Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Slobbering Orban fanboy and theocratic conservative Rod Dreher has apparently never seen nor heard of a sports bra before, but says their existence proves society is depraved and beyond repair.

[lineygoblue]

Everyone knows those clothes are only for the men that can naturally have a child.

In Wiz's case, that would be a female child.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Both of youse seem obsessed with THE_WIZARD_...why is this?

Oh yeah and STFU.

[lineygoblue]

Its only because you're such a lovable big lug ...

... or because its fun ...

[THE_WIZARD_]

XOXOXO

[Tom W]

Meanwhile, gas has quietly risen back over $4 (for no apparent reason), inflation is running out of control, colleges are still becoming less affordable. the southern border is still wide open to unidentifiables, our President and VP are tottering idiots (still waiting for an identifiable accomplishment) and Putin is rattling a nuclear saber.

[Jeff Buchanan]

In the two posts I'm about to make, these NYT's opinion pieces (paywalled) are worth a read if you're interested in trying to understand what kinds of outcomes the world is going to experience in the end game for Putin in Ukraine. There is some emerging clarity. That is because, FP experts who are good at parsing diplomatic language and figuring out what kind of messaging is going on between the players in this eastern European cluster fuck, are beginning to see end points. First is Thomas Friedeman who writes, Putin is Trying to Out Crazy the West:

With his annexation of parts of Ukraine on Friday, Vladimir Putin has set in motion forces that are turning Russia into a giant North Korea. It will be a paranoid, angry, isolated state, but unlike North Korea, the Russian version will be spread over 11 time zones — from the Arctic Sea to the Black Sea and from the edge of free Europe to the edge of Alaska — with thousands of nuclear warheads.

I have known a Russia that was strong, menacing, but stable — called the Soviet Union. I have known a Russia that was hopeful, potentially transitioning to democracy under Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and even the younger Putin. I have known a Russia that was a “bad boy” under an older Putin, hacking America, poisoning opposition figures, but still a stable, reliable oil exporter and occasional security partner with the U.S. when we needed Moscow’s help in a pinch.

But none of us have ever known the Russia that a now desperate, back-against-the-wall Putin seems hellbent on delivering — a pariah Russia; a big, humiliated Russia; a Russia that has sent many of its most talented engineers, programmers and scientists fleeing through any exit they can find. This would be a Russia that has already lost so many trading partners that it can survive only as an oil and natural gas colony of China, a Russia that is a failed state, spewing out instability from every pore.

Such a Russia would not be just a geopolitical threat. It would be a human tragedy of mammoth proportions. Putin’s North Koreanization of Russia is turning a country that once gave the world some of its most renowned authors, composers, musicians and scientists into a nation more adept at making potato chips than microchips, more famous for its poisoned underwear than its haute couture and more focused on unlocking its underground reservoirs of gas and oil than on its aboveground reservoirs of human genius and creativity. The whole world is diminished by Putin’s diminishing of Russia.
But with Friday’s annexation, it’s hard to see any other outcome as long as Putin is in power. Why? Game theorist Thomas Schelling famously suggested that if you are playing chicken with another driver, the best way to win — the best way to get the other driver to swerve out of the way first — is if before the game starts you very conspicuously unscrew your steering wheel and throw it out the window. Message to the other driver: I’d love to get out of the way, but I can’t control my car anymore. You better swerve!

Trying to always outcrazy your opponent is a North Korean specialty. Now, Putin has adopted it, announcing with great fanfare that Russia is annexing four Ukrainian regions: Luhansk and Donetsk, the two Russian-backed regions where pro-Putin forces have been fighting Kyiv since 2014, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which have been occupied since shortly after Putin’s invasion in February. In a grand hall of the Kremlin, Putin declared Friday that the residents of these four regions would become Russia’s citizens forever.

What is Putin up to? One can only speculate. Start with his domestic politics. Putin’s base is not the students at Moscow State University. His base is the right-wing nationalists, who have grown increasingly angry at Russia’s military humiliation in Ukraine. To hold their support, Putin may have felt the need to show that, with his reserve call-up and annexation, he is fighting a real war for Mother Russia, not just a vague special military operation.

However, this could also be Putin trying to maneuver a favorable negotiated settlement. I would not be surprised if he soon announces his willingness for a cease-fire — and a willingness to repair pipelines and resume gas shipments to any country ready to recognize Russia’s annexation.

Putin could then claim to his nationalist base that he got something for his war, even if it was hugely expensive, and now he’s content to stop. There is just one problem: Putin does not actually control all the territory he is annexing.

That means he can’t settle for any deal unless and until he’s driven the Ukrainians out of all the territory he now claims; otherwise he would be surrendering what he just made into sovereign Russian territory. This could be a very ominous development. Putin’s battered army does not seem capable of seizing more territory and, in fact, seems to be losing more by the day.

By claiming territory that he doesn’t fully control, I fear Putin is painting himself into a corner that he might one day feel he can escape only with a nuclear weapon.

In any event, Putin seems to be daring Kyiv and its Western allies to keep the war going into winter — when natural gas supplies in Europe will be constrained and prices could be astronomical — to recover territories, some of which his Ukrainian proxies have had under Russia’s influence since 2014.

Will Ukraine and the West swerve? Will they plug their noses and do a dirty deal with Putin to stop his filthy war? Or will Ukraine and the West take him on, head-on, by insisting that Putin get no territorial achievement out of this war, so we uphold the principle of the inadmissibility of seizing territory by force?

Do not be fooled: There will be pressure within Europe to swerve and accept such a Putin offer. That is surely Putin’s aim — to divide the Western alliance and walk away with a face-saving “victory.”

But there is another short-term risk for Putin. If the West doesn’t swerve, doesn’t opt for a deal with him, but instead doubles down with more arms and financial aid for Ukraine, there is a chance that Putin’s army will collapse.

That is unpredictable. But here is what is totally predictable: A dynamic is now in place that will push Putin’s Russia even more toward the North Korea model. It starts with Putin’s decision to cut off most natural gas supplies to Western Europe.
There is only one cardinal sin in the energy business: Never, ever, ever make yourself an unreliable supplier. No one will ever trust you again. Putin has made himself an unreliable supplier to some of his oldest and best customers, starting with Germany and much of the European Union. They are all now looking for alternative, long-term supplies of natural gas and building more renewable power.

It will take two to three years for the new pipeline networks coming from the Eastern Mediterranean and liquefied natural gas coming from the United States and North Africa to begin to sustainably replace Russian gas at scale. But when that happens, and when world natural gas supplies increase generally to compensate for the loss of Russia’s gas — and as more renewables come online — Putin could face a real economic challenge. His old customers may still buy some energy from Russia, but they will never rely so totally on Russia again. And China will squeeze him for deep discounts.

In short, Putin is eroding the biggest source — maybe his only source — of sustainable long-term income. At the same time, his illegal annexation of regions of Ukraine guarantees that the Western sanctions on Russia will stay in place, or even accelerate, which will only accelerate Russia’s migration to failed-state status, as more and more Russians with globally marketable skills surely leave.

I celebrate none of this. This is a time for Western leaders to be both tough and smart. They need to know when to swerve and when to make the other guy swerve, and when to leave some dignity out there for the other driver, even if he is behaving with utter disregard for anyone else. It may be that Putin has left us no choice but to learn to live with a Russian North Korea — at least as long as he is in charge. If that is the case, we’ll just have to make the best of it, but the best of it will be a much more unstable world.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The next one is a piece authored by Alexander Baunov. Mr. Baunov is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He writes, Putin Just Told Us What he is Planning

Vladimir Putin’s speech on Friday, in which he formally proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, was many things: a distorted history lecture, a rather tedious enumeration of supposed Western sins, an airing of grievances and a vaunting of power. For all the rhetorical flourish — accusing Western elites of “Satanism,” for example — it was in many ways a typical address from Mr. Putin.

But it was also something else: a plan. Amid the bluster and veiled threats, the president made three distinct points that, taken together, form a blueprint for war and peace.

First, Mr. Putin claimed in his speech that this week’s explosions at the Nord Stream gas pipelines were the work of the United States. In one move, that frees Russia from having to excuse its failure — now or in the future — to deliver gas supplies by that route. That, alone, is a victory. But this accusation also hinted that Russia may now be entitled to respond in kind, in effect threatening Western pipelines with sabotage. The weaponizing of energy supplies could take on a new dimension: not only reducing supplies from Russia, but also actively hindering the delivery of energy from other places.

Second, Mr. Putin suggested that talks for ending the war should begin immediately. He appealed to Ukraine to cease hostilities, withdraw its troops from the new “Russian” territories and sit down at the negotiating table.
The same type of ultimatum was issued on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On Feb. 21, Mr. Putin formally recognized the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics.” After clarifying that he meant the entire regions, not just the areas controlled by the separatists, he then demanded that the Ukrainian army withdraw from both. Within a few days, he launched his invasion.

There is a difference between the state of affairs now and the situation in the spring, when everyone was reeling from the invasion of the world’s second largest army into a sovereign state. Mr. Putin’s latest threat comes after a humiliating retreat from the Kharkiv region. It was this military setback that pushed Russia to announce both the mobilization and the annexation, and it seems highly unlikely that the Ukrainians will consider Russia’s request for talks seriously this time around. On the contrary, Ukraine has repeatedly said that annexation would mean an end to any attempt at negotiations with Mr. Putin’s Russia. For Ukrainians, after what happened this week, even sitting down at the negotiating table would amount to surrender.

This leads us to Mr. Putin’s third point: that the United States “created a precedent” for the use of nuclear weapons with its bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. It’s not hard to work out the implication. If the West continues to send weapons to Ukraine and refuses to put pressure on Kyiv to agree to a solution that would satisfy Russia, Mr. Putin may resort to the nuclear option.

There is one clear explanation as to why the use of a nuclear weapon, or even talking about it, is a great temptation for Mr. Putin and for those who share his views about Russia’s standing in the world. Equality is understood by them in a very blunt, practically arithmetical way. To be equal to the United States, Russia must show that it can do anything the Americans can, regardless of when the Americans did it or what the context was.

This symmetrical concept of equality and an almost superstitious idea of global justice are pushing Mr. Putin and some people around him to go for the nuclear option — especially since the prospect of Russia winning a conventional war is uncertain, if not improbable, and the Kremlin doesn’t recognize any exit strategy that cannot be passed off as some sort of victory.

This conflict is increasingly presented as existential for Russia. Mr. Putin and many Russian commentators want to convince the outside world that they are serious. Their argument is: “Many didn’t believe we were going to invade Ukraine or annex more of its territory, but we did. Now you don’t believe that we are going to use nuclear weapons, but we are not bluffing.”

This is Mr. Putin’s message, and the mood in the Russian elite is noticeably gloomy and fatalistic. There is, however, one significant difference between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and threats to resort to nuclear weapons. Before the invasion, Russia fiercely denied having any intention of invading. Now it’s doing the opposite.

[THE_WIZARD_]

So we aren't recognizing the election for the Ukraine annexation...but I thought we weren't supposed to question elections or it's seditious...

[lineygoblue]

Meanwhile, gas has quietly risen back over $4 (for no apparent reason), inflation is running out of control, colleges are still becoming less affordable. the southern border is still wide open to unidentifiables, our President and VP are tottering idiots (still waiting for an identifiable accomplishment) and Putin is rattling a nuclear saber.

And Dems are still going to control the Senate. Because they're doing such a great job, of course.

[THE_WIZARD_]

STFU

[DaGeezer]

For those that like DeSantis, this is an outstanding piece on what he has done in Florida and how little chance Charlie Crist has of beating him. https://www.nationalreview.com/magaz...g-florida-red/

For those that don't like DeSantis, I wouldn't read it. It's just full of facts that can't be refuted.

If it's paywalled, I can copy and paste upon request by anyone other than The Wizard. The Wizard can eat a giant bowl of scrotum and stifle the fucking fuck up.

I'd like to read that.

[lineygoblue]

A Coast Guardsman who received a call of congratulations from The Chairman for his performance in rescuing people after Ian is about to be discharged for not receiving a Covid vax.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-thanks-coast-guard-rescuer-hurricane-heroics-days-before-firing-vaccine-policy

The CG has refused two appeals for the Coast Guardsman based on religious beliefs.

As mentioned in the article, I doubt that the people he rescued cared if he was vaxed or not.

[iam416]

Per Geezer's request....

DeSantis Is Painting Florida Red

For almost the entirety of 2022, the news about Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been about where he stands in relation to Donald Trump and the Republican primary heading into 2024. Has DeSantis promised to stand down if Trump runs? No. How much money is DeSantis raising? Up until September of this year, a little more than Trump. Where is he polling compared with Trump among Republicans? Usually within striking distance.

But there’s one little matter before all that. Ron DeSantis has to win his reelection campaign to remain governor of Florida. He faces Charlie Crist, the one-time fixture of Florida’s Republican Party who is now a Democratic member of the House from the state’s 13th district. Crist’s campaign has been — and this is putting it nicely — abysmal. He lacks support from the national party, which is writing him off. DeSantis has maintained a polling lead of five to eight points, except for the occasional outlier. As of this writing, political forecasting from FiveThirtyEight finds that DeSantis has a 93 percent chance of winning reelection. Time magazine said that Democrats have given DeSantis “a pass” in 2022 and “seem powerless to stop him.”

It may be hard to remember now, but Florida was, until recently, considered a state up for grabs. And Ron DeSantis was, not so long ago, an untested, little-known congressman — a neophyte begging for Trump’s endorsement in an anti-Trump election year. Democrats hoped, with good reason, that Florida would finally break their way. Republicans had had a long run in the governor’s mansion, and 2018 was supposed to be a blue-wave year powered by the defections of suburban women from the Republican Party. These voters were disgusted by Donald Trump. They were bound to deliver the Democrats a congressional majority in the Midwest. And in Florida, Ron DeSantis had run as a mini-Trump in the Republican primary. Famously, he ran an ad that showed him acting like a Trumpy maniac in all his interactions with his infant child, first building a toy wall, then reading at bedtime from Donald Trump’s book The Art of the Deal, and then teaching baby’s first words: “Make America great again.”

This political environment seemed to create running room for progressives. The surge of Democratic optimism led them to nominate former Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum. Gillum’s campaign was backed by George Soros and hailed in the New Yorker as part of the vanguard of a progressive political revolution that had begun with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset victory in a low-turnout Democratic primary. The theory was that Gillum could activate the coalition of the ascendant — the Obama coalition — in Florida. That would mean running up large numbers among “voters of color,” young people, and suburban women to overcome the older, white electorate that had given Republicans control of the governor’s mansion for two decades.

Since 2018, Gillum has been disgraced. First he was found by police in a hotel room with a male sex worker and another man who overdosed on crystal meth. More recently he was indicted for alleged wire fraud, conspiracy, and false statements. But in 2018, he was seen as formidable. Most polls in November of that year had him winning by three to five percentage points. Only one pollster, the Trafalgar Group, predicted a DeSantis win outright. In the end, Ron DeSantis won narrowly. Over 8.2 million Floridians voted. DeSantis cleared the hurdle by just 32,463 votes.

It is a testament to Ron DeSantis that all of this has worked to his advantage as governor. His initial weaknesses catapulted him to a position of strength. His temporary brand as a mini-Trump, and the competitiveness of Florida politics, baited Democratic opponents across the nation and especially in the media to put the spotlight on him during the pandemic. DeSantis staked out a reopening philosophy that defied Dr. Anthony Fauci and, at the time, seemed more Trump than Trump. Although he was not the first to reopen his state — that honor goes to Georgia’s Brian Kemp — DeSantis, by miles, got the most negative attention for doing so. He welcomed the scrutiny and has thrived on it.

The national media initially hailed New York governor Andrew Cuomo for his daily Covid press conferences and his vows to do everything possible to save every life. Cuomo, working from dire projections about the need for hospital beds, favored a policy of moving seniors on the mend out of hospitals and back to their nursing homes. This mistake, while somewhat understandable at the start of the pandemic, led to New York’s appalling rate of death in nursing homes. The governor’s office and New York’s department of health concealed 4,100 Covid-related deaths in senior-care homes while Cuomo collected an honorary Emmy for his leadership.

Meanwhile, DeSantis allied himself with the dissenting view in public health, against broad lockdowns and for a philosophy of “focused protection.” That meant intervening among the most vulnerable: senior citizens. The media accused DeSantis of gambling with people’s lives as beaches in Jacksonville and elsewhere reopened. Less attention was paid to his orders banning visitation in nursing homes and banning the return of nursing-home patients from hospitals until they were no longer contagious.

DeSantis went further than some conservatives would have advised. He banned vaccine passports in his state — not just for state government, but even for private businesses. He similarly prevented the imposition of employer vaccine mandates. In doing this, he reaped serious rewards in public approval.

At the end of it all, the national media have conceded defeat. “With his early bet on reopening and his concede-nothing posture, DeSantis has plainly won the political argument on Covid,” a recent profile in the New York Times Magazine noted ruefully.

Partly because of the way the national and international media highlighted Florida’s openness, 2021 was the best year for domestic tourism in the history of the state. Over 40 percent of international tourism to the United States in 2021 was to Florida. And since Covid, Florida has led the nation in net in-migration. Florida recently reported a $22 billion revenue surplus. In a state without an income tax, a surplus like that points to rapidly expanding economic activity.

The Covid era and a burst of progressive overreach have given DeSantis a chance to do something that very few conservatives have been able to do, which is to run on the broad issue of education. As one would expect from a rock-ribbed conservative, DeSantis is touting Florida’s expansive school-choice options on the campaign trail. Seventy percent of Miami-Dade County students do not attend a school they would be assigned by geography. But perhaps more important, his Covid strategy has made DeSantis the undisputed defender of public schools in his state. He pushed a state rule preventing “unnecessary” removal of children from in-person learning and championed face-to-face learning. The board of education under DeSantis docked pay from school boards that issued mask mandates in defiance of the governor’s policy, and those districts relented. DeSantis hammered school closures as “the biggest public-health blunder” urged by “flat-earthers.” While many states are struggling to cope with the scale of learning loss during the pandemic, Education Week recently ranked Florida third in K–12 achievement.

DeSantis has become a champion of what might be called traditional public schooling, against recent progressive revisions. His Stop W.O.K.E. Act removed unpopular critical-race-theory material from public schools. He followed it up with the Parental Rights in Education bill, which banned classroom instruction about LGBTQ issues through third grade and required schools to tell parents if children receive mental-health services through the school. He then gave the Walt Disney Company, the state’s largest employer, a serious brushback after company officials vowed to challenge the parental-rights bill. He and the state legislature revoked Disney’s special-district privileges, which allow Disney to operate as its own government, rather than under the counties where it’s located. By doing so, he proved to conservatives that he could take on the Left even in a corporate boardroom.

And of course there is the way that DeSantis has made headlines by jumping to the front of every conservative fight. Conservatives are concerned about radical prosecutors and defund-the-police agendas; DeSantis used his constitutional powers to remove a prosecutor who refused to enforce Florida’s laws restricting abortion. Conservatives want the media and the White House to acknowledge the border crisis; DeSantis chartered planes to take Venezuelan asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard, knocking positive headlines for Democrats out of the news nationwide and putting the border back on the national agenda.

Against all this, Charlie Crist would have needed an absolutely pitch-perfect campaign. Instead, at his first stop in August, Crist decided to drop his own version of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment by telling DeSantis voters, “I don’t want your vote.” And he was expansive about it: “Those who support the governor should stay with him and vote for him. If you have that hate in your heart, keep it there.”

The only hint of a strategy for Crist has been to run on abortion rights. Polling indicates that Florida is the most pro-choice red state in the country, with 56 percent of respondents saying abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Crist accuses DeSantis of being an extremist on the issue. “If Ron DeSantis wins, and he will not, he will ban abortion completely.” For his part, DeSantis has signed a popular ban on abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation and remained focused on issues where he has the commanding heights.

At certain points it has looked as if Crist is just conceding the race. He has raised barely one-tenth of DeSantis’s campaign war chest of $180 million. A recently surfaced video has Crist calling his opponent “DeSatan.”

The big question of the DeSantis reelection campaign is how well the governor will do with Hispanic voters. Biden won 65 percent of Hispanics in Florida in 2020. DeSantis won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2018, a 13-point improvement over Rick Scott’s performance in 2014. How much higher can he go?

Democrats have hoped to gain with this demographic after DeSantis’s attention-grabbing maneuver of flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Crist called it an overreach, and the move was condemned in the media as treating Venezuelans as political pawns and as if they did not belong in the United States. But if polling is to be believed, Hispanic voters are less sure. A survey from Morning Consult showed that only 35 percent of Hispanics nationwide called sending immigrants to liberal U.S. states “inappropriate,” and 41 percent called it “appropriate.”

Gillum attributed his 2018 loss to DeSantis in part to Republicans’ preying on “sensitivities” of Latino voters in Florida. Namely, Republicans had tagged Gillum as a leftist and advertised themselves to Venezuelan and Cuban voters as anti-socialist and anti-communist. The Trump era saw Cuban voters, who had moved to the middle, swing back in large numbers to the GOP, followed by Venezuelans and even many Puerto Ricans.

Florida Republicans have been investing in outreach to Spanish-speaking voters since the governorship of Jeb Bush. DeSantis has hammered Crist with Spanish-language radio ads targeting his running mate, Karla Hernandez-Mats. The ads remind voters that Hernandez-Mats argued against reopening schools and that when Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died Hernandez-Mats tweeted: “Most in Miami rejoice, many in Cuba mourn Fidel Castro.” This attempt to acknowledge a pro-Castro segment of Cubans ended up provoking many Cuban Americans.

A strong showing by DeSantis would demonstrate that Democrats’ approach to racial issues — bundling a diverse set of voters as “Hispanics,” then re-bundling them as “people of color” — was a mistake, and it would provide a DeSantis 2024 campaign with an even more persuasive rationale.

But perhaps the clearest indication of how DeSantis’s campaign is going is the changed image of the state itself. Under his governorship, Florida has become synonymous with Republican government. New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, recently told her Republican opponents they should “move to Florida, where you belong.” It was a nasty thing to say, but looked at one way, the numbers back her up. In 2018, Florida had nearly 300,000 more Democrats than Republicans. As we enter election season in 2022, Republican registrations in Florida now outnumber those of Democrats by over 271,000. Representative Val Demings, who is running for Senate against Marco Rubio and was once thought to be a strong candidate for Joe Biden’s vice-presidential slot, acknowledges the truth about the fourth-largest state in the country: “We’re a red state y’all. We’ve got some work to do.”

If DeSantis wins handily, as expected, the comparisons to Andrew Jackson will come naturally. If he can conquer Florida, perhaps the White House is next.

[Jeff Buchanan]

For those interested this is link to an (long and detailed) ISW report dated 10/2 that deals with the information space - mostly involving what Putin wants Russians inside and outside of Russia to hear about his operations in Ukraine. This is an important factor in building and maintaining Putin's power base. The ISW report assesses that recent defeats of the Russian army in the Kharkiv province and how it is being reported by milbloggers, nationalists and even main stream TV channel commentators has had a profound effect on how supportive the Russian general population is of Putin's operation in Ukraine and "partial mobilization." The later is being harshly criticized as being deceptive and illegal. Ordinary Russians in the major cities, previously disinterested, are now more and more aware and voicing concerns about Putin's war. As city dwellers and elties now realize they and their sons may have to go to Ukraine and die for Putin's cause, polls indicate support for that is waning. Considering polls through July indicated the majority of Russians supported Putin's action in Ukraine, this is a big deal.

Putin's optimistic and false narrative is being exposed and therefore eroded by facts of defeat on the ground in Ukraine that are now being openly reported by various sources inside Russia. Those sources involve Russian nationalist commentators and milbloggers via Telegram who Putin has tried to court and has previously not shut down their voices. They are now turning against him although in indirect terms for now blaming the Russian bureaucracy for the mobilization mess and the MOD for defeats in the Karkiv province, Lymand and Kherson province.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-2