Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

All things considered I'd rather win the NY-03 vote than the Mayorkas impeachment vote. The former is for serious people; the latter is for the bread & circus crowd.

Suozzi ran as something like a Blue Dog, especially on immigration. He didn't run away from the topic and that seems like it worked. OTOH it's a special election and the Dems consistently overperform in those now (because high-frequency voters have flipped from R to D). And again, if you tell your base that voting Election Day is the only way to avoid having your vote "stolen", you leave yourself to the mercies of Mother Nature.

[CGVT]

Haha

Screenshot 2024-02-14 8.31.08 AM.png

[Dr. Strangelove]

?

[Mike]

Ukraine sank a Russian ship in the Black Sea.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-ship-drones-black-sea-8d2a78ab1f1b2a9b04ec8c421782417d

[Dr. Strangelove]

Ukraine sank a Russian ship in the Black Sea.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-uk...ec8c421782417d

Nyet. Was promoted to submarine. FAKE NEWS!

[Dr. Strangelove]

Wiki article on that ship. Not an insignificant loss. The bits I've seen this morning suggests Russian military bloggers are admitting the loss of the ship even though the govt probably never will.

Russian ship Caesar Kunikov - Wikipedia

[Mike]

According to the AP article it was carrying a shipment of ammo, too. Incidentally, Caesar Kunikov died on Valentine's Day 1943.

[Jeff Buchanan]

According to the AP article it was carrying a shipment of ammo, too. Incidentally, Caesar Kunikov died on Valentine's Day 1943.

The GUR, Ukraine's version of the CIA has a penchant for symbolic acts. This is one of them. Ukraine is having trouble maintaining defensive positions by virtue of running out of soldiers and ammunition. I'm reading the Russians fire daily artillery rounds at nearly 10X Ukraine's rate. When attacking, the Russians have adopted waves of smaller unit advances but with staggering losses for minimal territorial gains. Russian commanders don't give a shit about those losses - plenty more cannon fodder available from home.

To compensate Ukraine pulls off this kind of thing that poke's a broom stick up the Bear's ass. Hard to say that these rather spectacular events are going to help kick the Russians out of Ukraine but they get lots of press.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The Russians also keep stupidly sending out these big warships with no escort. You'd think they'd learn by now.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The national security threat that Mike Turner was hinting at in my post earlier is "reportedly" about the Russians attempting to put anti-satellite nukes in space.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The latest ISW report from yesterday talks about the Russian's adapting to the current battle field in Ukraine. Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets reported that Russian forces are attempting to restore maneuver to the battlefield through Soviet deep battle theory but are struggling with implementing Soviet deep battle so far due to current Ukrainian capabilities.

The report goes into a lot detail of what this is and how it is supposed to work. The tone of the description is that the Russians will fuck this up in it's execution because, well, its the Russian Army that is bogged down by antiquated doctrine and poor training and leadership skills among officers at the higher command level as well as commanders in the field.

The problem for Ukraine is that unless the support spigot from the US is turned back on, Russia will gain the momentum and eventually get the upper hand. We're talking multiple months for that to take place but it is almost assured if the US can't get the support bill through Congress.

I know that many folks don't see why we're spending billions in Ukraine (and Israel) while, here at home, a lot of priorities aren't getting funded. It's a tough call but the downside of letting Russia incrementally defeat Ukraine and force their terms on any diplomatic settlements of the conflict going forward would drastically increase global insecurity as nations see fleeting US power and influence internationally. You're going to get a new world order and I can pretty much guarantee you won't like it.

One additional comment. I read an article in the Economist (hard copy) that talks about the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelsey "event." How has this become an event of importance? It's been created, it's a pseudo event created, in this case by the media. There's a theory that these kinds of pseudo events have been part and parcel of a free press for decade and expanded greatly by the internet/social media. These detract from reality and hence make it difficult to actually solve difficult problems facing humanity. I think we are in such a time when reality is, at the least, obscured. Are the various crises at home, in particular the immigration problem, inflated in both their character and importance to further political causes? Is the boarder crisis one of those pseudo events. I've seen numbers and evaluations of it that support both sides. Where is the truth? Probably obscured making it difficult to fix it.

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Dr. Strangelove]

In case anyone felt the Mayorkas impeachment was serious stuff, be advised MTG, Clay Higgins, and Andy Biggs have been named impeachment managers. Holy shitballs.

[CGVT]

Good grief, the Republicans are stupid fucks.

[Mike]

Oh, you don't think Marjorie Taylor Greene is qualified to run a trial in the United States Senate??