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Month: February 2022

(Culture)War at CPAC

Published by digby on February 25, 2022

There was a time when the annual gathering of young activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was so hawkish you would have thought they were all going to rush out the door and enlist in the Marines demanding to be sent into the most dangerous foreign war zone they could find to fight for God, Mother and Ronald Reagan. Even though they rarely actually enlisted, they believed that it was their duty to pound their chests and insist that we needed to “fight ’em over there, so we don’t have to fight ’em over here” whether it was Communists or terrorists. Those days are over, I’m afraid.

It’s not that the attendees have transformed into peace-loving flower children. They are as hostile and aggressive as ever. But today’s CPAC activists have turned their focus inward and are convinced they are literally fighting for their lives here at home against what they see as a Communist 5th column (also known as the Democratic Party) and the “invasion” allegedly being waged daily along the southern border.Advertisement:

This year’s gathering in Florida, home of Dear Leader Trump, just happened to fall on the opening days of Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of its neighboring country, Ukraine. One might have expected that the speakers, at least, would feel it necessary to at least address this issue, seeing as it’s the first major land war on European soil since World War II, affecting 44 million Ukrainians and millions more in surrounding countries. On the first day, however, there was hardly a peep in defense.

Two of the big marquee speakers, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Senator Ted Cruz didn’t mention the war at all. (In fact, DeSantis didn’t even mention Trump at all, which I’m sure did not go unnoticed down the road at Mar-a-Lago.) DeSantis threw out a ton of red meat to the crowd however, such as, “if Biden is dumping illegal aliens into FL from the southern border, I’m re-routing them to Delaware — we’ll do some to DC and Hollywood as well.” But his only foray into foreign affairs was to say that if it hadn’t been for Florida in the pandemic the US would be like Australia and Canada today which may not be the winning applause line he thinks it is considering the much lower death tolls in those two countries.

Ted Cruz served up his tired, unctuous podcast act calling White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki ‘Peppermint Patty,’ saying he can’t wait until next January when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will fly away “on her broom” and then led the crowd in a lusty chant of “Let’s Go Brandon.” The crowd loved it which says more about their taste in comedy than it says about him.

The final speaker of the night, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, did bring up the Ukraine war, saying that President Biden is weak and should “open up American trade energy.” He later told CBS News Correspondent Bob Costa that he also believes the US should withdraw troops from Europe altogether because we have to fight China which doesn’t sound like a very sophisticated understanding of global affairs.

Reports from the floor show a consensus among the crowd that while it’s unfortunate that Putin has invaded Ukraine it’s not something we should be concerned about when our own border is supposedly under siege. This parallel between the two situations was repeated by many people. For instance, Buzzfeed reported

“[Ukraine’s] something that’s important,” Rodney Perez said. “I think more so our southern border, I think that’s the probably most important for our country right now, what’s going on. We’re being invaded.”

The New York Times:

Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist, said, “The U.S. southern border matters a lot more than the Ukrainian border.” He added: “I’m more worried about how the cartels are deliberately trying to infiltrate our country than a dispute 5,000 miles away, cities we can’t pronounce, places that most Americans can’t find on a map.”

Of course, this was something that Donald Trump had said earlier in the week when he was lavishing praise on Vladimir Putin and indicating that he wished he could stage such a smart and savvy military operation down at the Southern border.

There isn’t a lot of consistency among this group, with some saying we’re being invaded while others say we should invade, but there’s one thing they all agree on: America has gone completely to hell in a deplorable hand basket.

CPAC’s 2022 conference is dubbed “Awake, Not Woke,” which gives you a clear idea of what the right-wing really cares about. There were no dry panels on taxation or health care. They aren’t bothering anymore with ideological discussions about Russell Kirk. It’s all culture war all the time. Here is a sample of the panels this year:

“The Moron in Chief”
“Put Him to Bed, Lock Her Up and Send Her to the Border.”
“Lock Her Up, FOR REAL”
“School Boards for Dummies”
“Domestic Terrorists Unite: Lessons From Virginia Parents”
“Fire Fauci”
“Lock Downs and Mandates: Now Do You Understand Why We Have a Second Amendment”
“Are You Ready to Be Called a Racist: The Courage to Run for Office”
“The Invasion”
“Obamacare still kills” (just for old times sake)

And here’s just one example of the tone of the conference from the speakers:

Rolling Stone correspondent Steven Monacelli live tweeted from the conference and I think his post featuring the trailer for a new film starring CPAC organizers Matt and Mercedes Schlapp called “The Culture Killers, the Woke Wars” sums it up.

So it’s wrong to say that these activists aren’t hawkish just because they don’t care that Vladimir Putin has launched an unprovoked war against Ukraine. They are as bloodthirsty as ever. It’s just that the war they want to fight is within their own country. 

Ketanji Brown Jackson

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 25, 2022

President Joe Biden has selected his first Supreme Court nominee: Ketanji Brown Jackson from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “She is one of our nation’s brightest legal minds and will be an exceptional Justice,” Biden tweeted minutes ago.

The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON — President Biden has selected Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee to the Supreme Court, two people familiar with his decision said, choosing a well-regarded federal appeals court judge who if confirmed would make history by becoming the first Black woman to serve as a justice.

In Judge Jackson, 51, Mr. Biden selected a liberal-leaning jurist who earned a measure of Republican support when he nominated her to the influential federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., last summer. If confirmed by the Senate, she would replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer, the senior member of the court’s three-member liberal wing, who announced last month that he would retire at the end of the current court term this summer if his successor was in place.

While her confirmation would not change the court’s ideological balance — conservatives appointed by Republicans would retain their 6-3 majority — it would achieve another first: all three justices appointed by Democratic presidents would be women.

Judge Jackson, who was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Miami, graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Justice Breyer’s alma mater. She went on to clerk for him during the 1999-2000 Supreme Court term.

Jackson served for a time as a public defender, “a rarity among Supreme Court candidates. But it was a trait that appealed to Mr. Biden, who briefly served as a public defender earlier in his career.”

Pushback is already coming from Sen. Limdsey Graham who earlier indicated he might support Biden’s pick. If she was from South Carolina, of course. Jackson is from D.C.

Gotta hand it to Lindsey Graham. He’s as good as his word, “interesting.”

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Useful idiots

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 25, 2022

Russian forces are converging on Kyiv this morning. The Ukrainian capitol could fall to Vladimir Putin within days, sources tell CNN. President Biden has dispatched another (symbolic) 7,000 U.S. troops to Germany. A retired U.S. general told MSNBC Thursday night that Putin’s invasion will mean U.S. troops will be permanently stationed on his border in the Baltic states and in Poland. Foreign policy experts reassure us that Putin is making a historic strategic mistake.

Those assurances will be little comfort to Ukrainians this morning. Especially since statements condemning Biden and/or supporting Putin by Americans, including Republican members of Congress and a former president, are being rebroadcast by Putin’s state media in Russia.

“Why do Democrats want you to hate Putin?” Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson asked viewers Tuesday while implying the real objects of their hate should be non-conservative neighbors on their streets. Carlson et al. are the smart girl playing dumb so the boys will like her. The “boys” in this case are MAGA-style insurrectionists.

Other Trumpish Republicans “want to capitalize on some of the energy and ideas of Trumpism, but their shame is too strong or their stomachs too weak to debase themselves,” writes David Graham in The Atlantic. They bring a “gotta hand it to them” attitude to authoritarians like Putin for the same reason Carlson and Fox News do.

A third group consists of the remainder of what were “establishment” Republicans:

The problem for this group is that the most influential figures in the party are in the other two groups, and they’re most interested in fluffing Trump’s profile and playing footsie with Putin. During the Cold War, when Republicans were staunchly anti-Russia, there was a pithy term for people who for their own domestic political reasons defended Communist leaders and arguments in the West. The Soviet Union is gone, but the term is still handy for describing Putin’s American cheerleaders: useful idiots.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton writes this morning (also in The Atlantic) about Republicans braying about Biden’s weakness while giving comfort to Putin:

Republican leaders are abandoning core tenets of American democracy even as the stakes in the global contest between democracy and autocracy are clearer and higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War. They are defending coup-plotters and curbing voting rights while Russia tries to crush Ukraine’s fragile democracy and China menaces not only Taiwan but democracies everywhere, from Australia to Lithuania.

Putin watched as the Trump-inspired, antidemocratic insurrection proved a sizable slice of Americans yearn more for an authoritarian strong man than for democratic self-rule at home. Putin thought, Why would Americans defend it now in Ukraine?

This morning, Putin still has reason to ask that.

Clinton and co-author Dan Schwerin continue:

Whether Putin continues testing NATO’s resolve, and whether the trajectory of our competition with China veers toward conflict, will in part be driven by Russian and Chinese perceptions of America’s decline or resilience. When our democracy looks weak, our country looks weak, and as Reagan said, that only invites aggression.

And it has.

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An expert’s view

Published by digby on February 24, 2022

Professor Caitlin Tlamadge on twitter discusses Putin’s chilling nuclear threat :

Haven’t tweeted much on Ukraine crisis for multiple reasons. But developments in the last 24 hours are heartbreaking and a preview of great brutality I fear is coming. A few observations here on the nuclear & conventional dimensions.

Putin’s pointed, not-veiled nuclear threats are really remarkable, signaling a willingness to turn to the country’s arsenal if the West interferes with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is about the clearest evidence I have ever seen for the Stability-Instability Paradox: the notion that mutual vulnerability (“MAD”) at the strategic nuclear level can actually make conflict more likely at lower rungs of the escalation ladder.

Deterrence theorists associated with the Nuclear Revolution often dismiss this idea, arguing that nuclear stalemate means both sides will avoid crises and conflicts out of the fear they could escalate. The result should be peace, stability, and less military competition.

Yet Putin’s behavior suggests that revisionist actors are not so inhibited and may instead use their strategic nuclear forces as a shield behind which they can pursue conventional aggression, knowing their nuclear threats may deter outside intervention.

Now of course, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, nor a U.S. treaty ally. But then neither is Taiwan. So if you think nuclear stalemate is going to keep the peace in the Strait, you would need to do some hard thinking about why it hasn’t kept the peace in Eastern Europe.

China, in fact, is developing the same types of forces that Putin references in his remarks: not only a survivable second-strike capability, but also theater nuclear forces suited for limited strikes for coercive escalation. Not a coincidence.

More broadly, as a student of military operations and foreign policy, it’s hard for me to see the Russian end game here either operationally or strategically, for reasons @jeffaedmonds and @KofmanMichael and others have identified.

Yes, at a tactical level Russia can steamroll Ukrainian regular forces, though I expect Ukraine can make this more costly than Russia has anticipated. Urban warfare is unkind to invaders, even strong ones.

But beyond that, what is military endgame? Regime change and then puppet government? Difficulties of indefinitely occupying a nation of 41 million should be apparent after Soviet experiences with Warsaw Pact & Afghanistan, among others @dmedelstein.

Russian invasion likely to provoke higher European defense spending, tighter NATO, deployment of NATO forces east, hostility with West. Ukraine was not headed for NATO membership any time soon, so a destabilizing invasion wasn’t necessary to forestall that perceived danger.

At the strategic level, Russian invasion gives off big Schlieffen Plan energy. It is like committing suicide for fear of death, bringing about the very problems it is supposed to solve, and generating new ones like risks of inadvertent escalation.

Originally tweeted by ProfTalmadge (@ProfTalmadge) on February 24, 2022.

That’s what scares me about all this talk of Putin being unstable. If he is, then the threat of nuclear war is real. He sounded like Trump making one of his grandiose threats, but he isn’t Trump.

And this is disturbing:

*I also think this idea of the threat of nuclear war enabling lower level wars makes sense. I’m not sure why anyone would have thought otherwise. In fact, all the proxy wars during the cold war were basically based upon that, weren’t they?

This is Professor Talmadge’s website

The Trump model for US Senate

Published by digby on February 24, 2022
https://twitter.com/metzgov/status/1496941034303107077

The man is clearly brain damaged:

“We hope that we can get this behind us soon, but it’s going to be here a while; I’ll tell you that right now,” Tuberville said. “I was at a WHO meeting in Munich this past weekend. We’ve got another strain coming; it’s called BA-1. It’s kind of like Omicron, but less than that, you get sick, but it’s not as lethal. It’s going to be here a while. We’ve just got to continue to fight it, but we’ve got to get back to work. We’ve got to get back to school. We’ve got to get back to church. We’ve got to get the federal government out of our lives and let the people of this country run their own lives.”

It’s called BA-2. It’s already here. And nobody knows what the next variant will do.

Tuberville spoke on the supply chain breakdown, claiming the lack of available truck drivers was primarily due to vaccine mandates. He further claimed there were over 100,000 available trucking jobs in the U.S. 

The trucker shortage is long standing and has nothing to do with the vaccines.

“A lot of them are quitting because of vaccine mandates,” Tuberville said. “I hope it doesn’t get out of hand, but we’ve got truckers coming to D.C. I wouldn’t care if they shut down the government for about eight months until November because we’re in the minority right now. They do not want people telling them they got to take a shot, and I don’t blame them because you own your own body. It’s going to be a tough time for the next year if we don’t get the vaccine mandates under control, the mask mandates under control, our supply chain under control, and get people back to work.”

It’s certainly good that he hopes it “doesn’t get out of hand.”

Tuberville discussed the escalating tensions between Russia and Ukraine. He claims that a large part of Vladimir Putin’s desire for further annexation of Ukrainian land is due to the amount of farmland in Ukraine.

“He can’t feed his people,” Tuberville said. “It’s a communist country, so he can’t feed his people, so they need more farmland.”

Russia is not a communist country and they do not have food shortages. And seizing another country’s land is not legal in any case. Nazi Germany called this Lebensraum, but, of course, this moron wouldn’t know that.

Tuberville says that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has personally told him that Ukraine does not require “boots on the ground,” only that they need weapons and supplies. 

Ok. He’s told everyone on the planet that.

“The number-one problem in this world is China,” Tuberville said. Their economy is past ours, their military is past ours, and they are getting ready to move just like Russia is moving across the world.

Apparently, it’s bad if China does it but it’s fine if Russia does it. Also, the Chinese economy is not bigger than the United States’.

“We’ve been sanctioning Russia since 2014 since they came into Crimea. Sanctions don’t help.

“We are getting ready to put sanctions on Russia, and every day, Joe Biden buys 500,000 barrels of oil from Russia. Now how in the hell can you put sanctions on somebody, and you’re buying stuff from him? We bought 232 million barrels of oil from Russia in Joe Biden’s first year.

“We have to get back to being oil independent.”

Russia supplies 7% of America’s oil imports. (Prices are set by the market.) And America was never energy independent. Trump lied about that. Surprise.

Tuberville supported the strengthening of the U.S military, and by dispensing with the “woke” prerogatives of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin.

“I’m tired of hearing about ‘we need to change our military to where they’re woke,’” Tuberville said. “To where they need to listen to the federal government, and we need to educate them on things that have nothing to do with the military.

“Secretary Austin, we need a killing machine, not that we want to kill anybody, but people know that we will kill them if they come here and if they mess with us.”

Right. We don’t want the military listening to the Federal Government. I guess we should put Alabama in charge of it.

This is the level of intelligence we have serving in the Republican Party these days. If Trump’s endorsees win in 2022 there will be a whole lot more like him.

How rich is Vladimir Putin?

Published by digby on February 24, 2022

President Biden said today that personally sanctioning Putin is on the table. It should be. Putin is rumored to be the richest man in the world, although finding all of his assets is probably impossible.

This article discusses what’s known publicly. It’s likely the tip of the iceberg:

In a scene out of a James Bond film, just days before it was believed that Western nations would impose sanctions on Russia, a $125 million superyacht believed to be owned by Putin was swiftly sailed from German waters to the Russian territory of Kaliningrad. The luxury yacht, named Graceful, had been left at a port in Hamburg for repair work before it abruptly left on Feb. 7.

One report revealed that the yacht was receiving several modifications, including a swimming pool extension and the enlargement of two balconies.

In 2017, Fortune magazine said Putin was believed to be the richest man in the world, with a net worth of $200 billion. Hermitage Capital Management CEO Bill Browder, who previously worked as a fund manager in Russia, said in 2015: “After 14 years in power of Russia, and the amount of money that the country has made, and the amount of money that hasn’t been spent on schools and roads and hospitals and so on, all that money is in property, bank, Swiss bank accounts, shares, hedge funds, managed for Putin and his cronies.”

Last year, a palace worth $1.37 billion was featured in a viral video by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny — who has since been jailed for allegedly embezzling donations, an accusation that he has vehemently denied. Navalny said the luxury Black Sea property was paid for “with the largest bribe in history. [They] built a palace for their boss with his money.” One builder described the palace as if the Egyptian pyramids were being built. “I reckon around 1,500 people worked at the construction site at that point,” the builder told the BBC in 2011. “There were Russians, Uzbeks; there were soldiers. There was a rush to get it finished.” According to others who worked at the site, the property included a Japanese garden, a gym made out of marble, an underground ice hockey rink and a vineyard.

A recent investigation by Forbes put forward a number of theories about how Putin could have amassed and hidden his fortune. One theory relates to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian oligarch who was once believed to be the richest man in Russia, with an estimated $15 billion fortune.

In 2003, however, he was imprisoned on charges of tax evasion and fraud. He continually denied these accusations. Khodorkovsky’s fortune was frozen and his companies were broken up. But Browder, who is wanted by Putin after being sentenced to nine years in prison in 2019 for tax evasion in Russia and funneling money overseas, told Forbes he believes the arrest could have allowed Putin to cut new deals with other oligarchs. “The deal was, ‘You give me 50 percent of your wealth and I’ll let you keep the other 50 percent,’” he said. “If you don’t, [I’ll] take 100 percent of your wealth and throw you in jail.”

Another theory is that Putin increased his fortune by using his position in government to help his family and close friends. Forbes suggested that those in his inner circle would offer him money or stakes in a company they acquired as a result of his help. One of Putin’s friends, Arkady Rotenberg, received more than $7 billion in state contracts in the lead-up to the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014.

According to an investigation by Reuters in 2015, Putin’s daughter Katerina, then 29, had corporate holdings worth about $2 billion with her reported husband, Kirill Shamalov, son of Nikolai Shamalov, a longtime friend of the president. Financial analysts revealed that the wealth of Putin’s daughter stemmed mainly from a large publicly disclosed stake in a major gas and petrochemical corporation that Kirill acquired from another friend of Putin’s, Gennady Timchenko — who was hit with sanctions from the U.K. earlier this week. Along with the holdings, Putin’s daughter reportedly owned a villa in France worth $3.7 million. Not much is known about his other daughter’s wealth.

That’s what reporters in the West have uncovered. But what’s the official Russian party line about the president’s wealth? An annual list of declared earnings in the Kremlin stated that Putin is paid 8.6 million rubles per year, or $234,000, as president of Russia. In 2015, Putin famously claimed he did not know how much his salary was, saying: “They just give it to me, and I put it away in my account.”

The properties he declared in 2019 included two apartments, three Russian-made Soviet-era cars — two GAZ-M21s and a Lada Niva — and a Skiff trailer (also made in Russia), reported the Russian state-controlled media site RT. The value of the three cars adds up to no more than an estimated $27,000. In 2002, Lada Niva was awarded zero stars out of a possible four for safety after a dummy passenger was hit by the glove compartment so hard that it showed a risk for a traumatic brain injury.

Despite all the items listed, no international buildings or apartments were featured in Putin’s declaration, nor were any mega-yachts now berthed safely in Russian waters. So if Putin did amass the bankroll that Fortune magazine believes he has, where is the money, and how can Western countries come up with sanctions aimed directly at Putin’s real assets?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the intelligence communities knows where a whole lot of this money is. They certainly know where a lot of his cronies’ money is. Targeting these wealthy kleptocrats should be job one.

Will the Russian people resist?

Published by digby on February 24, 2022

Some people have already stood up but there’s no way of knowing whether the protests will get big enough or have enough staying power to make a difference:

There’ve been several reports of Russian citizens decrying the invasion: The Guardian spoke to several Russians who expressed dismay at their country’s moves, and the New York Times just published a report on a handful of Russian celebrities, including singers and TV anchors, who have publicly urged against going to war with Ukraine.

The Guardian noted a new independent poll showing that only 45 percent of Russians supported Putin’s declaration that the Donbas region belonged to his country.

There’s also a big anti-war protest going on in St. Petersburg at the moment:

These people are brave:

Russian authorities on Thursday warned anti-war sympathizers from gathering for protests after President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine.

The Investigative Committee, a government body that investigates major crimes, warned Russians of legal repercussions for joining unsanctioned protests related to “the tense foreign political situation.”

It said it was responding to social media calls to protest against Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine.

“One should be aware of the negative legal consequences of these actions in the form of prosecution up to criminal liability,” it said. The Russian interior ministry said it will take “all necessary measures to ensure public order.”

Russia has strict protest laws and demonstrations often end in mass arrests.

Some Russians called on social media for people to take to the streets to protest against the Ukraine attack. Independent rights monitor, OVD-info, said at least 27 people had been arrested throughout Russia for holding anti-war protests.

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said earlier on Thursday that he was against the invasion in a speech during his trial, held behind bars. “I am against this war,” Navalny was heard saying in a video published by independent news outlet Dozhd.”This war between Russia and Ukraine was unleashed to cover up the theft from Russian citizens and divert their attention from problems that exist inside the country,” Navalny said.

I suspect that the more effective protests will come from Putin’s oligarchs and their children if the US and its allies make their lives outside of Russia difficult.

Follow the money — and take it.

No, Putin wasn’t scared of Trump

Published by digby on February 24, 2022

Last night Trump was on Laura Ingraham saying a bunch of ridiculous things, among them this “mysterious” comment which was clearly intended to suggest he has something on Putin.

On Ingraham’s show, Trump tried to lay blame for Putin’s aggression squarely at Biden’s feet, telling her ominously that the invasion couldn’t have happened during his presidency for “a very good reason, and I’ll explain that to you someday.”

More likely, the other way around, don’t you think?

In any case, this is nonsense. Steve Benen lays out the facts:

After the National Archives confirmed on Friday that Donald Trump brought classified national security documents to Mar-a-Lago, the former president issued a long, rambling response, insisting the controversy was unimportant. But toward the end of the written tirade, the Republican added an unrelated thought, seemingly in passing.

Trump was apparently trying to argue that he didn’t have time to worry about tasks such as presidential records keeping. He was, Trump added, “too busy making sure Russia didn’t attack Ukraine.”

How subtle. The former president wants the public to know Vladimir Putin didn’t invade Ukraine during his term — unlike the current U.S. president.

There’s been plenty of related chatter of late in Republican circles. Putin targeted Georgia during George W. Bush’s tenure, Crimea during Barack Obama’s terms, and all of Ukraine after Joe Biden became president, but the Russian autocrat’s ambitions were restrained during Trump’s time in the White House. This, the right tells us, should be seen as proof of … something.

National Review’s Rich Lowry made the case via Twitter last night, “The sheer unpredictably of Trump, his anger at being defied or disrespected, his willingness to take the occasional big risk (the Soleimani strike), all had to make Putin frightened or wary of him in a way that he simply isn’t of Joe Biden.”

That’s certainly one way of looking at recent events, though it’s probably not the best way.

It’s important to acknowledge what motivates the Russian leader. The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum summarized matters nicely a few weeks ago:

[Putin] wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.

It led The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin to add yesterday, “Trump’s foreign policy sought to do much of what Putin wants to achieve, including intimidating Ukraine by withholding vital defensive weapons.”

Quite right. Putin wanted to undermine the NATO alliance, and Trump undermined the NATO alliance. Putin wanted to weaken the E.U., and Trump made little effort to express his disdain for the E.U. Putin wanted to weaken the U.S. political system, and Trump was unnervingly aggressive in trying to weaken the U.S. political system.

Putin wanted to hurt Ukraine, and Trump launched an extortion scheme that threatened to hurt Ukraine.

Why didn’t the Russian leader deploy troops into Ukraine during Trump’s term? Perhaps because Putin was so pleased with an American president who pursued goals in line with Moscow’s agenda.

Had Putin launched an invasion, it risked upsetting the course he was already delighted to see. Why would the Russian leader get in the way of the progress Trump was already delivering.

During the Obama years, the right wingers used to constantly rend their garments over Obama allegedly “apologizing” for America. “How unpatriotic” they cried! “How can you hate American so much!”

Trump told Putin and anyone who would listen that the US is a weak and stupid country over and over again and said “I alone can fix it” which any sentient being could see was laughable. He said NATO was obsolete and the only thing he ever did was whine about their “dues” being overdue. He took Putin’s word over his own intelligence community and refused to send military assistance to Ukraine unless they sabotaged Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

He is the most disloyal president in American history.

Miscalculations

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 24, 2022

President Biden is expected to speak on the Ukraine invasion at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine could be a serious political miscalculation on his part. What the rest of us must worry about are miscalculations in the field. A Russian missile strays into NATO territory and kills allied troops or civilians. A Russian jet wanders into NATO territory or overflys a U.S. Navy ship in the Black Sea and gets shot down. Any miscalculation could trigger NATO’s mutual defense provision.

Russia acknowledged the loss of one SU-25 attack jet, blaming pilot error. Ukrainian forces claim several Russian helicopters shot down.

Putin Wednesday night warned the world against interferingwith his actions, declaring, “whoever tries to impede us, let alone create threats for our country and its people, must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to the consequences you have never seen in history.”

Russians claim to have destroyed over 70 Ukrainian facilities. Blood has been spilled, reports say:

Russia Ukraine Crisis Live: As many as 40 Ukranian soldiers and around 10 civilians have been killed by Russian shelling, a Reuters report quoting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy adviser, said on Thursday. The AFP, meanwhile reported that Ukraine said it killed ‘around 50 Russian occupiers’ without providing details. The casualties are the latest in a series of fast-paced developments that began when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine early Thursday. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s ambassador to India urged PM Narendra Modi to contact Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr to mediate the crisis.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday said that the country has severed diplomatic relations with Russia after Moscow launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine by land, air and sea on Thursday, the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War Two and confirmation of the worst fears of the West. Zelenskiy has declared martial law in the country and Ukrainian foreign minister vowed to fight and defeat Russia.

Global stocks have already plunged. Stocks in the U.S. plunged hundreds of points as soon as markets opened at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time.

With so much focus on Ukraine, not all of the response reflects Western reaction:

China rejected calling Russia’s moves on Ukraine an “invasion” and urged all sides to exercise restraint, even as it advised its citizens there to stay home or at least take the precaution of displaying a Chinese flag if they needed to drive anywhere.

China’s call for “calm, restraint and dialogue” on Tuesday was effectively “cheerleading Putin’s belligerence,” Time‘s Charlie Campbell writes.

Putin has long wanted to rebuild the Russia-based empire that collapsed in 1991:

In a speech on February 21, Putin baselessly accused Ukraine of seeking a nuclear weapon and called its government a “neo-Nazi” regime that bore responsibility for any further bloodshed.

He recognised the independence of two separatist regions and authorised sending “peacekeepers” into the rebel provinces.

Tatiana Stanovaya, who runs the R.Politik analytical centre, predicted grim times ahead, saying that Putin had “crossed over to the dark side of history”.

The rest of us now are along for the ride.

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Putin’s war

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 24, 2022

Columns of Russian tanks and tracked vehicles are crossing into Ukraine as I type this. Russian-born American journalist Julia Ioffe appeared on CNN moments ago and observed how unconcerned Vladimir Putin is with appearances this morning. At least, outside Russia where he controls the media.

It is an invasion. There is nothing subtle about it. From east to west, reports suggest Russia is shelling virtually every major city in Ukraine, including the capitol of Kyiv.

“It looks like a blitzkrieg,” Ioffe said.

“Putin Issues Threat Against ‘Anyone Who Tries to Interfere’” reads the New York Times headline. Putin claims this is a “special military operation.”

Russian troops poured over the border 20 miles from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city where families with children and pets are already huddling in subway stations for shelter. civilians are already. NPR reported sounds of explosions outside Kyiv and jets above Odessa Wednesday night. Residents are lining up to pull money from banks and ATMs this morning. Very long lines have appeared at gas stations.

In up-is-downism worthy of Fox News:

More images from Ukraine at Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, in Bizarro World on this side of the Atlantic:

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.