflict much stronger domestically than it went in. Much as the US did after the American Civil War.
SteveF (Comment #217674)
SteveF, I think McCarthy should be asked what his plans are. He is obviously against the proposals that the holdouts have been bargaining with him. He evidently wants to follow Pelosi’s rules.
A chronic problem of the Republicans is that they are against the Democrats expansion of government when the Democrats are in power but when they are in power never seem able to reverse what the Democrats did when they were in power. That is what the WSJ got wrong or failed to mention in the editorial today.
Another paper worth reading
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“Cold War II
The U.S. is losing its economic advantage in a new era of global conflict”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/cold-war-2
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Another view of the same general idea as the previous Russian paper
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“But while high-flown ideological battles between Putinism and Western liberalism have often taken center stage, the outcome of the new global conflict rests largely on economic competition. In the last cold war, the American economic system proved stronger and more robust than the Soviet-style command economy. Yet, in a strange turn, since the end of the last cold war America has rapidly pivoted away from the industrial model that proved so successful in the 20th century. The U.S. elite have wagered on transforming the country into an information and services-based economy. China, meanwhile, has adopted the older U.S. model of state-private sector cooperation, in the process becoming the world’s manufacturing base.”
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SteveF (Comment #217674): “the hold-outs have an obligation to tell everyone exactly what it is they want.”
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It is not clear to me how that would be different from a non-negotiable list of demands. It is also not clear to me why the rebels should be expected to all have exactly the same objectives.
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Here is a good summary of what is at stake: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trimming-back-the-speakership/
DeVito also quotes an op-ed by one of the holdouts, Bob Goode:
The linked op-ed is largely about why Goode thinks that McCarthy is a poor choice for Speaker. It is not clear if his priority is unseating McCarthy or changing how Congress works.
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I very much agree with DeVito’s bottom line:
Most of what I have heard from the dissidents seems consistent with that. If most of them follow that advice, then the others will likely have little choice but to fall in line.
Ed,
That is some mighty fine turd polishing. The proxy war is to deter Russia from further wars of conquest, not for “Russian domestic collapse and regime change”, although Russia seems to be working harder at those goals than the west at the moment.
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A newly united NATO is expanding. Europe has pretty much figured out how to live without Russian gas permanently. Putin is globally ostracized. The Ukraine battle lines have barely changed in the grand scheme. Ukraine has fought the mighty Russian army to a standstill for almost a year using Soviet era equipment and a few NATO hand me downs. Russia is a technical leader in zero industries and is dismantling washing machines for military electronics.
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The brilliant Russian strategists decided to have a huge army New Years eve party next to an ammunition supply within range of HIMAR’s this week. Brilliant. I’m sure this was somehow part of the master plan to world dominance as well.
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China looks smart and is a real threat, Russia looks the exact opposite. China uses its strengths to grow stronger, Russia misuses what strengths it has and gets weaker. Russia is not China.
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The best thing that can happen for Russia is for Putin to accidentally fall out of a window. Otherwise this war may have a few silver linings in the long run but looks like a disaster all around today. One can much more easily dream up disastrous outcomes than good outcomes at the moment. If Russia prevails in Ukraine it may very well be a pyrrhic victory globally for them. We will see what the future holds.
~grins~
Almost, my curiosity is piqued enough to read.
Almost..
Ed
Lots of people like to call it a proxy war. But to Ukraine, it’s certainly a very real war. And to the extent it’s a ‘proxy’ war, it’s one Russia started. I mean… seriously…. the notion that it was the intention of someone other than Russia to start it is idiotic.
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Well… Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine does seem to have backfired. They don’t appear to have expected much in the way of push back.
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Perhaps things will come out less badly for Russia than it currently seems. But I think relative to Russians intentions when starting the war it’s pretty clear things are not turning out well for Russia.
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That that other ‘unexpected’ things may happen is true. Maybe Russian will come out “stronger”. If so, their starting this war to gain strength will not have been an utter catastrophe for them.
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But the idea that this is a war started by anyone other than Russia is just deluded.
SteveF (Comment #217674): “the hold-outs have an obligation to tell everyone exactly what it is they want.”
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Will this do?
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23400811-speaker-dear-colleague-final-12822
SteveF: “the hold-outs have an obligation to tell everyone exactly what it is they want.”
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I think it’s a reasonable assumption that McCarthy knows what he is being asked. And, as Mike M pointed out, there is no obligation for the holdouts to act as a block. In fact, it would be better for McCarthy if he could separate them.
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All in all, this is an embarrassment, but not much of one compared to the tyrannical rule by Pelosi and Dems voting as a terrified unanimous block for or against everything Nancy was for or against. It’s better that the rules of the road are straightened out from the start so voices will be heard and bills will be read before votes. They need to perfect a system to select the best ideas, not the ones presented by the most powerful and their financers.
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My hope is that McCarthy concedes to the demanded principles, but in exchange he demands a promise that this is the last time the caucus is tied up for ransom by a handful, and there will be consequences for either side for dishonoring their settlement commitment.
The Daily Wire is reporting that there is a split among the rebels between the Chip Roy group, who have an actual plan to get better rules, and a Never McCarthy group who won’t vote for McCarthy even though they have nobody else. My guess is that if McCarthy can win over the Roy group, the others will have little choice other than not voting and letting McCarthy win by something like 214-212.
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There are reports that McCarthy has conceded on restoring the motion to vacate the chair. I would think that would be the key item since it is the biggest concession for him and the biggest gain for the rebels, being that it gives them a way to hold McCarthy to account. So maybe tomorrow will see a conclusion (not a prediction, just a hope).
What do the following people have in common?
Answer, all left out to dry ( or will be shortly ) by the US.
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It’s dangerous to be an enemy of the US, but it’s fatal to be an ally.
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Zelenskyy of Ukraine
Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq
Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai
South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem,
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https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-ukraine-crisis-can-be-solved-206082
Biden gave a greenlight for Russia’s invasion, saying a small incursion would be OK, Putin has to do it.
If Putin hadn’t pushed to take all of Ukraine, and had just gone for the portions in the east with a recognition of independence rather than annexation, I think he would have gotten that just like Crimea.
Ed Forbes
If I’m not mistaken, you have been advocating leaving Ukraine out to dry. Now you are complaining the policy you advocate could be implemented.
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Might the policy you advocate be implimented? Sure. Especially because people like you are advocating it.
Mike M,
That document is the first time I have seen anything that resembles a rational position. Whether everything on the list makes sense is a very different question: seems they are demanding appropriations be used to force Biden to change policies, which would surely lead to government shutdown(s) and the USA defaulting on its debts.
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Even if that document could be used as a basis for negotiation, there are only a handful of signatories, and not nearly enough to get McCarthy to 213 or 214 (assuming pother holdouts would vote present), and there are five who have basically said they will not support McCarthy, ever. Putting 218 out of reach, and those 5 holdouts able to stop operation of the House indefinitely unless Democrats were willing to vote present….. very unlikely.
SteveF (Comment #217693): “That document is the first time I have seen anything that resembles a rational position.”
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And yet I was well aware of those positions. You can’t trust the media. It seems to me that Bret Baier is one of the best (if not THE best) ‘old school’ journalists working in America, but when he interviewed Rep. Roy he worked hard to try to get Roy to say something stupid. Roy refused and stayed on message, which he delivered quite clearly. Then Baier and Brit Hume (also old school) “analyzed” Roy’s comments, largely ignoring what Roy said and focusing instead on the words they wanted to put in his mouth. And that was main stream ‘journalism’ at its best.
SteveF (Comment #217693): “Even if that document could be used as a basis for negotiation, there are only a handful of signatories, and not nearly enough to get McCarthy to 213 or 214”.
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That is a legit concern and worries me. The 7 signatories combined with those who have previously voted for McCarthy would get him to 210. If that happens, then I think that at least some of the remaining 12 would accept the win. But I can’t be sure of that.
lucia (Comment #217692),
In fairness to Ed Forbes, he has been advocating against stringing Ukraine along. I agree with him on that. Where I disagree is with his claim that leaving Ukraine out to dry is inevitable. But I fear that he might be right.
MikeM
By cutting them off. Which is hanging them out to dry. You are trying to make a distinction between things that are no different from each other.
Ukraine is an ally of convenience, everyone knows this, especially Ukraine. There is a 100% chance it infuriates them privately, but they put a brave face on it because they must to survive. They will simultaneously never forgive us for not giving them more arms and never forget that we gave them some. The Russians were once an ally of convenience in WWII, and everyone knew it was transactional then as well. The goals were achieved anyway. Everyone in the Middle East is a transactional ally of convenience to everyone else.
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Sometimes these arrangements work out for the long term, sometimes they don’t. Most of our current long term allies we have been fighting with at one point or another. Japan is one our strongest allies now and my history book tells me it wasn’t always the case. The UK is one of our most trusted allies but I recall a very bitter revolutionary war.
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Ukraine is paying a very steep price but they are primarily doing it for their own interests of self determination, fighting off an oppressive country trying to subjugate them. Where this leads is unknown. If they survive then it seems a closer economic relationship with the EU and informal protection from NATO is likely.
Tom Scharf,
Followed by the war of 1812.
Exactly. And they know perfectly well that the arms may not flow forever. (As you pointed out.) No one has claimed they will flow forever. We are not “stringing them along”.
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Things may go very badly for Ukraine. Heck, things were already going to go badly the moment Russia decided to invade. The option of “things going well” in the Ukraine was taken off the table by Russian when Russia invaded.
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People may debate whether the Holodomoar was a “genocide”. But the Ukrainians certainly remember that during the Holodomor Russians shipped grain grown in Ukraine to Russia while Ukrainians starved. And a higher fraction of the Ukrainians died for want of the food they had grown. And beyond that, the lowered general yields was attributable to Russians policies. So for them, the Holodomor was a double whammy- Russian bad policies caused a crisis in the first place, the Russian siezed things from Ukraine to reduce the effect on Russians making it worse for Ukraine. And we can be pretty sure they would do that again. Because Russian doesn’t consider Ukrainians to be fully Russian. They see them as vassals.
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Ukraines do not want to be a vassal of Russia again. They know being a vassal of Russia is not a good outcome. And they know Russia doesn’t see them as “Russian”— and did not see them as “Russian” in the past. And how Russia treats vassals is something Ukraine remembers well.
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We aren’t stringing them along. They are fighting for themselves.
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lucia,
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 when it annexed Crimea. Thanks to Obama’s feckless response, blankets and MRE’s, a further incursion was guaranteed. Putin was probably surprised that Biden was more combative than Obama, especially after the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. It also helped a lot that the Russian army was nowhere near as competent as Putin had been told it was and the Ukrainians were much more competent and motivated than anyone expected.
McCarthy has reached 214 votes, with 6 holdouts and 2 Republicans absent (medical issues). One of the 5 “Never McCarthy” votes actually switched to support McCarthy, if the two absent representatives return and McCarthy gets two more holdouts, then he gets the gavel….. but that could be several days away.
Putin also believed he had the EU over a barrel with natural gas supply. The EU was moving towards green energy. Putin had a boatload of aging Soviet equipment that was rapidly becoming obsolete. He may have thought there was never going to be a better time. The way he was constraining gas supply in the months before the invasion implies this was a plan in the works for quite a while. It was the best time to act, it just wasn’t a wise move. He miscalculated Biden and the EU. Now that he has put himself in this corner there is no way out except for a military victory that he will sacrifice almost anything for (except his own hide). This is not likely to end well for anyone.
SteveF (Comment #217701): “but that could be several days away.”
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Indeed. Or it could be that the holdouts wanted one last chance to spit in McCarthy’s eye.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217702): “He miscalculated Biden and the EU.”
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And he REALLY miscalculated Zelensky and the Ukrainian people.
Yes, Putin really underestimated Ukraine, as did most of the world.
For those interested in a more tactical view of the ground war in Ukraine, this one is pretty good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqYOmY12YHU
Tom Scharf
No one anticipates balls of steel combined with some advance planning and brains.
Congratulations to Speaker McCarthy!
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And to representative government.
Ron Graf,
I see government shutdowns in the future.
There will be shutdowns if the Dems decide they want shutdowns. The House will pass appropriation bills that the Dems don’t like. Then the Senate and Biden will have to decide what to do. It will be interesting.
Mike M,
We might hope the Dems in the Senate will compromise with the House, but I doubt the many ideologues running the administration will. Shutdowns seem to me more likely than not. But we will see.
Interesting that the Republicans nearly came to blows when the holdouts (apparently) reneged on a done deal on the next to last vote.
While I will never trust politicians or make one my hero, I see the McCarthy ordeal as one of mainstream Republicanism that appears to believe that doing business as usual is somehow going to negate the leftward march of government.
Today’s WSJ editorial appears to have its nose out of joint by way of setting spending limits that might apply to its holy attachment to ever increasing defense spending and that the US remains the world policeman.
I see nothing inherently wrong with what the holdouts proposed and in fact see it as policy that should have been proposed by the whole of the Republicans going into this congress. Whether they are sincere in their mission remains to be seen. After all they are politicians as are the McCarthy branch of the party – with the exception that that branch has not, initially at least, spelled out a policy differentiating them from the Democrats.
If the Republicans become the party of the 1950s/1960s where the motto was we will all get along for the sake of good governance even if it means we remain the minority party without a political philosophy, then I believe the show is over for limiting government power.
The western narrative that Ukraine is “winning “ is starting to crack.
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https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russia-rebound-moscow-recovered-military-setbacks
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I’m amazed at your summary of that article.
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I would have suggested the author is saying “Russia maybe might not really be as widly incompetent as they seem.”
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I love this gem
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I’m also amazed you think the western narrative ever characterized the war as “Ukraine is ‘winning'”. That’s never been the narrative in the west so it could hardly have “cracked”.
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The article does explain that the war has dug in and this is likely going to be a long slog for both sides. The article is hardly unique in saying that– it’s pretty much the main stream position now. The previous narrative was, “Oh, my gosh. How can Ukraine not be annihilated in less than a week?” Which turned into “…. not annihilated in a month.” Which turned into….
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But I’ve never heard a “wester narrative” that says Ukraine is winning.
“Ron Graf, I see government shutdowns in the future”
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SteveF, Is that a bad thing? Seriously, I agree, but if you are blaming the conservatives that are trying to bring back fairness and openness to the House in the aim of regaining some measure of fiscal responsibility, then I disagree. My finger points to the legacy media for the shutdowns by always blaming the GOP for them even when Nancy is caught trying to jet out of town during the standoff.
Is anyone against:
1) Having 3 days to read a bill before voting on it?
2) Having bills be open for the congress at large to be able to offer and vote on amendments?
3) Having bills limited to single issues rather than bundled into massive pork-filled take-it-or government shut down ultimatums?
4) Having a Frank Church-type committee to investigate the domestic meddling of the USIC?
5) Having a committee propose a bill on congressional term limits?
Ron Graf,
I support all except the last. It can’t possibly pass, and is just a waste of everyone’s time… not to mention distracting from measures that matter.
They might just all agree to forget about #5. 😉
I think there was also something about not voting any more to raise the debt limit. I’m not sure if they will remember that pledge or maybe comply be having to erase the silly limit thing.
Ron Graf,
Wouldn’t #5 require a constitutional amendment? If yes, that’s an awfully high hurdle.
(By the way, on #5, I would prefer any term limits be applied to consecutive terms, not total number. I wish the Presidential one was “no more than two consecutive terms”.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-appeals-court-strikes-down-ban-bump-stocks-2023-01-07/
Hurray!
I’ve never shot with a bump stock, but based on common sense and what I read they’re a fun but mostly pointless gimmick. Apparently the bounce effectively ruins one’s ability to aim well using bump stocks. STILL, I will say I’m glad about this. The ATF overreached, pure and simple, at Trump’s prompting. I’m glad this has been rectified.
Maybe the ATF will back off Rare Breed Triggers which I suspect might actually be a useful and effective implementation of the bump stock principle that might not ruin the operator’s ability to aim. One can hope! ~grins~
Personally I don’t fear a government shutdown that much. It will have negative side effects and the media will cover it like the apocalypse but this is the one tool the legislature has against the administrative side to force action. It shouldn’t be used very often and the precedent will likely lead to repeated use for more and more trivial things. My guess is it won’t be used responsibly but we shall see.
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It is noted that the continued selection bias in the media is laughable. They will have live coverage of the House leader selection for a week (Republicans in meltdown!) but are doing their best to hide the fact that Biden is visiting the border and covering any immigration issues (unless it is Trump has kids in cages!). I realize this is old news but the legacy media is so lazy in their coverage now that it seems they aren’t even minimally interested in recovering some credibility.
While I judge that Lucia is probably correct on what is required for term limits and the degree of difficulty, I believe that limits are sorely needed. One of the early ideas behind service to the nation vis a vis government elected offices was that it was more a duty that one would serve for a short period of time and then get back to a real life job/career. Serving was to be considered sufficiently onerous to make if much less than what the server would like to do for an extended period of time.
That idea was a good one that ought to be reconsidered in light of what we see in Washington today – and some call a swamp. A swamp connotes stagnation and rotting from that stagnation. Besides the mess created by life in Washington for politicians serving for any length of time by divorcing them from the realities of life outside Washington, there is the matter of the (too) many advantages in elections for the incumbent.
There are arguments that term limits deny the constituents the opportunity to vote for term limited candidates, yet administrative offices are mostly all term limited.
The longer a politician is in Washington with great power over individuals and organizations, the greater opportunity for the politician to become influenced by special interests. Actually the ideal situation for change would be a one term limit where the candidates would have to commit upfront to what they would do if elected and then be held to those promises by some legal force and/or contractual agreements.
Even if such proposal as the ones I have noted here appear impractical on the face they could initiate some useful discussions.
A study that came out in November shows that natural immunity is 2X more protective against covid reinfection than the vaccine. Two places cover the study here, just the first two showing up in Google.
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https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/01/02/vaccination-or-acquired-immunity-which-better-16771
“Six months after the index date, the cumulative infection rate in the vaccinated was 6.7% … more than twice the rate in those with previous infections at 2.9%.”
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The forced narrative is maintained:
“Large, real-world study finds COVID-19 vaccination more effective than natural immunity in protecting against all causes of death, hospitalization and emergency department visits”
https://www.regenstrief.org/article/real-world-study-finds-covid-19-vaccination-more-effective-than-natural-immunity/
“This large population study of the entire state of Indiana should encourage individuals everywhere to get themselves and their children vaccinated and not rely on natural immunity. While the incidence of COVID infection was higher in vaccine recipients (6.7 percent) than in individuals previously infected (2.9 percent), the vaccine protected against severe disease while natural immunity did not confer the same benefit”
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Now this is another lesson in mysterious spin, why use a proxy for serious covid illness (*all cause* ER visits, etc.) when you can use a direct measurement? Most likely because the narrative must be maintained. The media reports are silent on why there are not direct covid illness stats. Maybe they are buried in the data.
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One explanation is that the unvaccinated are not as likely to be as healthy in many ways as the vaccinated. Another is that the unvaccinated don’t report their infections.
Another is that covid illness on reinfection is more severe in those with natural immunity than the vaccinated. This is implied but it is not explained why this would be the case beyond what appears to be routine vaccine evangelism (as is noted in the other comments in the articles). Better against infection but worse against serious illness needs an explanation.
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Framing bias. If vaccination held the advantage in reinfection then that would be highlighted in the headlines.
Ken: “That idea was a good one that ought to be reconsidered in light of what we see in Washington today – and some call a swamp.”
Term limits, if by some small chance get considered, need to include a prohibition on those coming from an industry that they will be in a committee regulating of creating bills on. Similarly, going out, the should be barred from employment in such industry or agency that they were directly involved with governing on committees. I know this is asking a lot but if you want to reduce the swamp then that’s what’s needed. Also, there needs to be a firewall between any intelligence agencies and political candidates. Sorry Pompeo.
Of all people Joshua supplied me this link to Carl Bernstein in 1977 exposing the CIA’s connections to US media and academics. https://web.archive.org/web/20131025035711/http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
Do we need the CIA? Real question.
Regulation (where it is needed) requires good information to make good policy. Industry should get their say in how regulations are created. For example they have good information on how costly a policy will be or whether there are cheaper alternatives that are as effective. Lobbying and having “experts” on the committee is not necessarily a downside. Industry already ghostwrites a lot of legislation so that influence is not going to go away with simple bans. Where expertise turns into improper influence and corruption is a gray area. The funding of election campaigns by industry is likely not a good type of influence but banning that is unlikely in the near term.
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The CIA is likely the source of most Russian and Chinese intelligence. They absolutely knew Russia was going to invade Ukraine, know their plans, and know a lot about their execution of the Ukraine war. I think we need intelligence agencies and surveillance capabilities to be aware of emerging threats. The other countries have the same abilities for the same reasons.
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I’m reading a book on the history of the Guadalcanal campaign against Japan in WWII. You would not believe the lack of situational awareness that plagued both sides. I’m not just talking about the inability to determine what the other side was doing, but the US didn’t even know what their own side was doing many times. Friendly fire was a big problem as was not knowing if the people firing at you were the enemy or not. This had locally catastrophic outcomes over and over. Needless to say you need to know what is going on to be most effective and the other side isn’t going to let you know if it disadvantages them.
Ron Graf,
“Having bills limited to single issues rather than bundled into massive pork-filled take-it-or government shut down ultimatums?”
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This actually reminds me of engineering work for a big chemical company many years ago. The company management was paid a substantial annual bonus based on net cash flow, so they always resisted even desperately needed capital projects. When a “must approve” capital project came along (eg EPA mandated structural change in the process) everybody wanted to make that “must approve” project a pack mule to carry a bunch of other unrelated projects (well hidden, of course) that would otherwise never get approved.
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A bit like the omnibus approach to the budget.
Ken Fritsch,
“While I judge that Lucia is probably correct on what is required for term limits and the degree of difficulty, I believe that limits are sorely needed.”
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Sorely needed or not, it would require a constitutional amendment that a) would never pass both houses with a supermajority, and b) would neve get approval among a supermajority of states. The proposal is a waste of everyone’s time. I don’t see it is all that sorely needed either. Yes, representatives and senators become embedded and (often) corrupt, but partially balancing that is there is always some increase in competence with experience. A freshman congress-critter is certainly not as capable, on average, as someone who has multiple years experience.
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What I think really is needed (and could plausibly happen) is a reduction in overall Federal power/reach. That only requires a term or two with a non-swamp-friendly Congress and President. Cut funding for the bureaucracy by 3/4 across the board, and the evil they can do is similarly reduced. Not likely, I know, but a damn site more likely than a constitutional amendment limiting terms in Congress.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217728)
January 8th, 2023 at 1:24 pm
Tom, I agree that with all the regulation coming out of Washington, corporations are compelled to provide input by way of lobbying. The answer to a number of critics of lobbying is to reduce government regulation. Regulation with impunity is requirement for authoratative facism.
I disagree with your take on the CIA. You and I do not know what the CIA knows and we cannot judge their competence. They were totally wrong on over estimating the USSR economy. Totally opaque government agencies are the makings of an authoritative government.
Not aimed solely at you, Tom, but in order to make changes to government one has to start serious discussions of changes that are not immediately going to be implemented. The left has been very good at starting with those discussion and at some time in the future getting the thinking behind it implemented. The Republican right has been hindered by half way measures and not talking about ideas that they feel cannot get immediate approval. In fact that attitude has hindered making changes to implemented ideas that could readily be shown to be failures.
Steve, I totally disagree with you on this one. Some of the most incompetent and out of touch politicians I have observed are the ones who have been there the longest. What would be the best alternative for someone who might find it difficult to be a success in the real world? That would be the make-believe world of the life long politician.
Here is my “term limit” proposal.
If you hold public office, you are not permitted to solicit contributions. Doing so would be deemed equivalent to soliciting bribes. You would not be permitted to have any communication in any form with political action committees. You could accept anonymous contributions, but with a strict limit on the maximum size.
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Good, effective officeholders will be able to get re-elected. Others will quickly fall by the wayside.
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In case it is not clear: If you don’t hold office, rules will be similar to what they are now.
Mike M. (Comment #217733)
January 8th, 2023 at 5:39 pm
Mike, that would be a Constitutional free speech issue. I do not agree with that approach at all, although there are 3 ladies on the Supreme Court who would probably agree with it.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #217734): “that would be a Constitutional free speech issue.”
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I don’t see why it would be. It does not apply to private citizens, it only applies to office holders. It does not limit their speech; it only sets limits on soliciting bribes (er, raising money). The government already sets limits on that.
Mike M,
The SC has walked back political contribution restrictions pretty consistently for a while. I doubt your proposal would ever survive judicial review. BTW, office holders don’t sacrifice their rights when they are elected.
Getting elected costs a lot of money, it has to come from somewhere. Taxpayer funded elections was one proposal, but I think the current SC is never going to allow eliminating people’s (corporations) speech (money) related to elections. We could potentially put up a wall to eliminate direct contributions, it may not be workable.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217737): “Getting elected costs a lot of money”.
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But getting RE-elected should not cost a lot, at least if the officeholder is doing a good job and serving his constituents.
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An incumbent has a massive built in advantage just from being the incumbent. It costs a lot to overcome that. But incumbents also have a massive fundraising advantage. All they have to do is to provide value (influence) for money. That makes it hugely expensive to challenge incumbents. So incumbents are nearly invincible and huge amounts of money are spent on elections.
I agree that term limits will be impractical to implement. Also, they deal with the symptom and not the root of the problem, which is corporate capture or too much power brokering and too little research and composition of toward solutions.
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My proposal would be to create a CongressTube video website that is limited to elected members and primary winning candidates. The pre-primary should have its own site. The difference between this and Youtube would be the lack of spoof and amateur pundit videos. Everything on the site is debate and presentation by people that have won election. The site would be a place where viewers could show their support by comment accompanied by a contribution. If you have $5 you can make a comment. The $1000 comments would and should get more attention. In this way the candidates get survey feedback and funding at once. This should greatly increase popular donation and would hopefully replace the fundraising by outrage spam.
A ban on election ads attacking the other guy.
DaveJR,
Some politicians merit attack. Those attacks will never be limited.
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When a married Governor goes AWAL and his staff says he is “walking the Appellation Trail”, when in fact he is in Caracas with his Venezuelan girlfriend, he is going to be subjected to attack. And IMHO deserves it.
That should have been ‘Appalachian’, not Appellation. Sometimes spell-check is not your friend.
I agree that most of what has been suggested here by posters– and that includes me – is aimed more at symptoms than causes. In my view the cause is very simply that government is too big and invasive, and the difficult task is to keep attempting to pare it down. It is not all bad looking at symptoms as long as the root causes are spelled out.
Politicians and government agencies love the situations where they can wield power through legislation and then when things go wrong, they have some entity in the private sector to blame. A prime example was the Federal government contracting out the dispensing of funds to companies for workers wages on a fast-track basis during the Covid-19 pandemic. Not unexpectedly under those circumstances those funds were wasted on unintended areas of compensation. Now the politicians can blame the contracted bodies and keep the fingers of blame pointed away from them. Going deeper into root causes would indict the governments for shutting down the economy that caused this supposed need in the first place. The housing mortgage crisis is another example of this. A friendly media helps protects the politicians in these instances and even convinces so-called conservatives to help point the finger in the wrong direction.
An example where the government has been more directly involved is the student loan fiasco. There the political policy is to ignore the government’s role and not point to the fact that loans allowed colleges to inflate student expenses above the general price inflation rate. It would be easy to blame the educational system for taking full advantage of this government program (it is not in this case since the current intelligentsia does not want to criticize its best conduit for its ideas) but the root cause would remain with the government program.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #217743): “I agree that most of what has been suggested here by posters– and that includes me – is aimed more at symptoms than causes. In my view the cause is very simply that government is too big and invasive, and the difficult task is to keep attempting to pare it down.”
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That is exactly right. And I say that as someone who is NOT a libertarian.
Oopsie of the day: Guy butt dials 911 while playing Rainbow Six Seige
and they hear him say “I killed two people.” Fortunately, the response appears to be substantially more measured than raids on Trump associates.
SteveF (Comment #217736): “office holders don’t sacrifice their rights when they are elected.”
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Sure they do. There are restrictions on the political speech of government employees. There are restrictions on the employment that some former government workers can do, including some that apply to former Congress Critters. There are restrictions on the gifts that officeholders can accept.
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I do not see much difference between soliciting campaign contributions and soliciting bribes. I am pretty sure the Constitution does not make such distinction.
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It would probably be necessary for any law to be clearly focused on solicitation rather than campaign spending, which would limit the utility of my proposal as a form of “term limits”. But that is fine.
Congress Critters spend a great deal of time soliciting campaign contributions. That is especially so if the Member wants to be a part of “leadership”. Both Pelosi and McCarthy got to be Speaker in large part due to their ability to raise prodigious amounts of campaign cash for their parties.
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There is an obvious problem with that. But there is a less obvious problem that I think is possibly worse.
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Ask yourself what type of person would be willing to spend many hours every day calling or meeting with rich people to ask them for money. Now ask yourself if such people are likely to be selflessly dedicated to the public good. I think the answer is obvious.
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Under the circumstances, it would be astonishing if Congress were NOT dysfunctional.
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p.s. – I am not saying that people who are willing to take a fund raising job are bad people. I am saying that I don’t want to be governed by people who are willing to make a career of doing that.
Ed Forbes, it looks like Soledar is falling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmpY3JSHtpo&ab_channel=AlJazeeraEnglish
If Putin can hold Soledar and force a withdrawal from Bakhmut by Ukraine, and if I were him I would then make a significant noise for negotiations. With NATO opening up more to giving heavier weapons I do not see time being on Putin’s side. He needs to find the least bad exist from his mess ASAP.
I think the last month’s assault was their full out offensive and Russia is near its high water mark. If Putin can absorb into Russia all land controlled before the invasion as a recognized new border he could claim victory.
I think it would be a victory for NATO that Russia paid such a heavy price that it would certainly be their last expansionist effort. It would also give the US time to start preparing for Taiwan’s defense. Will it play out like this? Probably not. I predicted that Putin would not invade after NATO membership was pulled from the table for Ukraine, which Biden was unwilling to do.
Dec 9th 22: “White House DENIES being involved in Twitter censorship after Musk’s release of files: Karine Jean-Pierre insists there was no collusion with the ‘private company’ after suppression of Hunter Biden laptop story”
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11522475/White-House-DENIES-involved-Twitter-censorship-Musks-release-files.html
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Jan 10th 23: ‘We were censored by the White House’: Tucker Carlson slams Biden administration after lawsuit reveals it pressured Facebook to censor him talking about vaccines
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“Court documents released as part of a lawsuit against the Biden administration for allegedly colluding with social media executives to suppress stories revealed that the White House’s director of digital strategy emailed Facebook monitors about a video in which Carlson debated the efficacy of the COVID vaccines.
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The director, Rob Flaherty, also pressured Facebook to ‘reduce’ the availability of the story as it worked to tamp down on what it deemed to be ‘misinformation’ about the vaccine, Carlson said on his show Monday night.”
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11617803/Tucker-Carlson-slams-Biden-administration-lawsuit-reveals-censored-show.html
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Can you imagine how this administration would be fairing if it got the Trump treatment? I would love to see the people responsible for cataloguing Trump’s “lies” apply the same methodology to Biden. I’m pretty sure he has Trump beaten in both quantity and severity. They come so thick and fast it’s impossible to keep up.
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There is so little accountability, they don’t even bother making up excuses, they just tell you it never happened.
MikeM, I am all for limiting the power of politicians in all manner within the realm of protecting individual rights of all involved. I, however, do not know how you would handle the situation whereby individuals and organizations spend large sums of money on their own initiative to spell out why they think certain ideas (that would include those pertinent to an election campaign) are good or bad. In my view those actions fall very much under constitutionally protected speech or at least should.
There is also the consideration whereby the MSM is obviously biased to the left and their freedom of speech is not and should not be infringed. Private groups should be allowed to garner whatever resources they judge necessary to counter and answer that bias.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #217750): “I, however, do not know how you would handle the situation whereby individuals and organizations spend large sums of money on their own initiative”.
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I would not want to do that. To try would surely be unconstitutional.
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But I think we can and should prohibit office holders from soliciting contributions.
The government can express an opinion about things it considers “fake news”. It cannot suppress the opinion of others or have private actors do the same in its stead. What is happening now is a gray area, there is no specific threat of retaliation by the government for a private company not doing its wishes.
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It is arguable that there is an implied threat of government regulation for not doing its wishes. This is not an obvious case. In the event a case is brought against the government and the case is won, it is not at all clear what the punishment would be. In a Facebook case recently the only outcome was people’s accounts were restored. This is a very small price to pay by the government for their illegal activity. As long as the the punishment is small, there will be little incentive for the government to change its behavior.
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At the very least, all communications between social media companies and government agencies should be transparent.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-eases-rules-for-income-based-student-loan-forgiveness-11673322971?st=y8x27ic9nyhtvd0&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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“Income-driven repayment plans were designed to help lower earners borrow for college, but few have been able to use them effectively because of technical problems and onerous amounts of income-verification paperwork. If enacted, the proposed changes would provide qualifying borrowers with significantly more-generous options that could leave them debt-free sooner, while paying off only a fraction of their total loan balances.”
“Payment-plan changes could, over time, be nearly as costly as the mass debt-cancellation plan is projected to be. A University of Pennsylvania Wharton School model suggested a range of possible price tags for the changes to income-driven repayment ranging from around $70 billion over 10 years to $450 billion over a longer period, depending on enrollment, and whether colleges continue to raise costs.”
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This is not a proposed law, it is an administrative action involving huge amounts of money. Note that even the effing WSJ cannot summon enough courage to have some curiosity where all this money might come from and criticize the effort except in the blandest terms in the guise of “Republicans pounce”. This is yet another huge handout to the academy and a favored constituency of the Democrats.
Ron Graf,
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The Ukraine front has all the earmarks of collapsing. Be a bit more to see if Ukraine can stabilize on another line.
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Ukraine has burned through two complete armies worth of MBT’s and armored personnel carriers and is asking the west for a third.
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The west has offered no additional MBT’s and only enough armored personnel carriers to outfit only 2 battalions. And these bring a nightmare in maintenance, support, and spare parts issues due to the repair depots are 1000km behind the lines in Poland.
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Artillery ammunition supply by the west continues to fall well short of Ukraine usage, in the order of only days worth supplied each month.
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Ukraine power grid is in shambles and most of Ukraine rail runs on electricity. Getting supply from Poland and moving reserves is becoming ever more difficult.
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Russia started this war lacking sufficient infantry support, which bit Russia in the a**. This has been addressed with the call back to service of 300,000 reservists,
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The above is to highlight why Russia believes it is winning and sees no need to call for a ceasefire, which Ukraine has categorically rejected.
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Russia has been very clear that they consider themselves at war with the US which is wagging a proxy war against them with Ukraine. The war in Ukraine bleeds the west of it’s stockpiled reserves which will take years to rebuild. Leaving a rump Ukraine that is not demilitarized and in forced neutrality only kicks the issue down the road and does not fit Russian requirements.
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The west has a short attention span and with the west heading into recession, pressure to reduce western aid to Ukraine will grow.
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So, no, I don’t see this war to end anytime soon.
ISW claims that the Russian effort at Bakhmut is “culminating” which seems to mean that it has reached a peak level of effort that can not be sustained. If so, then the Russian gains in Soledar may prove to be a high water mark. We shall see.
Social media is busy eliminating any anti-government content related to Brazil from its services:
“In advance of the election, we designated Brazil as a temporary high-risk location and have been removing content calling for people to take up arms or forcibly invade Congress, the Presidential palace, and other federal buildings,” a Meta spokesperson told Ars. “We’re also designating this as a violating event, which means we will remove content that supports or praises these actions.“
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This all sounds so lofty and pretentious. So is Meta going to do the same if they storm government buildings in Iran or Russia? No. These private organizations can choose to support what ideology they wish, but they don’t get to pretend they are on some obvious moral high ground. This is the exact type of behavior that justifies being legally designated as a common carrier.
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I think countries should hold fair elections and democracy is the least worst way to do it. People challenging the government need to have their say, and people breaking laws should be punished accordingly.
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What I don’t know is if the Brazil opposition has any valid points and Facebook imposing an information blackout for one side isn’t going to help me figure this out. It’s not at all obvious why Facebook would consider itself an authority on this subject, and why Facebook should care if the government of Brazil is overthrown.
I have noticed this effing WSJ news section change in phraseology depending on the party for some time now. I noticed today that it was the Republican House rules that were “dictated”. For the Democrats I am sure it would be more like the rules were “agreed to”.
Very good situation report on the battle. The linchpins for the entire Donbas is coming unstuck.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixMK7pvVvCM
I think that having private firms do what the government cannot constitutionally do as being unconstitutional could very easily rest on a mere suggestion by government that a private firm censor certain information without a direct threat. As for indirect threat by way of regulation has to always be considered an implied threat.
In other words in a free society the government has no business telling, suggesting or implying that a private entity censor.
As for punishment, it should be no different than it currently is when governments censor free speech directly. I am not sure that it really gets punished now, but once it is judicially ruled upon it should certainly desist. The other part of discouraging this behavior is the bad press it should draw. Unfortunately that currently only occurs for one party.
By the way, third parties who make arguments for or against ideas that are part of political campaigns, do a much better job of it than politicians ever do or probably could do even without the sloppy political considerations that so often prevail in their campaigns.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #217760): “In other words in a free society the government has no business telling, suggesting or implying that a private entity censor.”
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That is my view but with the caveat that there is an exception for cases where the government is permitted to restrict speech. Things such as national security secrets, incitements to riot, and the organization of criminal activity.
The Wall Street Journal has been liberal for decades, but it doesn’t get noticed because of the editorial page. One study in the 90s had them #2 among major papers.
The Clinton rape story was reported by the editorial page after NBC News wouldn’t air their interview.
If the police tell someone else to break in to a house and search around, it is a violation of the 4th amendment. That the third party was a private citizen doesn’t take away that this person is acting as a government agent.
Ken Fritsch,
“As for punishment, it should be no different than it currently is when governments censor free speech directly. I am not sure that it really gets punished now, but once it is judicially ruled upon it should certainly desist.”
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There is no punishment now, and only new federal law can provide for punishment. That has zero chance of passing in the next 2 years… if ever. The SC could officially bar the administration from unconstitutional action, but without punishment by law for responsible individuals there is little reason the administration (or the bureaucracy) would actually follow a SC order. I don’t see a way to eliminate de facto government censorship of disfavored political speech via social media companies in the sort term, if ever. One way that would work would be the SC allowing states enforce laws against censorship by social media companies, but the prospects for that don’t look good.
The non-effing WSJ opinion side is forced to covers the news…
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Biden’s Student Loan Write-Off, Part II
A Plan B to cancel debt in case his $400 billion write-off loses at the Supreme Court.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-student-loan-write-off-part-ii-supreme-court-debt-cancellation-education-department-11673392131?st=dp45vot09agb2jn&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“The Education Department is proposing rules it says will “transform” income-driven repayment plans, by which it apparently means turn college into an entitlement whose costs increase on autopilot. Students going forward will be able to borrow without worrying about getting jobs that allow them to repay their loans.”
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Personal responsibility has become a joke to these people, the joke is now on those who repaid their loans or those who were so unwise as to save and pay for college outright. Fools.
Mike M: “ISW claims that the Russian effort at Bakhmut is “culminating” which seems to mean that it has reached a peak level of effort that can not be sustained.”
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Ed Forbes, if by some chance Putin sues for peace negotiations after taking Soledar or possibly Bakhmut, would you say that I called it? If so, I would chalk it up to the accuracy of an assessment of a forest from a glance versus from someone who knows the name of every tree. So many things have gone wrong for Putin with his special operation he has got to be thinking that the sooner it is over the better.
Tom Scharf: “It’s not at all obvious why Facebook would consider itself an authority on this subject, and why Facebook should care if the government of Brazil is overthrown.”
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The same question could also be asked of Facebook in regards to its public health and drug efficacy expertise. The common denominator is the thread that leads to any person, entity or idea that supported Trump.
Ken Fritsch,
After I think about it a bit, the only enforcement mechanism that is actually available is broad defunding of ‘intelligence agencies’ by Congress. Even with a weak (swampy) speaker like McCarthy, simply cutting budgets and refusing to compromise would do it. After the omnibus monstrosity, that will have to wait until the autumn. All the agencies that have been involved ought to suffer big cuts, like 25% to 50%. Government shutdown? Yes, that would be pretty much inevitable, but that by itself would be a big plus if the issues were presented clearly to the voters. A government which constantly thumbs its nose at the constitution must be reined in.
Tom Scharf,
The Biden administration is run by dishonest social-justice warriors. They do not give the tiniest sh!t about education, but they care very much about subsidizing lefty/woke indoctrination of students funded by the taxpayers.
Ron,
Ukraine requires full capitulation from Russia to start negotiating. Recall that Ukraine and Russia had a working agreement before the US and UK stepped in and put a stake in it back in March.
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What terms are you suggesting that Russia would accept? It matters.
If Russia offers terms that require Ukraine to demilitarize, accept permanent neutrality, and Ukraine withdrawal from the whole of Donbas, I would not “say that you called it”.
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Russia could offer about anything to win brownie points, but the US will not let Ukraine off the hook easily. The Ukraine government itself would not survive accepting such terms as above.
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Just the offer of settlement by either side doesn’t mean much if what is offered is unacceptable to the other side.
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Ed Forbes
Ukraine would not survive as an independent entity. It would become a vassal.
Joy Behar explains the democrat approach to politics and justice:
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“There are differences in what happened. We all know that Trump is a liar and a thief. We know that. So it’s not that big a jump to say that he obstructed and he lied. We don’t think that Biden is a liar and a thief and so we give him the benefit of the doubt. That’s probably what’s going on.
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Lying has been so invasive, so ubiquitous, that noone will believe the truth anymore, and that you can put at the feet of Donald Trump who started the lying.”
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Biden’s Purple Heart story: Lie,
Biden cut the federal deficit in half: Lie
Biden said gas was $5/gallon when he took office: Lie
Biden used to drive an 18-wheeler: Lie
Biden was raised as a Puerto Rican: Lie
Biden graduated top of his law class: Lie
Biden got three degrees: Lie
Biden got a full ride to law school: Lie
Biden committed plagiarism in law school
Biden plagiarized speeches from other politicians
Biden’s ancestors worked in coal mines in PA: Lie
There’s no crisis at the border: Observably a lie
etc, etc, etc
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https://time.com/5636715/biden-1988-presidential-campaign/
Some humorous Russian propaganda: https://en.interaffairs.ru/media/uploads/us_think-tank_ukraine_and_the_prospects_for_negotiations.jpg
Ed Forbes, no matter how far apart two parties are at the beginning of negotiations they will compromise when they must. The meat grinder has been at a near stalemate for long enough to make it apparent to both populations they could forgive their leader for ending the conflict far short of the original promise. If the leaders are wise they will lead rather than wait for popular unrest.
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SteveF has I think also stated that one would expect the eventual outcome to be Ukraine to cede some of the Donbas and Crimea in exchange for peace. There would be no reason to accept demilitarization except perhaps in a zone to prevent skirmishes.
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There is no other plausible outcome. Russia would take extraordinary measures to prevent being pushed out of Crimea and Donbas. Ukraine and NATO would never allow Russia to take more than those.
The US and EU are primarily interested in keeping Russia inside its borders, and they don’t quite trust Russia’s word on the subject at the moment for valid reasons. If that can somehow be accomplished then I think everything else will follow behind doors. Ukraine will be forced to accept losing parts of eastern Ukraine upon threat of no more arms support. The public statements of both sides should be completely ignored, that is the highest form of propaganda.
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I don’t know how Russia can convince anybody it can be trusted at this time. The default position will be the status quo which is just throwing people and material into a meat grinder for little gain for Ukraine or Russia. As I have said many times, that default position is fine strategically for NATO although it has real costs.
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Ukraine can call an end to this anytime it wants and nobody would blame them, but it is unclear how they can end this either. Putin’s overarching condition will be saving face. Russia may think Ukraine is really Russia, but Ukraine vehemently doesn’t share that view.
SteveF might find this Murican propaganda humorous too.
Ron Graf (Comment #217776): “no matter how far apart two parties are at the beginning of negotiations they will compromise when they must.”
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Yes, when they MUST. Neither side is at all close to that.
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Ron Graf: “The meat grinder has been at a near stalemate for long enough to make it apparent”
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Nonsense. There was a stalemate for 5 months over the summer. Since then, Ukraine has twice made major progress.
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Ron Graf: “they could forgive their leader for ending the conflict far short of the original promise.”
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That really only applies to Putin. He will not be forgiven if he settles for something near the prewar status quo. The Russian population is divided roughly in three: Those who oppose the war, those who reluctantly support it, and those who enthusiastically support the war and are angry that more progress has not been made. If Putin fails, he will have the support of none of those groups. He will be done for.
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Ron Graf: “Russia would take extraordinary measures to prevent being pushed out of Crimea and Donbas.”
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Crimea for sure. The Donbas is far from obvious. But Putin can not afford to settle for that.
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Ron Graf: “Ukraine and NATO would never allow Russia to take more than those.”
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For sure. And maybe not the Donbas. At present, there is no basis for peace.
I have said before that I see no grand strategies on either side of the Ukraine war and that includes the proxy warriors from the West. I continue with that view. Most modern wars are fought until the civilians on one or both sides become convinced that the expenditures in life, limb and property are no longer worth the effort. Ukrainians are fighting for their sovereignty and that alone would keep them in a war footing longer. Unfortunately, that motivation is countered by the great destruction to the Ukraine nation.
A true and unbiased polling of the civilians in Ukraine, West, Russia and its allies would give the best picture of how long the war will continue as opposed to any conjecture on the thinking or believed strategies of the military and politicians on either side of the conflict.
This war like all wars is there for the observing that wars are worst way of attempting to solve any national differences.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #217780)
January 11th, 2023 at 1:58 pm
“I see no grand strategies on either side of the Ukraine war and that includes the proxy warriors from the West.”
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Complex comment.
Not sure how many fellow gamers comment here.
Great strategists exist or existed.
Sun Tzu ,
Alexander,
Alekhine,
Larsen.
The aim of war and its strategies in Europe for the last thousand years is puerile but effective.
Grab what you can when you are strongest.
The board game, Diplomacy, exposes a well known flaw.
Best illustrated by Napoleon.
The tall poppy syndrome.
Let an opponent over reach which unites all the others and slowly break him down.
That is a grand strategy evident at the moment?
Or just a fortuitous event?
In terms of modern warfare, killing real people with remote means, guns bullets, tanks, rockets, drones, gas and nuclear the old strategies are best.
The greatest strategists were Ghandi and the Roman who took down Hannibal and Tzu.
Zelensky is developing some good tactics publicity wise.
His rope a dope strategy of using up Russian missiles on lost towns is good.
Europe is helping more than it was as the threat of nuclear response by the Russians seems increasingly unlikely.
The stated Russian grand strategy in this war is the destruction of the Ukraine military. All other goals follow this objective.
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This is being accomplished by Russia taking a page from the Romans, among others, of using extensive fortifications to reduce the troops needed to defend the line of contact, which allows for a greater concentration of force at a focus point.
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Before construction of the contiguous Russian fortifications, Ukraine was able to use its superior numbers of infantry to bypass Russian strong points, forcing the Russians to fall back or be surrounded. This Ukraine tactic is no longer possible. Russia is now able to concentrate forces to reduce Ukraine positions at important points without being distracted elsewhere by Ukraine attacks.
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With the mobilization of Russian reserves, building a continuous fortified line, Ukraine no longer have an advantage in infantry numbers, and the general destruction of the Ukraine MBT’s, Ukraine is no longer able to mount a major successful attack on Russian forces. All they are now able to do is dig in and suffer against Russian artillery, which is 10x+ more extensive than Ukraine artillery.
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Now they have two different locations of Biden classified documents found, ha ha. The legacy media is doing their usual equivocations to protect Biden. These are different! The first set was known about since before the election. There appears to be nobody curious enough to ask who had keys to Biden’s “locked closet” and there are no ominous selective leaks about “nuclear secrets” and so forth.
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Why did they leak this stuff now? Maybe it’s an artifact of power changing hands in the House or maybe they didn’t want to have this sitting hidden when a decision to charge Trump for the same is pending.
angech,
I love board games !
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Most of my interest these days are generally in Euro games and such, not generally militarily anymore. My focus is on multiplayer strategy games almost exclusively. Lots of very good strategic games out there that are not military oriented. Conflict happens on many levels, not just militarily.
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Playing against 4 or 5 other VERY cutthroat players is one of my favorite vices.
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I doubt that games will tell us much about political and military strategies in the Ukraine war. Those who do think they have revealed the strategies of those engaged in this conflict would have to be mind readers and not particularly great gamers.
If a grand strategy can be defined more or less as winning a total victory over the opponent – and thus able to dictate the terms of ending the war – the definition of strategy loses all meaning.
The US appears to have a vaguely defined strategy of being the world’s policeman but when that comes to specific battles the initial strategies are either not defined or changed according to what the powers that be think civilians will tolerate.
Obviously being the world policeman would not be possible either militarily or financially if applied to all the world’s conflicts and thus conflicts engaged are arbitrarily selected and with no a prior selection method.
The discovery of Biden’s “handful” of classified documents (10? 20? 30?, some at the highest classification level), makes bringing charges against Trump much less likely (IMHO). If the DOJ is foolish enough to proceed against Trump, the consequences for the DOJ, and for the country, will be bad. Half the country already believes the DOJ is nothing but a political attack dog for the Biden administration. Bringing charges against Trump would only make that half of the country more convinced of it than ever, and motivate even moderate Republicans in the House to go after Biden on multiple fronts….. 1) personal corruption, 2) failure to enforce the law, 3) unlawful executive orders, 4) politicization of law enforcement,5) unconstitutional suppression of free speech by proxy, and now 6) illegal handling of classified materials. Even a woke simpleton like Merrick Garland can probably now see the potential damage. I hope he has the good sense to drop it, but you never know with woke simpletons.
It’s possible the Biden classified info was leaked to lessen the impact of not charging Trump. Or perhaps they wanted lots of Republicans to make a case against Biden to strengthen the case against Trump.
Ken,
Playing strategy board games is similar to learning geometry and other higher math skills as both require one to think in logical progression.
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Schools don’t require students outside of the math departments to learn upper division math because they will need to use it. It’s mainly required for two reasons, to weed out of program the undisciplined and to teach logical thinking.
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Any activity that reinforces logical thinking is useful in most of life’s endeavors. Wars also move by logical progression, which proscribe certain actions if other actions are taken. Wars are not entirely chaotic. Very chaotic at the individual level, much less chaotic at the strategic level.
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Edit: the many military officers I know constantly war game as a way of learning their trade. One battalion commander I know used an off the shelf commercial war game for the strategic lessons to win a division level game. The better commercial war games spend a lot of thought and expertise on their subject.
War efforts spend a lot of time and effort on propaganda, attempting to inspire nationalism, creating emergencies such that normal freedoms are relinquished, keeping war efforts secret, looking for spies and inflating the money supply so that the money cost of the war is temporarily kept from civilian attention.
Is that part of the games you play, Ed?
If Trump were convicted for stashing secret documents and Biden were impeached and indicted for the same offense, I’d take that trade-off every day of the week.
You can probably look for the NYT and WP to start showing that secret documents should not be labeled secret most of the time.
Here is something that I don’t understand. Maybe someone can explain it to me.
The Biden classified documents are a big embarrassment to Merrick Garland since he appointed a Special Prosecutor to go after Trump for similar. So now he is a jam as to Biden.
The Biden docs were found on Nov. 2 and supposedly promptly reported to appropriate authorities.
The Special Prosecutor was appointed on Nov. 18, 16 days later.
So it seems that one of two things happened. Either Garland went ahead with the Special Prosecutor in spite of knowing that Biden seemed to be guilty of similar. Or the White House left Garland out to dry by not telling him about the Biden docs. Neither makes much sense.
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OK. Typing this, I think I figured it out. Arrogance. Pure, unadulterated arrogance.
The special prosecutor is not about Trump. It is primarily about being able to investigate the Republicans in Congress.
Devin Nunez had an Ethics Committee complaint, Curt Weldon was raided by the FBI before the election, anyone who does too much will have the Eye of Smith on them.
Ed Forbes
Sure.
And playing monopoly may do the same thing. Nevertheless, I agree with Ken’s
Learning geometry and math is great. Most here would agree.
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Yet I doubt doing geometry problems would reveal strategies for those engaged in this conflict either.
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Play whatever board games you like. Chess. Smess. Checkers. None will reveal much about the political or military strategy of any particular war.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Especially when it is known the things you are looking for are being intentionally hidden.
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All we have is revealed behavior to infer the undisclosed strategies. This is good enough most of the time. It is mind reading to a certain extent. However it’s another thing entirely to claim there aren’t any strategies because the playbooks aren’t open for public perusal. One can claim NATO is just completely reactionary and has no grand plan whatsoever, but that is just not a reasonable conclusion based on a century’s worth of world military history.
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There is definitely a defined strategy in place, whether it is a good one or not only time will tell. The strategy may need to change based on the other side’s success. Some things remain hidden but will eventually be known such as what were the goals of the strategy.
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Putin replaced his commander of the war again yesterday in Ukraine. This implies he is not satisfied with the current strategy and one can assume tactics from Russia will probably change again soon. Putin’s early quick strike strategy failed miserably. If the other side keeps changing tactics then your strategy is probably good for the time being.
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The vast military complex war games constantly, both theoretically, in simulations, and in field exercises. Land, sea, and air. The military academies study past wars and analyze those strategies over history. As technology changes the battlefield some of these strategies become obsolete. As they say, generals are always fighting the last war.
NYT: “Garland Names Special Counsel in Biden Documents Case”
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Color me the least surprised person on the planet that one side’s righteous plan to “enforce a very high standard of the law, just coincidently starting with our opponents first” didn’t work out as they might have hoped.
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Garland is painted into a self imposed corner now. There is absolutely nothing in the universe that will allow charging Trump and not Biden to be seen as anything but political persecution to half of America. Trump, once again, bumbles his way into an advantageous position. All the pontificating very serious people telling us Trump was ready to sell nuclear secrets look foolish explaining how Biden’s actions are innocent. How does this happen? Look, I think Trump is an epic clown, but sometimes you just got to wonder…maybe he is just the luckiest guy on earth.
Tom Scharf,
“I think Trump is an epic clown, but sometimes you just got to wonder…maybe he is just the luckiest guy on earth.”
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My take is a little different. I think a large fraction of politicians in Washington are all epic clowns. The differences in their public coverage are due to other factors, like where they are from (South Dakota? Nobody in the MSM cares) and whether they are Republicans or Democrats. Republicans who have some national name recognition (eg DeSantis) are going to be hammered and abused via constant distortions and lies by the MSM. Low-life Democrats who sleep with Chinese spies, lie endlessly to the public or to the MSM (or both), are going to be treated with kid gloves. I think luck has not a lot to do with it.
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Adam Schiff is an utterly dishonest scumbag, who spent the entire Trump administration saying nothing truthful at any time. The only consequence he will ever suffer for his endless lies is not being allowed on certain House Committees. Voters need to completely discount the MSM account of what is happening in Washington.
Tom, I admire your diction, but what you say sounds an awful like Nancy Pelosi’s: we will know what is in the bill when we pass it.
I think Biden’s “whatever it takes and as as long as it takes” comment is the best we have as a hint about US/NATO strategies or the lack there of.
Putin’s strategy appears from observation to be to move the Ukranian people against a fascist government whether by threat of war initially or by destruction of their nation by war. But that is more a dream than a strategy when applied to the military and shows by the performance of the Russian military.
Ukraine strategy appears to be to fight to the end by giving hope to the nation that with a no bounds help from the West they can defeat the Russians by driving them out of Ukraine. But that is a strategy that depends a lot on things that are very much out of control of Ukraine and cannot be considered a self directed strategy.
Two potential candidates for the US Presidency are under investigation by special counsels. That could not be a better development for those who would like to see neither nominated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
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University of Chicago
UnCommon Core: The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine Crisis by
John Mearsheimer
University lecture on Ukraine from 6 ys ago. This lecture could have easily been dated as of today as its insight into where the situation in Ukraine was headed was precisely on target.
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One of the main takes I took from this lecture was the difference in viewpoints between Russia/China and the collective west.
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Russia/China seem to have a more 19th century view of politics where core national interests are paramount. The collective west is more of a 21st century view that is more of global interest than of core national interest. As such, the west seems to constantly be surprised when Russia responds vigorously to western actions that seem largely unimportant to the western viewpoint. This western lack of their understanding of the core underlying belief structure of Russia can, and does, led to fatal results.
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The prime task of a nations foreign office is to build a realistic model of other nations viewpoints and core values. The western foreign offices seem to have failed miserably at this primary task.
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Ed Forbes,
Now can you explain why Russian seems surprised that the West and Ukraine are making decisions in their national interest? Because they sure as heck seem to have been very surprised by Ukraine acting in it’s self interest and the EU deciding to support Ukraine in their own self intererst.
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Perhaps. But it’s clear either Russian’s foreign office failed miserably at this task or Putin isn’t listening to his foreign office. And that has lead to fatal results for lots of Russians. Many of whom are literally dead.
Tom Scharf (Comment #217794): “There is definitely a defined strategy in place, whether it is a good one or not only time will tell. The strategy may need to change based on the other side’s success. Some things remain hidden but will eventually be known such as what were the goals of the strategy.”
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I think that there are goals, but I have no confidence that they are either reasonable or achievable. I see no reason to believe that there is an actual strategy to achieve those goals. Everything the Biden administration has done seems consistent with making it up as they go along.
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It would hardly be remarkable for our foreign policy establishment to engage in a major undertaking without a strategy. We invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq without any serious plans for what would happen after the initial military victories. I see no reason to believe that there is any more foresight involved with regard to Ukraine.
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p.s. – Neither vague plans nor wishful thinking count as “strategy”.
Lucia,
I will leave you with the lecture for your answer.
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A couple of quips in response on a complex question would be lazy.
Grand Strategy for Russia has been well defined. Either Ukraine becomes neutral or Russia wreaks Ukraine.
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Grand strategy for Ukraine is also well defined. Use western help to drive Russia out of all Ukraine.
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How to accomplish the above is more of a tactical question, and tactics evolve over time. Tactics are driving by strategic goals.
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A bit simple, but generally accurate
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Ed Forbes
In other words: you have no answer.
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You usually seem to be able to move yourself to fine plenty of words. But now… none.
First: You have a vocab problems. You mixed and aim and goal with an action. Strategies are actions to achieve a goal or aim.
Their strategy is merely “to wreak Ukraine”. Their aim is … well.. I disagree with your notion that it’s merely to make Ukraine neutral.
Their aim or goal looks like: Make Ukraine a vassal or puppet taking orders from Russia. Nothing they have said suggest their aim or goal is merely for Ukraine to be neutral.
There’s probably some confusion here between political and military strategies. I am totally on board with the political strategy being a moving target, prone to the whims of public opinion and ineffectual leaders and decisions by committees of unequal allies. Messy, messy, messy. AFAICT the media isn’t even asking these questions.
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I don’t believe for a second that NATO and/or the US military doesn’t have defined goals with a defined plan to achieve those goals. They will recommend things to their political bosses based on their interpretation of reality and the opponent’s capabilities. Politicians can override those things, conflict here is common.
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Exactly what happens when a drooling sleepy Biden is presented with this information is hard to guess.
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If NATO wanted to win this war they could likely do so. No fly zone, give Ukraine advanced weapons, drive a 1000 tanks into Ukraine, etc. See a problem with that?
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How does Russia respond to that? Is NATO asking Biden that question or is Biden asking NATO that question? How do we know? Apparently there is no strategy and they just flip a coin or something. Or maybe they have studied Russian behavior in depth for a very long time, have CIA assets in Russia, psychologically profile Putin and his inner circle, deeply understand Russian capabilities, have them under active surveillance, and on and on and on and on. $1T/year buys you some answers.
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And then somebody decides how to proceed and may screw it up. It isn’t rolling dice in Risk. Putin has substantial but lesser capabilities than this but also is not randomly guessing, but he apparently miscalculated and hoped this was just Crimea 2.0.
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A long read how this typically works is here. Schwarzkopf interactions with politics and miltary strategy for Gulf War 1.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/schwarzkopf/1.html
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Sound familiar?
“Schwarzkopf: Well, we were getting diplomatic assurances from all over the world,every elder statesman in the world who was an Arabist was saying, “Oh, this will never happen, you know, an Arab will never invade another Arab, this is all a show of force on Saddam’s part and that the Kuwaitis will cave and grant him the concessions that he was looking for, and he won’t have to do this invasion.
It was only when we started to see this pattern of the type of forces that you would need to conduct an operation being grouped together geographically on the ground that it became very apparent that what you were seeing emerging was a military plan.
There are certain things that are known in the intelligence communities, indications and warnings, you know, tanks, tanks far forward, artillery placed far forward, this sort of thing it indicates an offensive operation. Whereas if it was a defensive operation artillery is located in depth, that sort of thing.”
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“Schwarzkopf: Well, we had studied Saddam Hussein in my headquarters very carefully and the Iraqi military. Frankly, we had gone to school on what Iraq did in the war between Iran and Iraq, the type of forces they had, the numbers they had, the tactics they used.”
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“Schwarzkopf: Yes, there was no question about that. We had been planning for just this sort of occurrence, in our Central Command plans for a year, so, and we always knew the precursor to an overall attack taking over the entire Gulf would be the taking of Kuwait first.”
“We invaded both Afghanistan and Iraq without any serious plans for what would happen after the initial military victories.”
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It depends. One can certainly say that Afghanistan and Iraq didn’t turn into thriving America loving democracies, therefore failure. One can also claim that there was not another 9/11 and Saddam Hussein’s regime is no longer a threat to anyone, global jihadism (with Syria included) is temporarily suppressed, therefore success.
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We didn’t “win the peace” depending on how you want to measure that. I don’t think these wars were started with those goals in mind and I would certainly agree long term political stability was a secondary concern. A goal of fixing Middle East politics is a bit beyond the reach of mere mortals in my view.
Ed Forbes youtube guy…. quite a few seriously confused point.
1) Evidently, the west wanting to expand NATO is because the west does believe in balance of powers doctrine was dead! (At least in Europe.) (Near 30:55) LOL. LOL. LOL!! Sorry buddy. But the reason the eastern block countries (and Ukraine) want to be in NATO is they damn well know balance of power politics is not dead. As does the EU and the US.
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He does seem to know that Putin believes balance of power politics is alive. (I’m sure he does. ) But the idea that the west somehow thought it was dead in Europe (but alive in the western hemisphere– Monroe doctrine) is nuts.
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That’s one of this guys major planks. It’s his delusion.
Evidently… we did not think Russia was aggressive. LOLOLOLOL!!!! 31:53!
And, in the end, nothing in th e lecture answers my question to Ed:
Lucia,
Russia was not surprised by Ukraine actions.
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Russia and Ukraine have been in a hot war since 2014. Some 15,000 dead in the Donbas to highlight this point between 2014 and 2022.
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Russia has been very clear what would happen if NATO membership was not taken off the table for Ukraine. The west doubled down by publicly stating NATO membership was officially on the table. Russia raised by upping the pressure on Ukraine by the military action in 2022. The west and Ukraine raised again by killing a tentative agreement between Russia and Ukraine in march. Russia called by moving toward the full economic destruction of the Ukraine economy by bombing Ukraine infrastructure.
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The west is now forced to show their hand. Do they walk away or do we head into WWIII with NATO crossing the border to directly confront Russia? Direct confrontation will not happen.
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I would say that nothing else would save Ukraine, but Ukraine is past saving. Ukraine is destroyed economically and the west in no way will pay to rebuild. The only thing that Ukraine will see at the end of this is economic slavery to the west to pay off all the top dollar loans for all the obsolete equipment they were provided. The only item really on the table is what the future Ukraine borders will look like. And they for certain will not include the Donbas.
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By the way, when little fish, and Ukraine is a little fish, gets between 2 big fish, what the little fish wants is of little importance. Little fish only get what the big fish want them to have. Most times the little fish gets eaten. So any talk of “Ukraine interests” has little to no meaning in the current conflict.
Ed
Oh? So they anticipated Ukraine would be able to hold them off this long? Sorry. I think you are mistaken. Absolutely totally mistaken.
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And I also asked you about surprise at the west. Are you suggesting they knew the West would support Ukraine? If you think that,sorry. Don’t think so.
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Russia was surprised. They did not think the cost of invading Ukraine would be this great.
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You can’t change that by saying it’s not even greater. Russia was and is absolutely surprised. It remains surprised.
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Oh? Well, that’s where we differ. For one things: these aren’t fish. And I guess if you feel no “surprise”, it’s because you still haven’t realized that what small countries want can be of importance. To think otherwise is blind and can result in serious miscalculation. That’s been a surprise to Russia.
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Or perhaps they aren’t “surprised” because they remain blind.
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The results have been fatal to many Including many Russian soldiers, officers and oligarchs.
Ed Forbes
They may consider this alternative better than economic slavery to Russia. Many would.
If a neutral observer examines the state of the allies of Russia and the allies of the EU / US what conclusions could they draw? Is one of these two selling a better product?
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It’s completely rational to avoid becoming an ally of Russia. They have habit of subsuming their alleged allies. They just can’t stop themselves. If you go to Eastern Europe where there is some shared cultural heritage, what do you find? Are they pining for the old days of the Soviet Union? Is East Germany now suffering? The Russians actually built a wall to keep people inside their borders! The US is building walls to keep people from coming in.
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This may seem trivial, but compare that to the way China is behaving *today* (Asian history is full of the same conquer and conquest as European history). The Chinese are running around throwing bags of money at people (an artform the US perfected) and cooperating nations have little fear the Chinese are going to make them vassal states or invade them (Exception: Taiwan, a whole other story…). The Chinese are attempting to economically conquer nations and make them dependent, capitalist style. The Russians want to destroy everything and everyone that doesn’t take the knee.
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One can argue how evil the Chinese are, but the point here is the comparison to the backwards Russians who haven’t progressed past the load up the elephants with spears and savage the closest neighbors phase.
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The Chinese are a much smarter and more economically powerful threat. They are executing the US long term plan to dominance with barely firing a shot. The Chinese learn. The Russian’s base instincts betray them.
1.TWITTER FILES: Supplemental More Adam Schiff Ban Requests, and “Deamplification”
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2.Staff of House Democrat @AdamSchiff
wrote to Twitter quite often, asking that tweets be taken down. This important use of taxpayer resources involved an ask about a “Peter Douche” parody photo of Joe Biden. The DNC made the same request:
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3.3.The real issue was Donald Trump retweeted the Biden pic. To its credit Twitter refused to remove it, with Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth saying it had obvious “humorous intent” and “any reasonable observer” – apparently, not a Schiff staffer – could see it was doctored.
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4.Schiff staffer Jeff Lowenstein didn’t give up, claiming there was a “slippery slope concern here.”
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5.Twitter also refused requests for bans of content about Schiff and his staff, e.g. “complete suppress[ion of] any and all search results about Mr. Misko and other Committee staffers.” Twitter said this would not be “conceivable.”
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6.Even when Twitter didn’t suspend an account, that didn’t mean they didn’t act. Schiff’s office repeatedly complained about “QAnon related activity” that were often tweets about other matters, like the identity of the Ukraine “whistleblower” or the Steele dossier:
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7.Twitter policy at the time didn’t ban QAnon, but “deamplified” such accounts. About the batch of tweets that included those above, Twitter execs wrote: “We can internally confirm that a number of the accounts flagged are already included in this deamplification.”
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8.Schiff’s office had a concern about “deamplification,” though: it might make it harder for law enforcement to track the offending Tweeters.
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9.“WE APPRECIATE GREATLY”
“We are curious whether any deamplification measures implemented by Twitter’s enforcement team – which we appreciate greatly – could… impede the ability of law enforcement to search Twitter for potential threats about Misko and other HPSCI staff.”
Thomas
Likewise, it’s entirely rational to not want to be the officially decreed “demilitarized neutral buffer”.
Tom Scharf and Lucia, those are excellent comments on Russia, very penetrating and concise.
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I am at a loss to understand Tucker Carlson and many on the freedom caucus that are so far isolationist. I am more or non-interventionist I was than prior to the Iraq war but Russia’s, (I mean Putin’s), barbaric invasion had to be answered by the western world. China should be ashamed. Clearly they are no more ethical, just smarter, as Tom points out.
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Ed, I have little to add to Lucia’s response except I thought we fought WWII to discredit the idea that being a big fish, or superior culture for that matter, provided any natural rights conquer others.
Ron,
A number of nations to consider that all have something in common. All were little fish that ran afoul of the US for one reason or another. Most got eaten or took years to get rid of US occupation.
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Vietnam
Cuba
Granada
Afghanistan
Iraq
Libya
Yugoslavia
Syria
Nicaragua
Venezuela
Ukraine
There was a piece in today’s WSJ titled: Documents Case Followed Hectic Exit. It goes to great lengths in detailing Joe Biden’s exit from office with the obvious but unstated purpose of painting a picture that can excuse Biden’s current possession of classified documents.
The only missing part is an ending sentence that says: We have your back, Joey baby.
Ken Fritsch,
Ya, well, even people who don’t like Biden very much so strongly dislike Trump that they are willing to turn themselves inside out to draw distinctions that excuse Biden but not Trump.
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Truth is, it was all pretty much a fabricated scandal from the beginning. Guns drawn FBI raid over documents? Please. I think no charges will ever be filed in either case over classified documents (Biden’s stupidity has taken that off the table). But Merrick Garland could still bring ‘obstruction of justice’ charges against Trump, if he is foolish enough. No telling for sure if he is that foolish, but many of his other actions suggest he is that foolish.
Ken Fritsch,
Why would Biden’s exit from office be any more hectic than any other occupants? (Including Trump?)
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Do Mike Pence, Obama, Bush, or the Clintons have any classified documents in his garage, house or offices? The world wants to know!
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Honestly, it might be worth knowing. If people accidentally taking classified papers and ending up with them stored in unsecured locations is common, the government probably needs to create a strategy to reduce this.
Ed Forbes,
And the entire soviet bloc had their economies wreaked by being folded into the USSR.
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I’m not seeing how a list of small countries who have had bad outcomes for various reasons supports your claim that they don’t matter.
Lucia,
“Do Mike Pence, Obama, Bush, or the Clintons have any classified documents in his garage, house or offices? The world wants to know!”
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My guess: almost certainly they all left office holding onto some ‘classified’ documents. Like all things Trump, he gets ‘special’ consideration.
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I agree that control of classified documents should be better, but in addition, classification of documents needs to be restricted, especially since much of the time the document is classified to hide incompetence and failure among office holders and bureaucrats, not to protect the USA from it’s adversaries.
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I think laws which make it *MUCH* harder for anyone in government to classify any document would be a good start, with very clear ‘you can’t classify just to avoid looking like an idiot’ rules, and automatic declassification of all documents after a specified period (eg 10-15 years) unless there are extraordinary circumstances and approvals for longer classification, including the President. Most of all, improper classification has to have real consequences, like automatic loss of your job, and criminal prosecution if the abuse is extensive.
The Bee nails it again: https://babylonbee.com/news/doj-indicts-trump-for-bidens-possession-of-classified-documents
Ken,
Yes the WSJ article was bizarre. What makes it even more bizarre is that CNN wrote a nearly identical lengthy article two days ago. Four authors!
CNN: Biden’s whirlwind final days as vice president had aides scrambling to close his White House office
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/12/politics/biden-documents-final-days-vice-president-aides-scramble
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It’s just really weird. They are written like they are some huge news story and are about some mundane tidying up between administrations many years ago. There isn’t any news there at all, except this blatant and completely lame attempt to cover up for Biden’s documents.
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It’s really embarrassing for both of these news organizations. There is apparently some quid pro quo going on here, you write this propaganda for us and we will grant you special access later.
I made a similar suggestion earlier that a third party had to make the judgement. Somehow a secretly operated government does not square in my view with a republic/democracy but does more so with an authoritative regime.
If worse were to come to worse for Biden I would look for the NYT and WP to start making the argument that much of what is classified should not be. In the meantime a hectic departure from office uniquely for Biden should suffice.
The real problem is that there is too much knee jerk classification. There are many levels of classification and lots of it is not very interesting I would suspect. Some things are basically so secret you can’t even look at a document unless you go in a special room type of thing.
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That being said, you are supposed to sign out these documents if you take them. There should be a list (a very, very long list) of documents people have signed out but never returned, or documents missing that were never signed out. The system is supposed to have traceability. Another rather important part of the story is that nobody knew these documents were missing, or more likely didn’t care. The system is broken.
NYT 2 days ago: “Mr. Biden, she said, “was kept informed throughout,” but does not know what is in the documents. “The search is complete, he is confident in this process, and I will leave it there,” she added.”
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WSJ Today:
“Additional documents marked as classified were found at President Biden’s Wilmington residence, the White House said Saturday.”
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What a clusterf***, ha ha. As an aside, I haven’t the faintest clue what the “does not know what is in the documents” defense is all about. He doesn’t want to know apparently. I guess it’s the 3 monkeys thing. As is typical, inquiring minds in the legacy media don’t want to know either.
I’m not sure how it works with the White House and Congress. Maybe it is this way and it’s different from DOD. In Defense work, classified info is often electronic. It’s not like there is a single source document to be checked out; there are word docs and PDFs (lots of them) that contain classified info. In my field, sometimes it’s design docs or software source that contains the classified info.
Shrug. Don’t know.
Tom Scharf
I can’t help but wonder: Did he ever know? If not, then why did he have them. (I can understand him not knowing which documents ended up in the boxes that got sent to his garage, office, or wherever. But, rather obviously, he should have read them otherwise there should never have been any reason for them to be taken out of their normal storage places and brought to him. )
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I have no opinion on whether too many things get classified. But I do know that if they get classified, they ought to be handled as such. Some effort to get them back from out going Presidents and VPs would be warranted.
… and … the NYT has now joined the “Biden’s last days of office” propaganda effort.
Documents Inquiry Puts Spotlight on Biden’s Frenetic Last Days as Vice President
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/us/politics/biden-vice-president-documents-investigation.html
“The White House has provided no explanation yet for how the documents wound up in the hands of Mr. Biden as a private citizen.”
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Hey, at least they changed the official term “scrambling” to “frenetic”. There is zero evidence that the last days of office and found documents are linked (Biden doesn’t even know what is in the documents), this line of thinking by the legacy media is 100% speculation. Oh brother.
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NOTE: Careful reading of NYT prose reveals this curiosity:
“No evidence has emerged *publicly* to indicate that he knew they had been taken improperly.”
“Ms. Chung was said to have helped pack up Mr. Biden’s office in January 2017, but there is no *public* indication whether she had handled the documents in question or knew that anything she was putting away for transfer was classified.”
“No information has emerged explaining where those files were stored in the year between Mr. Biden’s departure from the vice presidency and the opening of the think tank”
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“Public” is inserted and dropped, it seems the NYT may know some things it is not revealing.
mark bofill,
My days of DoD work are ancient, it’s likely they do things differently now. Even then there were lots of different things being done depending on “customer” requirements. Some things were paper only.
Tom,
Thanks. For all I know, some still are. But definitely not all are.
Ken Fritsch,
“In the meantime a hectic departure from office uniquely for Biden should suffice.”
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It is a pure garbage argument. The transition with Trump leaving office was clearly more disrupted and ‘frantic’, with Trump trying to overturn the election results right up to the end. The normal transition from Obama to Trump was, AFAICT, absolutely normal, save for the ongoing attempts to knee-cap the incoming administration in every way possible.
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The other real issue which the MSM consistently fails to address is that Trump as president had ‘unitary executive power’, and it is not legally clear that he could not simply declare a box of documents ‘declassified’ and walk out with them. Biden did not ever have that authority as he left the Vice Presidency.
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But as I noted above, this seems to me all tempest in a teapot: leaving office, both Trump and Biden had all kinds of national security secrets in their heads (OK, maybe not so many remembered by mush-head Biden). To quibble about classified documents, when they obviously know many more secrets than any classified documents could contain, seems to me the essence of ‘prosecutorial over-reach’. None of this should ever have risen above the level of “OK, you can keep the damned documents, but let’s agree on a secure location for all you want to retain” and have that location secured to satisfy even the anal-retentive Federal bureaucrats we all suffer under.
Washington Post clears the propaganda effort up a bit:
“This (anonymous) adviser and a second Biden (anonymous) adviser said they think the president has no criminal exposure in the case and that the improper handling and storage of the records was the result of sloppiness by aides rushing to pack up Biden’s vice-presidential office.”
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Anonymous leaks spouting speculation without evidence and the media stenographers dutifully march to the Biden drum. Regardless of the many dutiful attempts to split the hairs in the cases (Trump’s obstruction was not helpful) I think this latest attempt to take down Trump just died on the vine.
Finally! After a lifetime of waiting our culture may yet finally be redeemed. Mel Brook’s ‘History of the World, Part II’
I know what I’ll be doing March 6’th.
Lucia: “supports your claim they don’t matter”
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Now we get down to crux of the argument. Your view is another way to say “its not fair”. Life is not fair.
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Large and powerful nations are similar to large carnivores in outlook. Saying its unfair that the lion killed and ate a zebra is missing the point. Its in the lions nature to hunt. Its the same with large and powerful nations, its in their nature to oppress smaller and weaker nations in support of their interests.
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Thomas Hobbes was very much correct in some of his viewpoints
One such “ There is no natural self-restraint, even when human beings are moderate in their appetites, for a ruthless and bloodthirsty few can make even the moderate feel forced to take violent preemptive action in order to avoid losing everything. The self-restraint even of the moderate, then, easily turns into aggression.”
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Niccolò Machiavelli Is also worth reading to highlight the “morality “ and “fairness “ of nations and princes and why “they don’t matter” is the way of the world.
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Ed,
You are changing the subject from “don’t matter” (which you claimed) to whether or not something is “fair”. These are entirely different things.
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You continue to not show they “don’t matter”.
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Heck, honestly, you aren’t even consistent.
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On the one hand, with respect to whether the West or the US should support Ukraine, you want to tell us it “doesn’t matter”. But with respect to Russian rolling in, it evidently matters a mega-sh*t ton.
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If Ukraine “didn’t matter”, Russia wouldn’t have any justification to invade and wouldn’t have done so. And they’d give the whole place up. The real costs of invading and continuuing the war would not be worth it for an entity that “doesn’t matter”. Go tell Putin he should withdraw because Ukraine “doesn’t matter” and see what he tells you.
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Ed Forbes (Comment #217841): “Large and powerful nations are similar to large carnivores in outlook. Saying its unfair that the lion killed and ate a zebra is missing the point. Its in the lions nature to hunt. Its the same with large and powerful nations, its in their nature to oppress smaller and weaker nations in support of their interests.”
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That is ridiculous. A lion either kills zebras or starves to death. The survival of a large, powerful nation does not depend on exploiting weaker nations. Doing so is not “in the nature” of such nations.
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A better analogy is a thug who exploits those weaker than himself. To the extent that is “in his nature”, his nature is evil.
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We have laws to restrain and punish evil individuals. Of course, we don’t have the same sort of laws for nations. But with war a thousand times deadlier (and potentially a million times deadlier) than in Machiavelli’s day, we can not just shrug and say it does not matter.
Mike M,
Sure, we want nations to treat other nations ‘fairly’.
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But see what happens if the crazy leftist president of Mexico attempts to enter into a military alliance with China. Lopez-Obrador is not so stupid as do do that, of course, because he understands the likely consequences, even if he would like to embrace China and their version of Communism.
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Seems to me there is a lot more ‘real-politic’ involved than the idealized “treat every nation fairly” ideal. Powerful nations do indeed act to protect their interests, whether that is “fair” or not.
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In the case of Russia and the Ukraine: while you and I may disagree with Russian perceptions of ‘critical national interests’ and the need for Ukrainian neutrality, etc, that doesn’t mean the Russians agree with us. I am not interested in suffering global armageddon to save the Ukraine from Russian influence. There will ultimately be a diplomatic settlement; it won’t be ‘fair’. That is life.
Lucia,
it still comes down to the fact that the Ukraine view of what should be the final outcome is not down to Ukraine. Their view “does not matter”
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It will come down to what the US and Russia agree to. Any other nations viewpoint “does not matter”.
Ed Forbes,
What is happening in Ukraine is currently very much affected by Ukraine. And it looks like their view will affect the final outcome.
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The French thought the final outcome for the American colonies would come down to what the French and English agreed. We were just little fish. Pawns. What not. They were major powers.
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Guess what? The French and English did not negotiate the final settlement. Go. Figure.
The president of COP28 later this year, in Dubai, is the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Cue the hand-wringing.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/12/cop28-uae-sparks-backlash-by-appointing-oil-chief-as-president.html
Lucia,
The American colonies settlement with the Brits was only possible due to the French fleet forcing the Brit fleet to withdraw away from Yorktown. This forced the Brit army besieged at Yorktown to accept terms as they could no longer be either supplied or withdrawn. No colonial win at Yorktown, no independent colonies.
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Once again, big fish determines the fate of the little fish.
Ed,
You’ve changed to subject from
(a) the big fish deciding the final outcome which the French did not do
to
(b) the big fish giving aid to the little fish (which the French did do.)
The final agreement for the outcome did not involve the French. Not. At. All.
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If the same thing were to happen with the Ukraine-Russia war, we could play the role of the French–the big fish gives aid to a “small fish” . But final outcome (i.e. negotiated treaty) does not involve the “big fish” who gave aid at all.
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So: Yes. The French made it possible for the little fish to prevail and make a treaty. And likewise, we might make it possible for the little fish (Ukraine) to prevail and make a treaty. In both cases the little fish mattered.
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So: your claim that the little fish don’t matter was wrong in our revolution with the British. Just flat. out. wrong. As a point of American history.
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I suspect it was wrong in countless other cases which we don’t happen to be specifically familiar with. And just at it has been wrong in the past, it could very well be wrong in the future.
Lucia, not changing subjects, just trying to follow your corkscrew path of response.
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As to being wrong, ????
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I will leave it with affirmation of my belief that Hobbs and Machiavelli were correct In their view of the relationships between nations and heads of states. My posts and responses all follow these political paths.
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The world is what it is, not necessarily how we would wish it to be.
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On the tactical front, Ukraine seems to heading into new territory.
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The news of new airstrikes on the city of Kiev was not surprising as they have been ongoing for quite a while now.
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What was surprising was that air raid warnings didn’t go off until after the strikes went in. This was a first.
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If Ukraine air defense radar is becoming degraded to the point it can’t see incoming strikes, then losing high altitude air defense of the front lines may be coming.
Ed,
Yes. You are changing the subject. You first claimed
When pointed out that the final outcome in the US Revolution was up to the US (little fish) and not France-British (the two big fish), you changed the “issue” to France having supported us during the war.
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That’s a change from “final outcome” to “helping during”.
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The French helped us during the war (near the end– because they kept not showing up.) They did not dictate the “final outcome”. They weren’t even involved in the final outcome– we cut them out of negotiations of the final treaty!
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Hobbes and Machaivelli’s views is irrevelant to your specific claim about little fish not mattering. Especially as you decree Ukraine a “little fish”. And honestly, you can’t be convicing by just claiming “Machiavelli and Hobbes would agree with me” without actually quoting them.
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I mean… Machiavelli actually did say it was easier to stay on top if you got there virtuously than if you got there by being a thug. (And Putin is a thug.) Life may be brutish, but people remember who you behaved on the way up. The prince who is hated is also exposed. I think it unlikely Machiavelli would have advised Putin to behave the way he has been behaving.
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Sure. No one claimed it was how we wish it to be. But this platitude is also irrelevant to your claim about fish.
Ed Forbes: “Ron, A number of nations to consider that all have something in common. All were little fish that ran afoul of the US for one reason or another. Most got eaten or took years to get rid of US occupation.
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Vietnam [A newly independent French colony that the US tried fruitlessly to save from Soviet-China supported communist dictatorship, mainly motivated by geopolitical bipolar struggle.]
Cuba [One dictator overthrew another and felt communist block would protect and arm, while not ask questions about brutality.]
Granada [Cuba supported coup later reversed to benefit of all.]
Afghanistan [Failed attempt at nation building by a president that pledged he would not do that- but terrorist training camp…]
Iraq [Middleast destabilizing, missile-making, nuke-seeking mini Hitler needed to meet his maker.]
Libya [Reforming former terrorist supporting dictator that should have been left to rule his s-hole country.]
Yugoslavia [Bill was happy playing golf until Srebrenica massacre.]
Syria [Hillary didn’t play golf and thought she could win the Nobel Peace Prize by commanding Bashar Assaad to leave. Wrong.]
Nicaragua [The last battle of the Cold War did not go like Grenada — a CIA cluster-f**^k]
Venezuela [Unsuccessful attempt at giving a nation a second chance after they made a very bad mistake trusting the surrender of liberty for promise of other people’s money.]
Ukraine [Obama-Biden aligned CIA overplayed their hand in trying to liberate Russia vasal. Or, Russia overplayed its hand in trying to keep it.]
Ed, I truly believe that dictatorships breed almost limitless corruption and evil. In the face of their aggression it is a moral imperative for truly democratically run nations to show little tolerance for blitzkrieg invasions. However, corrupting leaders with bribes to take out national loans they can’t pay back in order to capture their resources seems like perfectly fair play in comparison.
They will not find any more documents
Ron,
I like your list. Yeah… I “loved” Ed’s idea that the US is what screwed Cuba up. I mean…. really….. (eyeroll).
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But I didn’t think the weirdness of Ed’s idea that somehow these countries were just going along fine or would have been just fine until the US got involved was worth wasting breath on.
Ron Graf (Comment #217853),
I don’t fully agree with your take, but it is much better than the silliness spewed by Ed Forbes (Comment #217821).
I don’t think the US has engaged in much pure unprovoked imposition of its self-interest on smaller nations since Iran 70 years ago. Yes, we have engaged in a lot of misguided interventionism, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Some have worked out OK, but most have been efforts to use force to “give” people a society and/or government that are unfamiliar and that they don’t want. That just does not work, especially when efforts to promote “liberty and democracy” have been mixed with attempts at Realpolitik, as they typically have been.
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In Grenada and Panama, we restored democracies. It worked because both countries had traditions of democracy. In Grenada, the date of the intervention is now a national holiday. In Bosnia and Kosovo, NATO intervention brought ongoing brutal wars to a close. But more common is that interventions have had poorly considered and often contrary objectives; those have tended to be disasters.
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In Ukraine, we are helping a democracy defend itself. So that is like Grenada and Panama, which gives hope for a good outcome. But we seem to be mixing that worthy objective with a desire to hurt Putin and Russia. Letting that control our actions could be a catastrophe for Ukraine.
Countries want to be safe, secure, and wealthy.
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It’s absolutely true the US has a checkered history in nation building and attempting to install “correct” values on other nations. It is also selective in which ones it chooses to have this privilege. For example it seems less interested in Africa and South America. There is undoubtedly self interest involved.
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What is not clear is whether allowing some other nation to do this wonderful work (the EU, Russia, China) would result in better outcomes. I think it is fair to say that the US may want friendly governments as part of the outcome of nation building, but the US is a bit unique to not want to conquer these states and rape their resources. For example there was plenty of people who bleated that the war in Iraq was just about oil access, but that was not true. The EU states certainly were quite interested in resources and conquest, but that was another historical time. My view is Russia is making no attempt to police misbehavior, but is solely interested in political/military conquest here. China has been quite insular in the past century, but we shall see how they behave once they can choose conquest as an option. I expect they will be rather bad at it, at least initially.
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Many of the countries the US was less successful in its political objectives with are friendly to the US now. I think they correctly see the US as more transactional in nature due to its capitalism. The US, whether it is the government or its private industry, wants to enrich itself but has learned that doing this at the point of a gun is bad long term planning. There are truly many win/win scenarios that can be exploited. Globalism. The Middle East’s wealth was primarily developed by the west and ultimately the locals took over. Saudi Arabia probably could have been conquered by 4 tanks at one time, but then you own that mess. It got a bit messy at times but win / win.
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Now what to do about junior tyrants? The playbook appears to be let them do their thing inside their borders to a limit, but once they try expanding their reach to contain them. What the junior tyrants need to learn is picking a fight with the west usually results in a fight to their detriment.
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There is status quo bias in place. There is no particular reason to believe the current borders in place are optimal and sacrosanct. Obviously Putin thinks some border changes are better long term. However trying to adjust borders to better align with the native’s true desires just breeds great conflict. The Balkans, etc. Some borders elsewhere were created by EU powers that had little apparent consideration for the local’s cultural divides. Realistically though, best to leave it alone than try to fix it.
Mike M, What? You don’t completely agree? (lighthearted sarc).
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Actually, I probably abbreviated very complex histories down a bit haphazardly. US foreign policy on intervention has evolved from colonialism with Philippines and Hawaii to communist containment at the periphery to humanitarian crisis intervention or anti-terror.
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All the while we have been learning the lesson slowly by repeated blowback that intervention is inherently destructive. And, therefore there must be a strong desire expressed by the foreign nation’s peoples at large for assistance before it will be accepted as legitimate. Trying to change another culture by force only leads to distrust. Gifts will be burned if seen as Trojan horses.
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Nation building also fails becuase the assistance itself is corrupting. Aid must pass through hands, each of which is empowered to self-enrichment and political control through non-earned means. Even assistance that gets distributed directly by NGOs is corrupting to the extent of the receiving government’s cooperation is necessary and thus can be used for favored political motives.
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I am very much about teaching people by setting productive examples that are worthy of being stolen by envy.
“Even assistance that gets distributed directly by NGOs is corrupting to the extent of the receiving government’s cooperation is necessary and thus can be used for favored political motives.”
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Yes, see Somalia.
Ron Graf (Comment #217859): “there must be a strong desire expressed by the foreign nation’s peoples at large for assistance before it will be accepted as legitimate.”
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Indeed. I don’t know that it needs to be expressed, but the desire would seem to have to exist. Panama is almost certainly better off since we got rid of Noriega, but many, if not most, Panamanians still resent our intervention.
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Ron Graf: “Trying to change another culture by force only leads to distrust.”
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I think it is worse than mere distrust. Kipling provided a good analysis of what we stupidly tried to do in Afghanistan:
The whole poem would seem to apply.
MikeM
I agree we have in the past tried to “give” people what they don’t want. I also agree this does not work. (Or perhaps it can only work under very, very, very unique circumstances. After WWII we may have “given” Japan something they did not want at the time. I know the allies pushed to remove the emperor and pushed a constitution. It seems to have worked out.)
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So there is a big distinction between helping a country get what they want and trying to give them something they don’t want. The former sometimes works (though, of course, Ukraine could still lose.) The latter… almost never.
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Notable (given Ed putting Cuba on the list) we have not really tried to “give” Cuba democracy. (Or certainly haven’t tried whole heartedly.)
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We did forcefully prevent Russia from putting its weapons there. But whatever opinion one might have of our relations with Cuba we didn’t screw up their country. They did that to themselves by way of supporting Castro whose policies are harm them greatly. Does our imposing embargo cause them some economic difficulty? Sure. But their major economic problems are not being unable to trade with us.
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Maybe we are mixing it with a desire to hurt Putin and Russian. It’s difficult to separate the “helping Ukraine” from “hurting Putin and Russia” in this instance. To help Ukraine you do want to repell actual invading Russian forces, but you could also help them by weakening Russia’s resolve to hurt Ukraine. Steps to weaken resolve tend to be steps to hurt Russia.
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We also can see a separate need to weaken Russian’s economic hold over the West, which Putin does try to use to weaken the West’s resolve to help Ukraine. Weakening the Russia’s economic hold means reducing dependence on their oil– which can cause them economic harm. That can look like a “desire” to harm Russia or Putin, but the “desire” is the not become an economic prisoner to a state that wants to wield its economic hold for the purpose of invading other countries (e.g. Ukraine.).
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So, it’s a bit tough to diagnose the motive for “hurting Russia” which can range from totally just to hurt them to totally to help Ukraine and the west itself. I think it’s a mix.
lucia (Comment #217862): “So, it’s a bit tough to diagnose the motive for “hurting Russia” which can range from totally just to hurt them to totally to help Ukraine and the west itself. I think it’s a mix.”
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The best way to help Ukraine is to get them to an acceptable settlement as quickly as possible. But maximally hurting Russia can be accomplished by dragging out the war as long as possible. Those have some overlap but are definitely in conflict. But it is hard to tell which is guiding policy.
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It seems that last spring there was a tentative peace deal that fell through. It is not at all clear how close it was to being a done deal and why it fell through. Ukrainska Pravda reported that it was agreed to by both Moscow and Kiev, but NATO and the USA killed it. If so, then we were sacrificing Ukraine to harm Russia.
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It *seems* that we have been carefully rationing aid to Ukraine. There are various possible explanations of that. One is that we have been giving Ukraine enough aid to keep them in the fight while not giving them enough aid to gain a clear advantage. If so, then we were sacrificing Ukraine to harm Russia.
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In both cases, the key words are “if so”. We don’t actually know.
I don’t see how you can get a peace deal with Russia. Say you agree to give up Crimea and some other land. What happens in the future when Russia does the same with the new border areas, or occupies a small area of land?
MikeM
Sure, but big questions inclue what is “acceptable”? And what will make Russia be willing to concede to something “acceptable”?
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What precisely did Ukrainista Pravda report? I’d need to read it to know what it “seems” the deal was, and who or what killed it.
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https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/04/16/7340072/
You can see back in April they were reporting that Russia had not agreed to remove troops. Had not responded on whether they would find security guarantees by Western countries acceptable. Russia statements of what they would accept were utterly vague. So vague as that one can’t really say they agreed to anything specific.
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So Ukrainista pravda is not saying the west killed it in that article.
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I know ultimately the French said the Russian’s weren’t negotating in good faith. If they would say “we are willing to come to ‘reasonable’ agreements'” — without ever agreeign to anything specific, I’d say Marcon’s characterization is true. That’s the sort of language Putin continues to use. He’s “willing” for peace at any time…. but he doesn’t describe anything he’d give up, do whatever. That’s not negotiating. And it also can’t be characterized as an agreement to anything.
My memory is faulty. I conflated two things. Ukrainska Pravda reported that the West killed negotiations.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/05/5/7344206/
An article in Foreign Affairs included a claim that there was a tentative deal.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-putin-wants-fiona-hill-angela-stent
On the Boris Johnson– I had read that. And of course, it means Boris is saying the west isn’t ready to sign guarantees. But it doesn’t way Ukraine was ready.
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It’s also worth nothing that Boris is Boris. So if Zelensky has really wanted to agree to whatever terms Russia was demanding at the time, it’s not clear he couldn’t have gotten around that.
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I’m pretty sure that any time the Ukraininians want to say, “We are tired of fighting. We’ll concede anything and everything Russia asked for.” they can do that. Neither Boris Johnson nor the entire West can force Ukraine to not surrender if that’s what they want.
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This is so vague as to be meaningless. As I mentioned before, Russia is perpetually saying they are open to ending the war. That’s the “outline”. But the details are…. what? If there is no agreement on details, they aren’t anywhere near some agreement. One can think it “appears” something is happening. But really, nothing is until they agree on quite a few major details.
Tom wrote: “I think this latest attempt to take down Trump just died on the vine.”
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Not necessarily. Biden is hardly a benefit. Removing him this way means they can also pretend to be interested in impartial justice.
Apparently, the Delaware house containing classified documents was rented by Hunter Biden in feb 2017, for a year, for 49k per month. Sounds totally legit…
DaveJR,
But the garage was locked. . .
If they wanted to agree to something, they would agree to something. The terms of this alleged deal are completely missing so this statement carries zero weight. These anonymous sources can clear up why it fell through, they don’t, it’s just more selective truthy propaganda.
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Russia has an incentive to *appear* to be talking to Ukraine for their domestic audience and to claim it is the evil west stopping peace from gloriously breaking out. They don’t even really do that. All Russia needs to do is insert some obvious unacceptable detail, this is what Iran does with its negotiating. Appear to negotiate, throw a wrench in at the last moment, and claim the other side is the problem. It’s a mirage, as is Russia willing to negotiate.
.
The chances there is backdoor communications going on is high, the chances this is getting nowhere is also high. What are the odds the west is going to give up sanctions or the EU will start buying gas again? Zero. The EU isn’t going to buy gas no matter what now because Russia cannot be trusted because their politicians have chosen to weaponize the energy supply. Russia’s energy warfare has thus far failed miserably and the future outlook is not promising. Another miscalculation. If there was a settlement, why would rational actors put their strategist interests at risk again by buying Russian gas?
The files are a nothingburger. Just innocent mistakes of hard working aides who were in an unfortunate scrambling, frenetic, hectic, frenzied, fraught, feverish process of packing boxes. How could one expect somebody to look for secret markings during that whirlwind process? Biden was getting a Medal of Freedom at the time for goodness sakes! (actually reported this way) Biden is reportedly very angry at his aides for putting him in this position. Can you believe the aides hid those boxes in his garage like that? What is next from those untrusting Republicans? Are they going to go crazy and ask who had access to the garage for all those years? They have already been told repeatedly it.was.impenetrably.locked.24.7 like all garages. The Q-Anon folks are probably going to start wondering if some boxes were left somewhere else and were stolen and nobody even knows about them because they are gone. They will say things like “you will never find what you don’t know is missing”.
Lucia wrote: “But the garage was locked. . .”
.
I’m thinking more about the 49k rent per month. Bit high for renting a house from your Dad, don’t you think? Average rentals around there are supposedly about 4k per month. Great way to pass 10% to the “big guy” though…
A very pro Ukraine site on the use and need for artillery
.
https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-15-january-2023-192ac14b12b0?source=user_profile———0—————————-
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Because even 400 Challengers or 400 Leopards would never have the same fire-power like 400 artillery pieces. They are no artillery and thus can’t hurl a comparable amount of HEs like artillery can. Result: they can’t cause the necessary — massive — amount of damage to the VSRF. At most, they can cause ‘lots of needling’; at worst, their formations are just going to offer plentiful of excellent targets to the Russian artillery — because Ukrainian artillery is going to remain unable to suppress that of the VSRF.
This is going to remain that way even if all these tanks and infantry fighting vehicles (and whatever else NATO-members are promising, the last few days) — would enable the ZSU to build-up something like ‘strike capability ‘— which, actually, is little more than daydreaming. Why? Because even 200 Challengers would not provide the ZSU with the capability to pulverise VSRF units meanwhile deployed along two-, some-places even three lines of defence — all heavily protected by kilometres-deep minefields — constructed all along the frontline, and that from the border in north-western Luhansk, all the way down to the Dnipro River. The only military branch capable of doing that is the artillery of the ZSU — all provided this would be supplied with enough pieces and shells.
Tom
Unbelievable. Everyone knows they should have been put in Jill’s walk in closet.
DaveJR,
I think my mind just ‘corrected’ 49K/month to $49K/year. . . Yes. $49K/ month would be a spectacular amount of rent to pay even if the place is large and splendid. Few renters want to rent a space that large and splendid.
Hunter owns the house now.
Hunter disowns his own child, not nice.
The Biden’s do not keep records of who visited the house when he was vice President and the secret service did not and do not care who visited him?
Rubbish.
An x Vice President and his guests are logged and followed all the time by the Secret Service who have extensive records.
Claiming not to have such records and failing to supply them are smoking guns.
Big trouble down the track.
Still, if nobody cares?
angech
No.
xVPs get secret service protection for up to six months. Biden was xVP and not president for 4 years.
From a quick search, it seems the $49K/month rent is from some rental application Hunter filled out on which he also claimed to own the home. Maybe he filled it out while under the influence. So it might not be reliable.
.
I did not know that former VP’s only got Secret Service protection for 6 months.
Yeah, I didn’t know that either. Thanks Lucia!
the “Former Vice President Protection Act of 2008,” which authorized Secret Service protection for former Vice Presidents, their spouses and their children less than 16 years of age for up to six months”
That is sensible.
“angech An x Vice President and his guests are logged and followed all the time by the Secret Service who have extensive records.”
No?
I did not say protected, I said surveilled [well actually I said followed] as in the secret service
a. spies on all all Presidential and vice Presidential persons forever, they have to that is their remit in keeping the country safe.
[This is also a reason that we know the Russian charges against Trump were trumped up.Any half way decent CIA would have been all over and exposed s Presidential candidate with proven links]
–
b. Must have records of everyone who visited the Biden place as you just do not let spies or Canadians with hammer tendencies anywhere near the place without at least recording their car numbers phone numbers and whatever the phone taps pick up.
Or else they are not a decent FBI service/Secret Service.
As said a smoking gun in the fact that everyone knows that Biden knows who visited his house and so do the Secret Service.
Remember the last year he was also running for President.
When they deny knowing what they have to know to be competent well…..
Dogs that do not bark are particularly important.
If the Special Prosecutor , Ben something or other , wants to do a proper job instead of being a prop he would be aware of this and the interviews might start to bite.
Steve F would be happy if Biden takes Trump down with him but as the Democrats say the two cases are not remotely similar.
One is a man who had the authority to do whatever he liked by merely thinking about it with documents everyone knew he had.
The other hid state secrets he should not have had at his home and offices pertaining to his son’s dodgy dealings managed by his secretary suggested by his son who is now likely in deep trouble.
He only admitted their presence through his lawyers who were so concerned at what they were finding they were afraid to hush it up.
Takes foil hat off.
angech
No.
I’m not aware of any constant surveillance program for former VPs especially not by the secret service. They aren’t a spy or monitoring agency.
.
I think you are just imagining policies you think must exist for some reason. They don’t.
Well, the Democrats say it! So it must be true.
.
Look: there are similarities. So whoever claims they are not remotely similar is either lying or deluded. I’m sure there are also differences. If nothing else, a garage is different from a walk in closet. 🙂
Whatever he liked by merely thinking something? That’s a tenuous theory.
.
I’m not sure if you are attempting irony or not.
“I’m not sure if you are attempting irony or not.”
–
Just a little.
????
Perhaps he is just Walter Mitty trapped in an orange suit.
Most likely explanation: Biden held on to a series of documents to help in preparing a book (worth millions of dollars from some Democrat aligned publisher), or to prepare to deal with his son’s (ahem…) ‘business activities’. The documents were in different locations because Biden read/reviewed them in different locations. Of course Biden knew he had these documents, just as Trump knew he had classified documents. Trump’s motives are likely multiple (and maybe weird), but neither he nor Biden will ever provide a truthful explanation of motive. And since the documents are secret, the public will never get to judge their importance, or even if they should be classified at all. We will continued to be deluged with leaks discounting Biden’s ‘inadvertent mistakes’ and pounding on Trump’s willful theft of ‘nuclear secrets’. It is a charade, and ought to end.
SteveF (Comment #217885): “Most likely explanation: Biden held on to a series of documents to help in preparing a book … The documents were in different locations because Biden read/reviewed them in different locations.
.
Indeed. The classified documents were obviously not merely misfiled among a bunch of documents put in storage and forgotten about. When Biden left office, the documents went to some undisclosed location, probably Biden’s home. At some later date some of those documents were transferred to the think tank, which did not exist at the time Biden left office. That was obviously purposeful, with the most likely reason being to help Biden’s ghost writer with preparing a book.
.
Some of the remaining documents were in Biden’s home library, suggesting that they were being used at some point. And the docs in the garage do not appear to have been properly stored but instead seem to have been borderline discarded, just stuck in a box that was chucked into the garage.
Steve F and Mike M
Well said.
Article about Biden docs has Ken Dilanian’s name on it. He is a favorite for leaking stories, along with Devlin Barrett.
I’m not sure what it means that they wanted to put this story out there.
Today in “It’s time to leave earth”:
.
Woman quits office job to work at McDonald’s, breaks down in tears after one shift.
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DOJ still fighting in court for forced masking on transportation.
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Woman sues bar – after getting so drunk she blew up $10M home.
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DC poised to soften penalties for carjacking, other violent crimes, despite mayor’s veto.
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The dangerous rise of men who won’t date “woke” women.
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Man made AI wife then talked to her so much he had to “euthanize” her.
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Former congressman Adam Kinzinger sells signed copies of Jan 6th report for $100.
Where are these from?
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2020/01/9244509/laurence-fox-anti-woke-meaning?fbclid=IwAR0X0cC4o8PnFSduQcm2z3UBSCxjReCR3CEV2gYZLCFQ3E7q-60bfJt3Ooo
“The Dangerous Rise Of Men Who Won’t Date “Woke” Women”
First sentence is incorrect. They must not have consulted a dictionary.
Anything else? “irrespective of X” means not taking X into account. You can certainly take A-W and Y-Z into account.
And of course, irrespective by itself doesn’t tell you what X is.
.
There are certainly a bunch of ‘hostile to women” social media guys going. Andrew Tate is currently off line– but he was a big example. But people do get to not date those who they don’t wish to date. They may, as a consequence, end up dating no one. But when I was young I sometimes got asked out by some guy I didn’t want to date. Given the choice between “Not dating him”, and “Not going out on a date”, I chose the latter. That was my right (even if the guy was grumpy and insisted I should somehow value him and wonderful, wonderful. And yes, some guys would insist they “merited” me.)
It is funny to read the article. If I were dating…
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Those would all result in hard swipe left on a dating profile. Of course, the guy can continue to exist. If he doesn’t like women with the current fashion trend in eyebrows, ok. Some guys like long nails; some don’t. No biggie.
(In fact, I don’t ‘do’ my eyebrows, so I suspect he’d think mine were fine. )
.
But mostly a listing of peeves of any sort is a “swipe left”.
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OTOH: That someone would want to have dinner with Jordan Petersen woudn’t necessarily be a “swipe left”. That’s not a peeve.
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I guess stereotypes have changed. The complaint used to be women only want money and don’t want sex!!
Not to start a gender bias war, but it is different for women under a novel theory men and women are different. If you want to hear open bias, then eavesdrop on a bunch of guys who have known each other for a long time. This is the problem with the forced social conformity, it is artificially constructing a world that everyone knows doesn’t exist and everyone plays along in public. I find it all very strange, but I get that some people want to remove some unjustifiable prejudice. I believe most people comprehend the difference between general stereotyping and improperly applying group prejudice to individuals.
.
Not a user of dating apps and barely know what a swipe left is, but the opposite probably also occurs. Overtly conformist people virtue signaling in their profiles probably results in a lot of rejects. “No drama queens” would be something everyone understands but would need to be stated in a different way. It’s not obvious to me that only selecting people like you is a good match anyway.
The future of the world really comes down to the genius, courage of perseverance of a very few people. Jefferson, Franklin and Madison come to mind for political thought, Washington for his recognition of their unique enlightenment. The world seemed to recognize their idea’s and value them too for ~200 years and then somewhere in the 1970s they slowly lost respect for it, starting in the academic and entertainment communities.
.
Now the left and even center sneeringly calls freedom fighters anyone who appreciates the idea of limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances — freedom.
.
What happened? real question.
.
On a more optimistic note, here is some cool videos of Helion’s David Curtley explaining his iterations at creating aneutronic fusion for baseload powering of electrical grids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38&t=473s&ab_channel=RealEngineering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GJtGpvE1sQ&ab_channel=ElectricFuture
Hey Lucia, I missed this last week. “Gov. Pritzker Signs Legislation Banning Assault Weapons and Sale of High-Capacity Magazines”.
I guess you’re going to have to shut down the Liljegren Arsenal you’ve been running all these years up there? 😉
I have no business teasing you. Alabama has adopted ‘[c]onstitutional carry’ since the turn of the year, and do I have my conceal carry weapon purchased yet? Ehhn Oh. Who has time. I’ll get around to it one of these days when I have a minute.
Postmodernism et al. Real answer.
“What happened?”
.
The dishonesty of the left happened.
Tom Scharf
I think I am not a drama queen. I understand why someone would prefer to avoid drama queens.
.
But if I saw that in a profile, I would tend to think “Danger, Will Robinson, danger danger!” Same with “No crazies”. “No jerks.” “No narcissits.”. My main reaction is why do they feel the need to write this?” And I tend to suspect the answer is that they tend to “diagnose” others as being drama queens, crazies, jerks etc when there is a disagreement.
.
Example: In college one of the girls on our dorm floor was engaged. They told her family. Wedding was being planned. Turned out her fiance was married. She was upset about this.
.
He diagnosed her being upset as “over reacting” and “being dramatic”. You might think, “Was she throwing stuff around?” Screaming? Threatned to kill him? Nope. Upset. Wanted to discuss what his plans where. What they should do about wedding. (She initially bought his claim the divorce was in the works.) But he his response to her wanting to discuss the situation was to diagnose her as unhinged, and wouldn’t want to discuss until she “calmed down”. (Which seemed to mean…. stopped wanting to discuss things.)
.
I’m sure this guy things lots of women are “crazy”,”dramatic” etc. Swipe left.
.
(They didn’t get married and she married someone else.)
.
Yeah. People don’t want to date crazies. But writing “no crazies” when advertizing yourself in a profile…… not a good sign about you.
mark bofill
Well… maybe my neighbor might have to shut down his arsenal? (I don’t know if he has an arsenal. I’m pretty sure he has guns.)
Lucia,
I know, just being silly. I remember you’re not personally a big fan of firearms. If memory serves you’ve preferred hot chocolate.
drama queen
noun INFORMAL
a person who habitually responds to situations in a melodramatic way.
.
But yes, you are right. People who would actually write that stuff are likely saying more about themselves. Perhaps “Looking for somebody with an even keel and laid back even when under stress”.
Lucia,
“In college one of the girls on our dorm floor was engaged. They told her family. Wedding was being planned. Turned out her fiance was married. She was upset about this.”
.
I am sitting at the international airport in Sao Paulo. I very nearly snarfed my draft beer when I read this!
Planning & gaming out on situations
.
“..The level of incompetence in the planning of this war is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before. It appears that all the preparation was focused on provoking a Russian invasion, not on the developments that would happen soon afterwards. What’s clear, is that the Pentagon never “gamed out” the actual war itself or the conflict as it is presently unfolding. Otherwise, how does one explain these glaring errors in judgement:
.
They never thought the sanctions would backfire
They never thought they’d run out of weapons and ammo
They never thought Russia’s oil receipts would skyrocket
They never thought that the majority of countries would maintain normal relations with Russia
They never figured they’d actually need a coherent military strategy for fighting a ground war in eastern Europe.
.
Is there anything they got right?..”
.
https://exit-cuckoos-nest.blogspot.com/2023/01/ukraine-is-hammer-about-to-fall-by-mike.html
MIKE WHITNEY • JANUARY 17, 2023 • 2,200 WORDS
Tom
Yep. Precisely. Describing attributes you consider positive is better. There are people who are more easily upset– and others who are more placid. You can prefer one type.
.
And heck, some people want someone “bubbly” who is a “fire cracker”, which tends to be the opposite of “placid”.
.
Those who describe others as ‘drama queens’, ‘crazies’ or “slugs”, tend to be people you shouldn’t want to date.
Just a few years ago you would be roundly mocked by the ‘ever so socially aware “smart” people for confusing “gender” (which is a social construct, they said), with “sex” (which is biology, they said). Only dumb, bigotted, conservatives could be stupid enough not to grasp this clear difference and just let people be who they want to be (but not you). Unsurprisingly, this turned out to be your typical motte position of a motte and bailey attack. It started with “woman”. Now it’s moving on to female.
.
“Not all students who menstruate are female,” said DFL Rep. Sandra Feist during a hearing to consider a bill that would provide menstrual products in all school bathrooms, including boys’ bathrooms.
.
https://twitter.com/AlphaNewsMN/status/1615408741376999429?s=20&t=en1EbV61fPElWksYsRprBA
DaveJR,
Just when you think the Babylon Bee is too over the top to be outdone by reality, some lunatic steps up to show that you are mistaken. These are crazy people.
Ed: “They never thought the sanctions would backfire”
[Sanctioning a large country is bound to be bad for more than just the sanctioned country. What senile WH forgot is that enemies are constantly war gaming. Canceling oil on inauguration day was idiotic.]
.
“They never thought they’d run out of weapons and ammo”
[Nobody remembers the cost.]
.
“They never thought Russia’s oil receipts would skyrocket”
[Yep. idiots.]
.
“They never thought that the majority of countries would maintain normal relations with Russia.”
[Actually, this was just as blind stumble but unlike cancelling oil, seemed to unite Europe to rally out of concern for US’s senile leadership. Russia will be crippled for a decade of two due to Putin’s gambit.]
.
“They never figured they’d actually need a coherent military strategy for fighting a ground war in eastern Europe.”
[As Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.”]
Ed Forbes (Comment #217905): “They never thought the sanctions would backfire”
.
I don’t know what you mean by “backfire”, but the EU and USA knew there would be a cost to them.
.
Ed Forbes: “They never thought they’d run out of weapons and ammo”
.
At best an exaggeration, at worst simply not true.
.
Ed Forbes: “They never thought Russia’s oil receipts would skyrocket”.
.
Russia’s oil receipts have been far less than they would have been if it were not for the sanctions. Any increase was due to a global supply shortage, not the sanctions.
.
Ed Forbes: “They never thought that the majority of countries would maintain normal relations with Russia”
.
I don’t see why that matters or any evidence that it was unexpected.
.
Ed Forbes: “They never figured they’d actually need a coherent military strategy for fighting a ground war in eastern Europe.”
.
A claim without evidence. In any case, the lead on military strategy has been appropriately left to the Ukrainians and they have proven to be much better at it than the Russians.
I’ve assumed “they” in this sentence refers to the Russians who seemed to think all the needed to do was roll into Ukraine and the Ukrainians would fold.
.
The person Ed is quoting is incoherent. The article is full of undefined terms. What, for example, does “backfire” mean in the context of that article. And almost everything applies better as criticism of the Russian “strategy” or “plan” than to anyone else.
.
Had the WhiteHouse done some stupid things? Sure. But many of those stupid things are unrelated to helping Ukraine. Likewise Germany who put themselves in a position to be affected by Russia’s decisions about oil.
“Pentagon Still Can’t Account For Roughly $220 Billion In Equipment, Gov’t Watchdog Says”
.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pentagon-still-cant-account-for-roughly-dollar220-billion-in-equipment-govt-watchdog-says/ar-AA16sFlz
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Harry “felt less important because William got more sausages at breakfast”
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If plants are so intelligent, should we stop eating them?
.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/16/if-plants-are-so-intelligent-should-we-stop-eating-them
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Elementary school to host “girlx” sporting event open those who identify “as girls,” “with girlhood”.
.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/17/cambridge-ma-elementary-school-to-host-girlx-sporting-event/
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Facebook, Instagram lift breast ban – but only for trans, nonbinary users
.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/18/facebook-instagram-told-to-allow-bare-breasts-free-the-nipple/
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I have M-cup breasts – Americans treat me like a piece of meat
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https://nypost.com/2023/01/17/model-with-m-cup-breasts-shocked-at-how-americans-treat-her/
Hmmm, woman with massive fake breasts wearing revealing clothes, showing off around Time Square, gets lots of attention. Who would have thought? Somehow, I don’t think the tourists around Time Square form a proper representative sample of “Americans”!
Microsoft hosts Sting at a private gathering of 50 at Davos with their top management team and announces 10,000 layoffs the next day. Completely clueless. I don’t think anyone would care much if Russia nuked the WEF, they missed an opportunity there.
DaveJR
Yeah… I also read the blurb on his feelings about the size of room/bed William got relative to him.
.
You know…. my family had a four bedroom house and four kids. The parents got one. My older sister got her own room. My brother got his own room. My younger sister and I had to share!!!. We middle kids were so unimportant.
.
And you know what else? My older sister and brother didn’t have to wear hand me downs!!
.
I should write a whole book on this.
.
(Well… of course there is some ‘unfairness’ inherent in primogenitor especially with royalty. But it’s pretty hard to fell really, really, really bad for Harry about being ‘the spare’ not getting as many sausages. Relative to other people he had plenty of sausages. And I would imagine when he was 3 and William 6, giving the older child larger helpings made sense. The alternative would have been to give Harry too many sausages, tell him to finish and then have him not have room for dessert!)
.
So….
.
O…… K…..
The lack of a clear military objective in Ukraine to obtain clear and realistic political objectives will, again, lead to both a military and political loss for the US.
.
“… Since the failures of the US military missions in places like Afghanistan and Iraq – and many other Muslim nations like Libya – critics of the US mission in the “global war on terrorism” have lamented the lack of a coherent strategy.
.
As the tired line from Carl von Clausewitz goes, “war is an extension of politics through other means.” Warfare, therefore, is an inherently political act. More precisely, it is the use of violence by a state or non-state actor to affect a political outcome.
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Thus whenever military force is used it must have clear ends set forth by the political leadership ordering the use of that military force. Those clearly defined political ends must be supplemented by reliable ways to achieve that realistic political objective. The means are the resources that must be brought to bear in order to accomplish the political end.
.
https://asiatimes.com/2023/01/americas-strategy-of-failure-comes-to-ukraine/
Ed Forbes (Comment #217918): “The lack of a clear military objective in Ukraine to obtain clear and realistic political objectives will, again, lead to both a military and political loss for the US.”
.
That is an assertion without evidence.
.
Ukraine is most certainly not Iraq or Afghanistan. The US invaded those countries; Ukraine was invaded by Russia. The US had clear military objectives in both Iraq and Afghanistan; those objectives were quickly and efficiently reached. The problem was that the US had no sensible plan to deal with the resulting power vacuums in those countries. That is not an issue in Ukraine since there is a stable, democratic government in place.
.
Ukraine most certainly has a clear strategic objective: To drive Russia from their territory. The public objectives, which include regaining Crimea, are not realistic. We can not know if they have a more realistic objective in private; they certainly can not reveal that at this time.
.
The US also has a clearly stated public objective: To support Ukraine in regaining their territory. The problem is that we can not know if that is the real objective. The Biden’s administration’s actions are arguably more consistent with using Ukraine as a cat’s paw and seeking a stalemate that will sap Russia.
.
The only relevance of Iraq and Afghanistan is that the Biden foreign policy people are essentially of a piece with the feckless authors of those blunders. So it might well be that we don’t have a clear strategy. Biden’s actions to date are consistent with that.
Mike M.
Ed probably thinks that objective “unclear” because it differs from Russia’s objective. 🙂
.
And honestly, is Russia’s political objective clear and realistic? I don’t think so. I mean, back in Feb 2020, the objective was supposedly
““to conduct a special military operation … to protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years,” repeating a baseless claim about Ukraine’s Russian-separatist-backed Donbas region. ”
See https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/24/europe/ukraine-russia-attack-timeline-intl/index.html
.
He certainly doesn’t seem to be trying to prevent abuse or genocide of the Russian speaking people in Ukraine.
.
Whatever his objective is it doesn’t seem to be aligned with what he’s doing. So: no his political objective isn’t “clear” (or at least not clear unless you think he’s lying.)
And is their military objective clear? Also don’t think so.
Lucia,
I think at least some of the Russian objectives are pretty clear: 1) permanently retain Crimea, 2) retain at least de facto political control over the Donbas region, 3) maintain a guaranteed water supply to the Crimea, 4) Not have the Ukraine join NATO. In addition to those, there are other publicly stated objectives (eg, absorbing all of eastern Ukraine into Russia) which may or may not be serious.
.
Have Russian objectives changed over 11 months? Absolutely. Putin thought the Ukraine would not fight but instead quickly fold and return to vassal state status, and believed the West would not supply the Ukraine with arms/support/money like they have. Surely these realities on the ground have changed Putin’s objectives. I doubt the Russians honestly believe the Ukraine will ever return to a vassal state. I also doubt they believe they can absorb all of Eastern Ukraine into Russia if there is ever to be a negotiated settlement. Of course, neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians may be interested in a negotiated settlement.
.
So for now, the fighting will continue.
SteveF,
But those aren’t the objectives don’t make sense for starting the war. They already essentially had Crimea before Feb 2020. There wasn’t anything going on to make them suddenly lose Dombas and so on. So those don’t make sense as the reason for invading. So it’s not at all clear that those were the objectives for going to war.
.
Russia didn’t say their reason for invading was to not have Ukraine join NATO. We know they didn’t want that to happen. And I agree lots of people think that was the “real” reason; it may have been. Their claim was “denazification” (whatever that means) and ending or preventing the genocide and abuse. (I’m not going to make any claims about abuse. But there didn’t seem to be a lot of genocide going on before the war.)
.
But no, I don’t think their reasons are “clear”.
Lucia,
The Russian objective for starting the war was (I think) returning the Ukraine to a vassal state status, which would automatically give them all the other things I listed above and more. I think this was the objective because 1) they immediately tried to seize Kiev, where they would have (presumably) installed a puppet government, and 2) the size of the invading force was much too small to “occupy” the Ukraine. Their initial objective was thwarted by the stiff Ukrainian defense, aided by Western arms and other support.
.
I think those other things I listed are *now* the objectives for continuing the war, and they seem to me reasonably clear. YMMV.
“An x Vice President and his guests are logged and followed all the time by the Secret Service who have extensive records.”
I’m not aware of any constant surveillance program for former VPs especially not by the secret service. They aren’t a spy or monitoring agency.”
I think you are just imagining policies you think must exist for some reason.”
–
Not so.
Breitbart today
“The Secret Service is reportedly willing to reverse course and disclose visitor records from President Joe Biden’s Wilmington residence.
While the Secret Service claims not to keep visitor logs of everyone who entered Biden’s home, the Secret Service does keep records of those who “come into contact” with the locations the agency protects.
It’s those logs the Secret Service is willing to turn over to Congress, according to Fox News.
“The Secret Service does not maintain visitor logs at the private residences of protects,” Secret Service’s communications chief, , stated.
“ the Secret Service does generate law enforcement and criminal justice information records for various individuals who may come into contact with Secret Service protected sites.
The report appears to contradict the agency’s prior statement to the Associated Press.
this speaks to the means and methods of our protective operations.”
Just makes their sting operations on x president even more ludicrous.
They knew he was not under foreign influence, unlike Biden, all the time.
Treacherous, not incompetent.
According to the latest figures I can find, approximately 17% of the pre-war Ukrainian population has fled and declared refugee status in the west (this excludes residents of Crimea, which were not included in the pre-war total population and who have mostly stayed in place). It will be interesting to see how many more Ukrainians leave if the war continues. In the USA, Ukrainian refugees (82,000 so far) are given 2+ years residency and automatic work status, which can be extended depending on the situation in their home country. Seems likely many in the States won’t ever return to the Ukraine.
angech,
“They knew he was not under foreign influence, unlike Biden, all the time. Treacherous, not incompetent.”
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It has been clear for many years that the Washington bureaucracy/intelligence agencies have been doing their best to torpedo Trump and all though aligned with him. The political “protection” the permanent bureaucracy has afforded Biden is not at all surprising; if they actually turn over damaging visitor logs, I will be very surprised. Most likely any information they provide will hide the identity of visitors, and so any obvious conflict of interests/sale of influence will be hidden from the public.
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Note that the logs you are describing are for Biden’s time in office, not when he is not in office. There may be no logs of any kind for visitors to Biden’s homes between January 2017 and January 2021.
SteveF (Comment #217922): “I think at least some of the Russian objectives are pretty clear: 1) permanently retain Crimea, 2) retain at least de facto political control over the Donbas region, 3) maintain a guaranteed water supply to the Crimea, 4) Not have the Ukraine join NATO.”
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As lucia has said, the first two they basically had before the war started. 3) is hardly the basis for a war and 4) was premature.
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SteveF (Comment #217924): “The Russian objective for starting the war was (I think) returning the Ukraine to a vassal state status”.
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I think that is clear. But I see no reason to believe that they have abandoned that.
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SteveF: “I think those other things I listed are *now* the objectives for continuing the war”.
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If that is all they want now, then they would be actively seeking a peace deal. There is no evidence of that. But I am guessing that, or something slightly less, is what they will be forced to settle for.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/01/19/woke-zuck-facebook-instagram-to-lift-ban-on-bare-breasts-but-only-for-transgender-and-non-binary/
Facebook
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“The same image of female-presenting nipples would be prohibited if posted by a cisgender woman, but permitted if posted by an individual self-identifying as non-binary,” it said.“
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This entire issue is getting very strange
Angech
Yes. And the protect the VP for 6 months. Not forever.
Your claim was this:
They do not follow a former VP forever. The records were in the home of the former VP and for long after the 6 months of protection lapse. You are talking as if they monitor the former VP forever. They don’t.
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The also wouldn’t be monitoring places they are not protecting. So if the VP is not living there (because, say, Hunter is renting it), it might not be protected. If not protected, not monitored.
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SteveF,
I suspect not. There is a new dance teacher from Ukraine at My Dance Hub. If his career here works out, I suspect he’ll stay. After all: Why not?
Not that small numbers of tanks will make much of a difference, but…
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“….. A push to provide battle tanks to Ukraine is stalled after U.S. officials this week expressed reluctance over difficulties in maintenance and training for the advanced tracked vehicle.
The U.S. decision effectively prevents Ukraine getting tanks from other NATO allies as well, as Germany this week made clear it would only allow other countries to send German-made tanks if the U.S. commits its own M1 Abrams tank firs…..”
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https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3820367-how-us-german-bickering-is-blocking-ukraines-push-for-tanks/
Mike M,
“But I see no reason to believe that they have abandoned that.”
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I do. They expected a few weeks war to reach Kiev, followed by installation of a puppet government. The facts on the ground make creating a vassal state nearly impossible at this point. Even if the Russians wanted to completely over-run the Ukraine, the cost would be astronomical. Seems to me their aims are now to gain some additional ground in the western Donbas and continue to inflict costly damage to Ukrainian infrastructure to force negotiations. But those are only guesses; nobody knows for sure.
Lucia,
“After all: Why not?”
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Love of country. Patriotism. Friends and family still in the Ukraine. But yes, the attraction of a greatly improved standard of living is maybe hard to resist.
I doubt one of the Russian strategic goals was Sweden and Finland joining NATO, nor their embarrassing military performance, or 100K casualties, or the loss of the entire western world as fossil fuel customers etc., etc.
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Wars are bad news for everyone. It is commonly a matter of who lost the worst, not who gained the most. Seeing missiles destroy apartment buildings and civilian infrastructure isn’t winning any Russian converts. I guarantee nobody on the Russian side expected to be in this position a year ago. I have no idea what this week’s strategic plan in Russia is, but it likely isn’t a long term occupation of western Ukraine. Clearly they thought that was feasible early on, but epically miscalculated.
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I expect the west thought the same thing early on and planned for an insurgency until given this unexpected opportunity to make Russia pay for every inch it occupies, and pay they have.
Tom Scharf,
“..until given this unexpected opportunity to make Russia pay for every inch it occupies, and pay they have.”
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Sure. Remember that we offered Zelinskyy safe transport out of the Ukraine, which he (famously) refused.
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But the West is paying dearly for arms and ammunition given to the Ukraine, along with damage to Western economies and the cost of hosting millions of refugees. The danger for the Ukraine is voters in the west refusing to pay endless billions of dollars to keep Kiev going. I don’t know how long blank checks are going to be handed to the Ukraine, but I suspect another year or so may be the limit.
The voters may grow weary of the war funding, but it is abstract at the moment. NATO may also come to believe Russia has been deterred sufficiently and see no need to continue an endless slugfest. My guess is before either of those happen Ukraine and/or Russia will grow tired of paying much steeper prices and settle things. Very hard to guess. Things could also escalate if people get stupid.
Steve F
“There may be no logs of any kind for visitors to Biden’s homes between January 2017 and January 2021.”
A point Lucia was making though the first 6 months may be officially monitored.
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My expectation is that an efficient Secret Service would be doing a lot more unofficially but recorded and available.
It will be interesting to see what they come up with.
The Ukraine eastern defense is starting to unravel. Soladar started the unraveling and the Russian advance has not slowed as yet. Russian advances northeast of Soladar along the supply road are accelerating as they are now behind the extensive Ukraine fortifications built up since 2014.
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A short and detailed youtube map and analysis of the eastern front lines
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYKGkko1uII
angech,
For certain there are logs for the 8 years Biden was Vice President. Whether those will ever be released to the public is another story; my guess is they will remain ‘secret national security’ documents if they suggest Biden’s influence peddling.
With a judiciary and a security upper management working hand in hand with a clean government there is less of a problem.
Unless the republicans win both houses and a presidency it is hard to see serious change in the way that the upper echelons operate.
I get that many branches of Government saw Trump as a clear and present danger.
I understand the motivations of people working to get rid of him by foul means or fair.
I want agencies working together with government as I see little conflict of interest when everyone is on the same fair page.
I just think America and Americans would prefer a more honest or seeming honest system which it has not been for the last 6 years.
angech
Your expectations notwithstanding, it is not in their remit to “do more” than they are authorized to do.
angech
By design, the judiciary (legislative branch) does not work hand in hand with the executive branch. Our constitution has separation of powers.
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You seriously need to take a course in “US Constitution” before you start making up theories of how our government operates!!
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(I also sincerely doubt eliminating separation of powers would make the government more honest.)
I doubt anything interesting will be found in visitor logs. It’s just the same old partisan wrestling over access to documents. It’s only mildly interesting in that it exposes the media’s bias, they aren’t openly speculating on what is in the visitor logs with experts opining on all the illegal things that are surely being hidden.
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The NYT let’s us know why the documents were hidden:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/us/politics/biden-classified-documents.html
“The decision by President Biden and his top advisers to keep the discovery of classified documents secret from the public and even most of the White House staff for 68 days was driven by what turned out to be a futile hope that the incident could be quietly disposed of without broader implications for Mr. Biden or his presidency.
The handful of advisers who were aware of the initial discovery on Nov. 2 — six days before the midterm elections — gambled that without going public, they could convince the Justice Department that the matter was little more than a minor, good-faith mistake, unlike former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of documents at his Florida estate.”
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Hmmmm … “quietly disposed of” is apparently a NYT euphemism for coverup. I think they might pull out an entirely different vocabulary (hoarding!) if this was the Trump presidency. I’ll at least give them credit for not entirely memory holing the event, although this is basically more stenography from the DNC.
angech,
This provides a basic description of the structure of US government and how political power is supposed to be shared: https://www.thoughtco.com/federal-government-structure-4140369
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The main problem I see today is that there is an enormous (and enormously powerful) permanent bureaucracy which has vastly diminished the ability of voters to control the Federal government. Nowhere in the Constitution is there anticipated a permanent bureaucracy which can’t be controlled by the elected President; nearly all Federal Employees are protected from firing via ‘Civil Service’ laws, so they can (and do!) effectively thwart any Presidential directives/policies they disagree with. While the Constitution gives the President complete administrative control of the Federal government, that control is in fact severely limited…. some might say neutered.
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IMHO, Civil Service laws should have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court as soon as they were passed, because they undermine separation of powers and because they make the ‘permanent bureaucracy’ a part of government not accountable to the voters. The most dangerous of the Federal agencies are the ‘intelligence agencies’, which are even further insulated from control by the voters because most everything they do is completely hidden by “classification” of all relevant information. Voters have absolutely no idea what these agencies are doing, and are prohibited from learning that information.
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You are right that only complete control by Republicans of Congress (including a supermajority in the Senate) and the presidency would be required to make any meaningful change. I won’t hold my breath.
Honestly, it’s a pity they won’t charge Trump. If they could have housed him in the “Former Illinois Governor’s Mansion”, that would be fun.
(There is no former governor currently occupying that mansion now that Blagoyavich is out. And… of course, it’s not a Federal facility. But a girl can dream!)