OT subject but worth a main-stream read- OT News Feeds...

lousubcap

Tom Nichols from The Atlantic-
As always, a thought provoking read:
"

Contain and Defeat Ukrainian flag waving after the Ukrainian army liberated the town of Balakliya. (Metin Aktas / Anadolu Agency / Getty) Last weekend was full of grief and glory. Queen Elizabeth II died, and like many Americans, I felt the pang of loss. The Queen, a seemingly eternal part of our world, was a stalwart ally of the United States, and a model of dignity and duty. But while focusing on the mourning and pageantry, we might have lost track of another potentially world-changing story in Ukraine. The Ukrainians, using a combination of clever strategy, military fortitude, and Western weapons, have routed the Russians from a series of positions around Kharkiv. These were not merely defeats; the Russians were abandoning their posts and leaving behind their equipment even before the Ukrainians could reach them. Apparently, Russian soldiers do not want to die for President Vladimir Putin’s pathetic dream of reestablishing a state that had already perished before some of them were even born. This is an immense humiliation for the Russians and for Putin personally, and Russian pundits are already yelling at one another in panic on state television. The Russian state’s newspaper of record, Rossiskaya Gazeta, is, as the analyst Mark Galeotti noted, stammering and contradicting itself trying to wave away yet another Russian military disaster. So what happens next? In some quarters, we might expect calls for the Ukrainians to negotiate. But to what end? As my Atlantic colleague Anne Applebaum wrote, there’s nothing to discuss. Putin “has put the destruction of Ukraine at the very center of his foreign and domestic policies, and at the heart of what he wants his legacy to be.” Negotiation, from the first day of the war, was impossible. The only answer was to stand and fight, which the Ukrainians have done with valor and tenacity. There is a lesson for all of us here as we face the global attack on democracy. Americans, generally, are the products of a legalistic, free-market, democratic society, so we prize negotiation and dealmaking. We think almost any problem is amenable to rational discussion and good-faith exchanges. Each side gives something and gets something. But what if the person across the table has no interest in compromise? Yesterday was the 21st anniversary of 9/11. I recall how the attack generated debates about how we might have avoided such hostility, how we should have understood that we were paying the price for our policies, how we didn’t hear the voices warning us. Policies have consequences, but I never believed in such recriminations. Subsequent terrorist incidents over the years, to my mind, proved that we were being attacked for reasons we could not control. There was never a chance of averting violence from al-Qaeda, or from the lost and pathetic men engaging in mindless slaughter in places such as London, Madrid, Paris, and Brussels. (The Tsarnaev brothers, who attacked my beloved city of Boston, were poster boys for nihilism masquerading as a cause. These supposed Muslim warriors were, in reality, a young man described by a friend as “a normal pothead” and his narcissistic older brother, a would-be boxer who was an early suspect in a triple homicide before the Boston Marathon bombing.) Over the years, we learned the lesson that compromise was impossible, and that we would just have to fight groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and their assorted cast of violent losers. We then made the same mistake after the January 6 riot at the Capitol. Republicans and others engaged in hand-wringing about how the insurrectionists were expressing “legitimate” grievances. Once again, we were told that we should have been paying more attention to the voices of the unheard—as if somehow, we could have accommodated and satisfied those of our fellow citizens whose minimal demand was the suspension of the Constitution (to say nothing of those who wanted to see the execution of senior elected officials of the United States government). Extremism, however, defeats compromise and dealmaking. There was nothing Ukraine could have done, short of immediate surrender, that would have stopped Putin’s invasion. The profusion of violent jihadists, particularly in Europe, is a complex social phenomenon that cannot be reduced to a reaction against U.S. policy. The rioters at the Capitol wanted to nullify an election and hang the vice president of the United States. Sometimes, there’s nothing left on the table to discuss. Last week, my colleague Pete Wehner—a man of greater faith and patience than I could ever hope to be—wrote this in The Atlantic: But even though we shouldn’t give up on individuals, I can’t escape concluding that the time for mollifying grievances is over. In our political endeavors, the task is now to contain and defeat the MAGA movement, shifting away from a model of psychological amelioration and toward a model of political confrontation. Contain and defeat. If we really are to be partisans of democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and basic decency, then this is a painful truth. Policy has its limits. Negotiations must be grounded in not only good faith but reality, and not lies or myths. The demands of extremists are meant to be impossible to fulfill: America must convert to Islam, Ukraine must accept Moscow’s rule, the election must be overturned and Mike Pence hanged. People issuing such demands are not interested in discussion or compromise; indeed, they’d be disappointed if they got what they wanted, because their anger sustains them and gives meaning to their lives. When faced with such movements and their demands, there is only one response: Contain and defeat."

lousubcap

Tuesday Russia-Ukraine update:

"The Pentagon yesterday offered a cautiously optimistic assessment of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the northeast of the country. A senior military official said that Russian forces “had largely ceded their gains” around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and “withdrawn to the north and the east”, adding that “many of these forces have moved over the border into Russia.” However, the official warned that the rapid advances of the Ukrainian counteroffensive had not fundamentally changed the near-term outlook on the battleground, a cautious message also sent by other senior figures in the U.S. administration. “This continues to be a tough fight for the Ukrainians,” the official said. Felicia Schwartz reports for the Financial Times. 

The Ukrainian military has claimed to have advanced into an additional 20 Russian-controlled towns and villages in Ukraine over the past 24 hours, adding to the hundreds of square miles it has retaken in the northeast. It also said it had recaptured nearly 200 square miles in the southern region of Kherson in recent days, in an offensive that aimed to cut off thousands of Russian soldiers stationed west of the Dnipro River in territory that Russia claimed in the initial stages of its invasion. The swift success of Ukraine’s offensive has boosted its European allies ahead of what is expected to be a hard winter of rising fuel costs, and it will likely increase pressure on NATO members to supply Ukraine with heavier weaponry. Andrew E. Kramer, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Shashank Bengali report for the New York Times. 

Criticism of Russian leadership appears to be mounting in Russia, as more than 40 local Russian officials signed a petition yesterday demanding the resignation of Vladimir Putin from the post of president. The petition, pushed by opponents of the Ukraine invasion, had no practical impact and was roundly ignored in Russia’s state-controlled media. However, it was striking in its very existence, showing that despite the Kremlin’s extraordinary crackdown on dissent, Ukraine’s counteroffensive successes have left opponents of President Vladimir Putin newly emboldened. “There is now hope that Ukraine will end this war,” said Ksenia Torstrem, a member of a municipal council in St. Petersburg who helped organize the petition and called Ukrainian advances an “inspiring factor” for it. “We decided we needed to put pressure on from all sides.” Anton Troianovski reports for the New York Times.

Active negotiations with Ukraine and Russia to end military actions in and around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant are ongoing, the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has said. “I have seen signs that they are interested in this agreement,” Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told reporters at a news conference. While Grossi declined to go into details given the delicate diplomacy involved, he said he had witnessed “two sides that are engaging with us and are asking questions, lots of questions.” Grossi’s comments suggested that what is under discussion is something less than a demilitarized zone and perhaps more like an agreement to silence arms in and around the plant. Marc Santora and David E. Sanger report for the New York Times. "

lousubcap

Wednesday Russia-Ukraine update:

"China's leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss the war in Ukraine and other "international and regional topics" at their meeting later this week, the Kremlin has said. The two will meet in Uzbekistan at a summit that will show an "alternative" to the Western world, the Kremlin added. Putin will also meet other leaders including those of India, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran - but his meeting with China's leader "is of particular importance," said Kremlin foreign policy spokesperson Yuri Ushakov. Frances Mao reports for BBC News. 

As the war began Putin rejected a Ukrainian peace deal which would have satisfied Russia’s demand that Ukraine stay out of NATO, according to three people close to the Russian leadership. The architect of the deal, Ukrainian-born envoy Dmitry Kozak, told Putin that he believed the deal removed the need for Russia to pursue a large-scale occupation of Ukraine. However, despite initially backing the negotiations, Putin made clear when presented with Kozak’s deal that the concessions negotiated by his aide did not go far enough and that he had expanded his objectives to include annexing swathes of Ukrainian territory, the sources said. Reuters reports. 

A nationwide military draft in Russia is not currently on the cards, the Kremlin has said. The politically risky proposal has gained prominence in public discussion amid Russian forces’ rapid reversal in northeastern Ukraine. Speaking with journalists, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said that the potential for a mobilization “is not being discussed at the moment.” The statement reflected the Russian government’s difficulty maintaining control over debate as recent defeats have brought increased criticism, including from usually supportive conservative and nationalist voices. Ivan Nechepurenko reports for the New York Times. "

lousubcap

Worth a look on the continuing China-Taiwan dance-

"China's Xi Jinping is visiting Kazakhstan for his first trip abroad since the pandemic was declared in March 2020. Kazakhstan, AP reports from the capital city, "is a major oil and gas producer," and "China is a leading customer."
Xi's three-day trip includes a planned visit with Putin in Uzbekistan Thursday for a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in Samarkand. Putin is also expected to meet with his counterparts from India, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran, according to the BBC.
Meanwhile in Washington, a key official from Taipei hosted around 60 elected officials from around the world on Tuesday, in part "to persuade fellow democracies to stand against China since Russia's invasion of Ukraine heightened concerns that Beijing could attempt to take the island by force," Reuters reports. The group of parliamentarians from across Europe, Asia and Africa are known as the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China; and they're expected to release a public pledge later this week. Read more, here."

Gulfcoastguy

Russia bombed a reservoir in Kherson province in order to slow down the Ukrainians. 

Gulfcoastguy

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russians-hit-dam-kryvyi-rih-125800413.html

HeavyG

lousubcap

Thursday Russia-Ukraine update:

"As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 204th day, we take a look at the main developments.

People crowd near a car distributing humanitarian aid in the town of Balakliia, recently liberated by Ukrainian forces, in Kharkiv region [File: Gleb Garanich/Reuters]

Here is the situation as it stands on Thursday, September 15.

Fighting

• The largest city in central Ukraine, Kryvyi Rih, was attacked by eight cruise missiles that destroyed the water pumping station and caused the Inhulets River to break through a dam, officials said.
• In the northeastern Ukrainian town of Balakliia, police officers said civilians were killed when the town was under Russian control. The Reuters news agency could not independently verify the account. Russia has denied going after civilians.
• Ukraine has reclaimed 8,000 square kilometres (3,100 square miles) of territory this month inflicting a serious blow to Russian military ambitions and raising hopes of victory.
• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Izyum, days after his country’s troops retook the city during an ongoing counteroffensive against Russian forces in the northeastern part of the country.

Diplomacy

• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to believe he did not commit a mistake by launching an invasion of Ukraine, after a 90-minute-long telephone call with the Russian president."

lousubcap

Some gold teasers in the below:

"THE BOOK EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT — NYT’s PETER BAKER and The New Yorker’s SUSAN GLASSER, two old friends of Playbook (Susan was POLITICO’s editor from 2014-2016), will release "THE DIVIDER: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021," on Tuesday. But after The Guardian’s resourceful Martin Pengelly snagged a copy early, the book’s embargo was lifted last night, leading to a flurry of coverage.

In the NYT, Baker himself writes up an incredible account from the book about the time Trump’s friend, the cosmetics billionaire RONALD LAUDER, convinced him that the U.S. could buy Greenland:

“Mr. Lauder discussed it with him from the early days of the presidency and offered himself as a back channel to the Danish government to negotiate. JOHN R. BOLTON, the national security adviser, assigned his aide FIONA HILL to assemble a small team to brainstorm ideas. They engaged in secret talks with Denmark’s ambassador and produced an options memo.

“Mr. Bolton, concerned about expanding Chinese influence in the Arctic, thought that an increased American presence in Greenland made sense but that an outright purchase was not feasible. Mr. Trump kept pushing. He suggested taking federal money from Puerto Rico, which he disparaged, and using it to buy Greenland. On another occasion, he suggested outright trading Puerto Rico for Greenland.”

The Guardian focuses on two anecdotes:

— “In December 2020, Donald Trump told friends he was afraid Iran would try to assassinate him in revenge for the death of QASSEM SULEIMANI, an Iranian general killed in a U.S. drone strike nearly a year before.”

— “Donald Trump will not pick MIKE PENCE as his running mate if he runs for the presidency again, according to an interview with the authors of a new book on his time in the White House. ‘It would be totally inappropriate,’ Trump told Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. ‘Mike committed political suicide’ by refusing to reject electoral college votes in Trump’s 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, Trump said.”

WaPo leads with this doozy via the king of Jordan:

“President Trump once offered what he considered ‘a great deal’ to Jordan’s KING ABDULLAH II : control of the West Bank, whose Palestinian population long sought to topple the monarchy. ‘I thought I was having a heart attack,’ Abdullah II recalled to an American friend in 2018, according to a new book on the Trump presidency being published next week. ‘I couldn’t breathe. I was bent doubled-over.’”

In the CNN write-up, there’s this assessment of the Russia question from a former top Trump official:

“Following a 2018 meeting with Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN in Helsinki, Finland — after which, Trump sided with Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies who had determined Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election — the top U.S. intelligence official was left wondering what Trump’s real motives were.

“‘I never could come to a conclusion. It raised the question in everybody’s mind: What does Putin have on him that causes him to do something that undermines his credibility?’ DAN COATS, the then-director of national intelligence, reflected to associates afterward, according to the book.”

CNN also relays this previously unreported account of an aborted plan for mass resignations:

“In encrypted text messages, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told a top aide that five senior officials in the Trump administration — including the secretaries of Defense, Education and Interior — were on the verge of quitting amid a particularly chaotic period ahead of the 2018 midterms. ‘Ok for the first time I am actually scared for the country. The insanity has been loosed,’ she wrote in the messages.”

And a few more from Baker’s NYT piece:

— “He harshly criticized women for their looks, telling visitors that Speaker NANCY PELOSI was an example of why women should be careful about plastic surgery and that he would not pick NIKKI HALEY, his United Nations ambassador, as a running mate because she had a ‘complexion problem.’”

— Trump “order[ed] aides to block a merger in retaliation against CNN and to ensure that a government contract did not go to JEFF BEZOS’ Amazon — actions aides considered illegal or unethical.”

— JOHN F. KELLY “secretly bought a copy of a best-selling book by a group of psychiatrists questioning Mr. Trump’s mental health.”

— Kelly to Trump, when the president wouldn’t lower the flag after Arizona Sen. JOHN McCAIN died: “If you don’t support John McCain’s funeral, when you die, the public will come to your grave and piss on it.” "

lousubcap

Putin-Jinping meeting comments:

"Russia's autocratic leader spoke with his Chinese counterpart today in the Uzbek city of Samarkand. It was the first time that Xi Jinping has traveled outside of China since the pandemic began more than two years ago. Putin, for his part, appeared to be on the defensive because of his Ukraine invasion, based on public statements in both state-run media TASS and according to Reuters. 

Said Putin (emphasis added): "We highly value the balanced position of our Chinese friends when it comes to the Ukraine crisis," the KGB veteran said in his opening remarks at their Samarkand meeting. "We understand your questions and concern about this. During today's meeting, we will of course explain our position."

Said Xi (emphasis added): "We are ready to team up with our Russian colleagues to set an example of a responsible world power and to play a leading role in putting a rapidly changing world on the track of sustainable and positive development," according to a readout provided to TASS.  

Bigger picture: Russia's "outlook remains bleak, economists say, as sanctions on critical imports and an exodus of Western companies are expected to degrade the long-term potential of the economy," the Wall Street Journal reports. Meanwhile, "China has walked a careful line in its dealings with Moscow to avoid being ensnared in any potential sanctions and alienating other countries, such as those in Central Asia, where China is building economic ties." "

lousubcap

Friday Russia-Ukraine update:

"Ursula von der Leyen, the E.U.’s top official, yesterday reassured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that his country is still progressing toward membership in the bloc. During a wide-ranging meeting in Kyiv, von der Leyen told Zelenskyy that whilst the entry process will most likely be long and difficult, the possibility exists that Ukraine could join the E.U. 's internal market before acquiring full member status. “I note determination, huge progress on this path,” she said. “We will support you with all our capabilities.” Carly Olson reports for the New York Times. 

Pope Francis has said it was morally legitimate for nations to supply weapons to Ukraine to help the country defend itself from Russian aggression. Speaking to reporters aboard a plane returning from a three-day trip to Kazakhstan, Francis expounded on the Roman Catholic Church's "Just War" principles, which allow for the proportional use of deadly weapons for self defense against an aggressor nation. "Self defense is not only licit but also an expression of love for the homeland. Someone who does not defend oneself, who does not defend something, does not love it. Those who defend (something) love it," he said. Philip Pullella reports for Reuters. 

The White House has announced a $600 million security package for Ukraine, providing the Ukrainian military with another round of assistance during its counter-offensive against Russian forces. The equipment will be drawn from existing US stocks and inventories, and it will include additional arms, ammunition, and equipment, according to a statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Together with our Allies and partners, we are delivering the arms and equipment that Ukraine’s forces are utilizing so effectively as they continue their successful counter-offensive against Russia’s invasion,” Blinken said. Oren Liebermann reports for CNN. "

And some observations regarding the Putin-Jinping meeting:

"China is “willing to work with Russia to demonstrate the responsibility of a major country, play a leading role, and inject stability into a turbulent world,” according to a statement issued following Xi and Putin’s meeting.  Scholars who study the between-the-lines messaging of the Chinese government’s public remarks have argued that this sounds like an implicit rebuke. Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said the statement appeared to telegraph “a reproach to the Russians, that they’re not acting like a great power, that they are creating instability.” Shi Yinhong, a longtime professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said it was “the most prudent or most low-key statement in years on Xi’s part on the strategic relationship between the two countries.” Anton Troianovski and Keith Bradsher provide analysis for the New York Times. "

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/NGrossman81/status/1570797238238212097?s=20&t=e4WQNVI9rnIA19btbtyb4A

lousubcap

Another great article from Tom Nichols regarding the "suck up to me move" by Ron DeSantis- worth a read regardless of your political bent-
"

Ron DeSantis’s hideous political stunt is a reminder that the GOP’s policies are no longer about achieving results, but gratifying the basest impulses of MAGA voters. But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic. Nice democracy you’ve got here. Shame if something happened to it. Gen Z never learned to read cursive. What do dogs know about us?

Intention Matters Ron DeSantis speaking during a primary election night event in Florida on August 23, 2022 (Chandan Khanna / AFP / Getty) View in browser I am from Massachusetts, yet I have never been to Martha’s Vineyard. I now live in coastal Rhode Island, less than a hundred miles from the Vineyard, so Ron DeSantis’s idiotic and cruel attempt to dump human beings on the island during the off-season is something of a local story for me—but one that carries an important national lesson. The Florida governor’s cartoonish assumption, apparently, was that liberal Bay Staters are just as racist as the Republican MAGA-base voters he’s trying to woo, and that they would prove it by reacting with outrage when a bunch of Latin Americans showed up on their doorstep. (He even sent a videographer, in the hopes of capturing the Vineyarders getting the vapors.) This bizarre miscalculation probably won’t help DeSantis much. As the journalist Josh Marshall said this morning, in politics, “weird can sometimes be worse than wrong.” In any case, the show was a fizzle: The locals provided the migrants with food and shelter, and sent students from an AP Spanish class at the local high school as translators. I’m proud of my fellow New Englanders for their reaction to DeSantis’s inane showboating. And yet, I consider myself an immigration hawk. I am the grandson of immigrants on both sides of my family, and I cherish and celebrate immigration—but I also believe in law and order. I was a young conservative working in Washington, and I winced when Ronald Reagan signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, the amnesty of 1986 that was supposed to solve much of our immigration problem. I gritted my teeth during the Obama administration, when what seemed to me to be another amnestyloomed. (I am also one of those people who finds the term “undocumented immigrant” Orwellian nonsense. It is a phrase meant to command empathy by implying that a person who has broken American law merely lacks documents. We can welcome people at the border, we can determine who needs asylum, we can fight human trafficking—and we can do all of those things without mangling language. But that’s an argument for another day.) At times, my frustration with illegal immigration led me to embrace some pretty hardline views, and I would even say that by the early 2000s, I was radicalized on the issue. As my colleague David Frum wrote back in 2019: Demagogues don’t rise by talking about irrelevant issues. Demagogues rise by talking about issues that matter to people, and that more conventional leaders appear unwilling or unable to address: unemployment in the 1930s, crime in the 1960s, mass immigration now. I’m still pretty vehement about border security: In 2019, I was yelling at the television during the Democratic presidential primary debates when Julián Castro talked about decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings, apoplectic at the idea that nations can’t make laws about their own borders. I guess this makes me today something like a 1996 Democrat, back when the party platform said, “We must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it … Washington talked tough but failed to act. In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed.” But DeSantis and Donald Trump have talked me out of supporting tougher policies. Why? Because intentions matter. A policy implemented by sadists is not a policy. It is cheap political gratification masquerading as policy, and it will always do more harm than good. Trump’s ghastly child-separation debacle is a case study in hateful policy. The Trump administration, when it came into office in 2017, locked on to a truth about illegal immigration: It is difficult, for many reasons, to send families with babies and children back to their home countries. The children are blameless, even if the traffickers who brought them and their parents to America are not. Previous administrations held and then deported many of these people. But as my colleague Caitlin Dickerson showed in great detail, the Trump administration was populated by a menagerie of immoral and cowardly appointees who decided to stop illegal immigration by separating children from parents, intentionally inflicting pain on parents and kids as a deterrent in itself. This policy was not only brutal but executed with maximum incompetence, with no real plan for ever reuniting these families. And here we are again. Who came up with the idea of flying immigrants around the country? Was this motivated by some deep thinking in Tallahassee about our immigration problems? Or was it because some Fox host might have bloviated about owning the libs by sending immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard? As it turns out, Fox’s chief bloviator, Tucker Carlson, suggested this very idea in July. DeSantis, one of the thirstiest politicians in America, clearly spotted an opportunity, so the taxpayers of Florida ended up paying to send people—some of whom seem to be asylum-seekers we should be welcoming—from Texas to Massachusetts. According to an immigration lawyer assisting with the migrants’ cases, someone (I assume people working with DeSantis or Texas Governor Greg Abbott) appears to have lied to the group of some 50 people, coaxing them to board the planes by saying they would get a “surprise,” and that jobs and homes awaited them—a particularly nasty touch in an already vomitous business. I am against illegal immigration. But I am against the intentional tormenting of other human beings—especially children—even more. If my choice is the current mess or an immigration system run by ruthless opportunists such as Ron DeSantis—a man dancing on a chain while Tucker Carlson cranks the racist street organ—it’s not even close: I’ll stick with what we have. And I will never support anything, in any way, that runs the risk of handing power to people like DeSantis or his MAGA base."

SamIAm2

@lousubcap - Thank you for posting this instead of a link. I have been voting against DeSantis since he first ran for office in Florida. He always struck me as a bully. I only hope his latest fiasco removes any consideration of him for any higher office.  

littlerascal56

Thinking DeSantis might be the next president.  He is charismatic and a good speaker.  Totally opposite of the brain dead babbling fool currently in office. People are looking for someone to turn this dumpster fire economy around, and DeSantis might be the man for the job.  Biden set the bar pretty low, so anyone that is coherent, doesn’t fall down or fall asleep during a big event, and can read from a teleprompter could easily be our next commander in chief.  

Biden really “dummied down” the job for sure. Won’t take much to top what we have now. Biden & Harris have embarrassed the USA beyond comprehension. We have become the laughing stock of the world, in less than 2 years. All Biden had to do was sit in his basement for his 4 years of office, and do nothing. But he reversed everything Trump did, and look at the mess we are in today.

Legume

littlerascal56 said:

Thinking DeSantis might be the next president.  He is charismatic and a good speaker.  Totally opposite of the brain dead babbling fool currently in office. People are looking for someone to turn this dumpster fire economy around, and DeSantis might be the man for the job.  Biden set the bar pretty low, so anyone that is coherent, doesn’t fall down or fall asleep during a big event, and can read from a teleprompter could easily be our next commander in chief.  

Biden really “dummied down” the job for sure. Won’t take much to top what we have now. Biden & Harris have embarrassed the USA beyond comprehension. We have become the laughing stock of the world, in less than 2 years. All Biden had to do was sit in his basement for his 4 years of office, and do nothing. But he reversed everything Trump did, and look at the mess we are in today.

The irony of you posting the things you say about Biden, delicious.

JohnInCarolina

lousubcap said:

Another great article from Tom Nichols regarding the "suck up to me move" by Ron DeSantis- worth a read regardless of your political bent-
"

Ron DeSantis’s hideous political stunt is a reminder that the GOP’s policies are no longer about achieving results, but gratifying the basest impulses of MAGA voters. But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic. Nice democracy you’ve got here. Shame if something happened to it. Gen Z never learned to read cursive. What do dogs know about us?

Intention Matters Ron DeSantis speaking during a primary election night event in Florida on August 23, 2022 (Chandan Khanna / AFP / Getty) View in browser I am from Massachusetts, yet I have never been to Martha’s Vineyard. I now live in coastal Rhode Island, less than a hundred miles from the Vineyard, so Ron DeSantis’s idiotic and cruel attempt to dump human beings on the island during the off-season is something of a local story for me—but one that carries an important national lesson. The Florida governor’s cartoonish assumption, apparently, was that liberal Bay Staters are just as racist as the Republican MAGA-base voters he’s trying to woo, and that they would prove it by reacting with outrage when a bunch of Latin Americans showed up on their doorstep. (He even sent a videographer, in the hopes of capturing the Vineyarders getting the vapors.) This bizarre miscalculation probably won’t help DeSantis much. As the journalist Josh Marshall said this morning, in politics, “weird can sometimes be worse than wrong.” In any case, the show was a fizzle: The locals provided the migrants with food and shelter, and sent students from an AP Spanish class at the local high school as translators. I’m proud of my fellow New Englanders for their reaction to DeSantis’s inane showboating. And yet, I consider myself an immigration hawk. I am the grandson of immigrants on both sides of my family, and I cherish and celebrate immigration—but I also believe in law and order. I was a young conservative working in Washington, and I winced when Ronald Reagan signed the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, the amnesty of 1986 that was supposed to solve much of our immigration problem. I gritted my teeth during the Obama administration, when what seemed to me to be another amnestyloomed. (I am also one of those people who finds the term “undocumented immigrant” Orwellian nonsense. It is a phrase meant to command empathy by implying that a person who has broken American law merely lacks documents. We can welcome people at the border, we can determine who needs asylum, we can fight human trafficking—and we can do all of those things without mangling language. But that’s an argument for another day.) At times, my frustration with illegal immigration led me to embrace some pretty hardline views, and I would even say that by the early 2000s, I was radicalized on the issue. As my colleague David Frum wrote back in 2019: Demagogues don’t rise by talking about irrelevant issues. Demagogues rise by talking about issues that matter to people, and that more conventional leaders appear unwilling or unable to address: unemployment in the 1930s, crime in the 1960s, mass immigration now. I’m still pretty vehement about border security: In 2019, I was yelling at the television during the Democratic presidential primary debates when Julián Castro talked about decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings, apoplectic at the idea that nations can’t make laws about their own borders. I guess this makes me today something like a 1996 Democrat, back when the party platform said, “We must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it … Washington talked tough but failed to act. In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed.” But DeSantis and Donald Trump have talked me out of supporting tougher policies. Why? Because intentions matter. A policy implemented by sadists is not a policy. It is cheap political gratification masquerading as policy, and it will always do more harm than good. Trump’s ghastly child-separation debacle is a case study in hateful policy. The Trump administration, when it came into office in 2017, locked on to a truth about illegal immigration: It is difficult, for many reasons, to send families with babies and children back to their home countries. The children are blameless, even if the traffickers who brought them and their parents to America are not. Previous administrations held and then deported many of these people. But as my colleague Caitlin Dickerson showed in great detail, the Trump administration was populated by a menagerie of immoral and cowardly appointees who decided to stop illegal immigration by separating children from parents, intentionally inflicting pain on parents and kids as a deterrent in itself. This policy was not only brutal but executed with maximum incompetence, with no real plan for ever reuniting these families. And here we are again. Who came up with the idea of flying immigrants around the country? Was this motivated by some deep thinking in Tallahassee about our immigration problems? Or was it because some Fox host might have bloviated about owning the libs by sending immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard? As it turns out, Fox’s chief bloviator, Tucker Carlson, suggested this very idea in July. DeSantis, one of the thirstiest politicians in America, clearly spotted an opportunity, so the taxpayers of Florida ended up paying to send people—some of whom seem to be asylum-seekers we should be welcoming—from Texas to Massachusetts. According to an immigration lawyer assisting with the migrants’ cases, someone (I assume people working with DeSantis or Texas Governor Greg Abbott) appears to have lied to the group of some 50 people, coaxing them to board the planes by saying they would get a “surprise,” and that jobs and homes awaited them—a particularly nasty touch in an already vomitous business. I am against illegal immigration. But I am against the intentional tormenting of other human beings—especially children—even more. If my choice is the current mess or an immigration system run by ruthless opportunists such as Ron DeSantis—a man dancing on a chain while Tucker Carlson cranks the racist street organ—it’s not even close: I’ll stick with what we have. And I will never support anything, in any way, that runs the risk of handing power to people like DeSantis or his MAGA base."

My only problem with the above take is that the immigrants in this case weren’t here illegally.  They’d actually come through the proper asylum process, and were documented immigrants.  

As others have pointed out, the irony is that they were fleeing communism in Venezuela.  

lousubcap

And a few teasers on the Cheeto legal team;
" And then there’s this: NYT’s Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush have an absolute doozy of a story up peeking under the hood to see what’s really going on with Trump’s legal team as the former president “faces potential prosecution on multiple fronts” and his team of lawyers squabble amongst each other and face their own legal woes.

They focus on emails obtained between Trump’s lawyers and ERIC HERSCHMANN , a former Trump White House lawyer, who is now being called to testify before a federal grand jury. “For weeks this summer, Mr. Herschmann tried to get specific guidance from Mr. Trump’s current lawyers on how to handle questions from prosecutors that raise issues of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.

“After ignoring Mr. Herschmann or giving him what he seemed to consider perplexing answers to the requests for weeks, two of the former president’s lawyers, M. EVAN CORCORAN and JOHN ROWLEY, offered him only broad instructions in late August. Assert sweeping claims of executive privilege, they advised him, after Mr. Corcoran had suggested that an unspecified ‘chief judge’ would ultimately validate their belief that a president’s powers extend far beyond their time in office.”

Haberman and Thrush also note that BORIS EPSHTEYN has emerged as the de facto “quarterback” of the legal teams — even as the former Trump campaign aide had his phone seized by the FBI last week in its sweeping investigation into Jan. 6.

In the emails, Herschmann did not hold back: “I certainly am not relying on any legal analysis from either of you or Boris who — to be clear — I think is an idiot,” he wrote. “When I questioned Boris’s legal experience to work on challenging a presidential election since he appeared to have none — challenges that resulted in multiple court failures — he boasted that he was ‘just having fun,’ while also taking selfies and posting pictures online of his escapades.”

— “Trump team told National Archives that Mar-a-Lago boxes only contained news clippings,” by CNN’s Jamie Gangel: “A former top official in the Trump White House counsel's office told the National Archives last fall that, according to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, there were only 12 boxes of records at Mar-a-Lago and they were just filled with newspaper clippings, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.”"

lousubcap

Monday Russia-Ukraine update:

"A Russian missile has exploded near the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant, Ukrainian officials have reported. The missile exploded less than 1,000 feet from the plant’s reactors and caused extensive damage around a hydroelectric power station in the industrial zone that surrounds the nuclear complex, forcing the shutdown of one of the plant’s hydraulic units. There was no damage to essential safety equipment at the nuclear power plant, which remained fully operational, the company said. Marc Santora reports for the New York Times. 

Four Ukrainian health care workers were killed yesterday when Russian forces launched an attack during an evacuation of psychiatric patients from a hospital in the Kharkiv region. “Russians opened massive fire during evacuation,” the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Synyehubov, wrote on Telegram. “Unfortunately, four health workers were killed and two patients injured.”  Only a few dozen of the more than 600 patients at the facility had been evacuated, he wrote. His post did not give further details and it was unclear whether the attack involved artillery or missiles. Matthew Mpoke Bigg reports for the New York Times. 

Russian strikes have increasingly picked out civilian targets over the past week, even when no immediate military benefit could be perceived, according to a U.K. Ministry of Defense intelligence update. The aim is to “undermine the morale of the Ukrainian people and government,” following Russian setbacks in the  Kharkiv region, it said. This has raised concerns about further escalation from Moscow. Speaking during a regional summit in Uzbekistan on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had launched several warning strikes in response to Ukraine’s offensive. “If the situation continues to develop in this way, then the response will be more serious,” he added. Isabel Coles reports for the Wall Street Journal.

lousubcap

An update on US-China-Taiwan:

"U.S. forces would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, President Biden has said. When asked in a CBS 60 Minutes interview broadcast whether U.S. forces would defend the democratically governed island claimed by China, he replied: "Yes, if in fact, there was an unprecedented attack." When asked to clarify if he meant that unlike in Ukraine, U.S. forces - American men and women - would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, Biden replied: "Yes." This is Biden’s most explicit statement on this issue and has drawn an angry response from China. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular briefing in Beijing that Biden’s comments sent a "seriously wrong signal" to those seeking an independent Taiwan. David Brunnstrom and Trevor Hunnicutt report for Reuters. 

U.S. policy on Taiwan has not changed, a White House official has said following Biden’s CBS interview. Officially, the U.S. maintains "strategic ambiguity" on whether American forces would defend Taiwan, but the Taiwan Relations Act obligates the U.S. to help equip Taiwan to defend itself. CBS Newsreports. "

lousubcap

Good article on how Ukraine is using modern warfare to its advantage:  

"https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/09/ukraines-success-shows-mastery-3-essential-skills-modern-warfare/377281/"

HeavyG

https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1571563669783474177

A Twitter thread some might find interesting that relates to the link @lousubcap posted above from defenseone.com.

lousubcap

Tuesday Russia-Ukraine update:

"Ukrainian air defenses have shot down at least 55 Russian warplanes since the start of the war in late February, a U.S. general said yesterday. The huge losses are a major reason Russian fighter planes and bombers have not played much of a role in the conflict, he added. That lack of protection from the sky has been one of the big surprises of the war, as most analysts expected Russia to quickly establish dominance over Ukraine’s airspace in the early days of the invasion. That failure allowed the Ukrainian air force to regroup and survive mostly intact. Speaking to reporters at the annual Air Force Association conference, Air Forces in Europe and Africa commander Gen. James Hecker estimated that Ukraine has retained about 80 per cent of its air force, seven months into the war. Paul McLeary reports for POLITICO. 

Russia is struggling to attract recruits for its army following setbacks in Ukraine, a senior U.S. defense official has said. “The Russians are performing so poorly that the news from Kharkiv Province has inspired many Russian volunteers to refuse combat,” the official said, adding that the leader of the Wagner Group, a private military company with ties to the Kremlin, had been seen in videos posted on social media asking Russian prisoners, Tajiks, Belarusians and Armenians to join the fight in Ukraine. The official also signalled that the U.S. may be open to transferring Western main battle tanks to Kyiv, alongside the soviet era tanks already provided. “Armor is a really important capability area for the Ukrainians,” the official said. “We recognize that there will be a day when they may want to transition — and may need to transition — to NATO-compatible models.” John Ismay reports for the New York Times. 

Pro-Russian officials in the two self-declared separatist “republics” in eastern Ukraine have called on Moscow to immediately annex the territories. In a statement published on the website of the Luhansk People’s Republic’s “public chamber,” the deputy head of the chamber, Lina Vokalova, called for a public referendum to approve annexation and said the vote would “fulfil our dream of returning home - to the Russian Federation.” A similar message came from the pro-Kremlin puppet authorities in Donetsk. The appeals from authorities in the Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics came as Ukrainian forces continued to extend their gains of recent days, signaling an apparent panic that the Kremlin’s war is failing. David L. Stern reports for the Washington Post. "

lousubcap

An update on Russia-Ukraine and the eastern regions:

"The surprise success of Ukraine's recent counteroffensive near Kharkiv "is panicking proxy forces and some Kremlin decision-makers," and now several of those officials have announced what are likely to be sham referendum votes to annex Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, as well as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, according to analysts at the Institute for the Study of War. Occupation officials in Luhansk and Donetsk want their votes to happen as soon as Friday; it's unclear just yet exactly when the other two regions could proceed, according to Reuters. 

One notable complication: "Russian forces do not control all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts," ISW warns. And this suggests Russian officials could soon find themselves "in the strange position of demanding that Ukrainian forces unoccupy 'Russian' territory" after the sham votes, "and the humiliating position of being unable to enforce that demand," according to ISW.

Meanwhile in the motherland, and amid Russia's stark manpower shortages, parliamentarians appear to be trying to walk a fine line between coercing reluctant soldiers into going to war against Ukraine without sending too many of those "refusenik" soldiers into penal colonies, since the latter could pose a huge political risk to the safety of Vladimir Putin's regime. That, anyway, is the opinion of Russia-watcher Rob Lee after learning of recent legislation in Moscow's lower body, the Duma. "

Legume

https://apnews.com/article/8b7abcd09c51831681cdc86902f535e6

I can’t embed a link to save my life from my phone.

Great story about a Russian woman that left Russia 5 years ago to live in Ukraine because she couldn’t sit for what Russia was doing to Ukrainians.

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1572340729695051777?s=20&t=OUT8kyiu8QJlsrIeXH8XHg

lousubcap

Wednesday Russsia-Ukraone update:

"In a major escalation of the war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the threat of a nuclear response and ordered reservists to mobilize. “Russia will use all the instruments at its disposal to counter a threat against its territorial integrity—this is not a bluff,” Putin said in a national address that blamed the West for the conflict in Ukraine. Without providing evidence, Putin said top NATO officials had said that it would be acceptable to carry out nuclear strikes on Russia. “To those who allow themselves such statements, I would like to remind them, Russia also has many types of weapons of destruction, the components of which in some cases are more modern than those of the countries of NATO,” Putin said. In his speech, Putin also cast the partial mobilization as a response to what he called a decadeslong Western plot to break up Russia. Evan Gershkovich, Thomas Grove and Alan Cullison report for the Wall Street Journal. 

Occupied regions of Ukraine have announced that they will hold referendums on formally joining Russia this week. In what appeared to be a coordinated announcement, Russian-appointed leaders in the occupied regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and the self-declared Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic all said they planned to hold "votes" beginning on Sept. 23. The referendums, which Putin backed during his national address, could pave the way for Russian annexation of the areas, allowing Moscow to frame the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive there as an attack on Russia itself, thereby providing Moscow with a pretext to escalate its military response. The referendums - illegal under international law - have been widely denounced by Western officials. Simone McCarthy and Rob Picheta report for CNN. 

The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine has called Putin’s move to partially mobilize his country’s reservist force and to back staged referendums  a “sign of weakness.” In a post on Twitter, Bridget Brink, who has been in her post for roughly four months, also said: “The United States will never recognize Russia’s claim to purportedly annexed Ukrainian territory, and we will continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.” Annabelle Timsit reports for the Washington Post. 

Putin’s remarks are an obvious threat and should be taken “very seriously,” British deputy foreign minister, Gillian Keegan, has said. “Clearly it’s something that we should take very seriously because, you know, we’re not in control. I’m not sure he’s in control either, really,” Keegan told Sky News. “Of course, we will still stand by Ukraine, as will all of our NATO allies,” she added. Jennifer Hassan reports for the Washington Post. "

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/johngreen/status/1572584213395935232?s=20&t=dds_7_VYgH6MkIOsca8EEA

Gulfcoastguy

In today’s Papyrus Times

HeavyG

https://twitter.com/DylanPrimakoff/status/1572741283806085120

Well, that's certainly one way to try and stop antiwar protests. Corral them and sign them up.

Rather than protesting these folks are deciding to just get the hell outta there:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/russians-flee-country-ukraine-war_n_632b210ee4b0cd3ec263f6db