Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Everybody saw this coming.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

He really is that stupid.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / The Water’s Edge

The Water’s Edge

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So, this happened:

Trump pinned the tweet to the top of his Twitter feed (only because he couldn’t figure out how to dot the “i” with a heart), and the Russian embassy in the US retweeted it.

The shitgibbon is openly kissing the ass of a ruthless foreign autocrat who tampered in an American election. And undermining the current president’s policy. We’re through the looking glass, folks.

Reader Interactions

162Comments

  1. 1.

    Runt

    “How do we know Trump tweeted that? Could be a parody account, or maybe his account was hacked by the NSA!”

    Glenn Greenwald, very soon.

  2. 2.

    Davis X. Machina

    His audience is Republicans, not us. We’re just Americans. It’s not our country.
    This differs little from Jefferson Davis seeking recognition from the UK and France for the CSA.

    Welcome to our shiny new civil war. Wonder when the shooting starts?

  5. 5.

    MazeDancer

    Simply cannot be fine with the entire GOP that Trump chooses Russia over America.

    Trump’s foolish base, drunk on their Obama hatred, may think this is just Strong Manly Vlad versus The Weak Muslim Black Guy. But this is putting Russia over America. Please may McCain and Graham continue outrage at “Russia First” and actually do something.

  11. 11.

    Feebog

    So what happens once Cheeto Benito is sworn in and Putin then invades and takes over all of Ukraine? What kind of response will the Shitgibbon have when Russia simply takes over Latvia and Estonia? Is it going to be all chocolates and roses then?

  12. 12.

    tpherald

    US Conservatives do LUV their tough-guy authoritarian leaders, don’t they? GWB: “I looked the man in the eye and looked into his soul. I could see he was a good man.” Ewwwww

  14. 14.

    Corner Stone

    @Davis X. Machina:

    His audience is Republicans, not us.

    Do we conclude it simply does not matter who the adverse party is, as long as it does not identify as “Democrat” then it wins by default in their eyes?

  15. 15.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Feebog: High-fives. For a manly man takin’ what he wants, and not takin’ any guff for it.

    It’s a sort of foreign policy…

  16. 16.

    Yutsano

    @Amaranthine RBG: This is not “snark”. This just fucking happened and you act like you couldn’t give two shits. The mitigation needs to happen but The Yam needs to be removed ASAP. Amendment 25 or impeachment or whatever.

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Heh. Down the memory hole it went!

  17. 17.

    Anya

    Not only did he tweet it, he pinned it so that his Rusian crime boss doesn’t miss it. The Russian embassies in USA and UK RT’d it. The world is fucked.

  19. 19.

    recurvata

    @Runt: I think Trump’s account should be hacked by parodists (?). But how could you tell? Say the next tweet is about merging the US with Russia – the United States of Republics, Could you be sure this wasn’t Trump? Not me.

  21. 21.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Corner Stone: Exactly. He’s declaring half the country to simply not be ‘the country’. That’s his call.

    Jeff Davis would be proud. It’s secession-in-place.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @Feebog:

    So what happens once Cheeto Benito is sworn in and Putin then invades and takes over all of Ukraine?

    The only way he’s taking over all of Ukraine is the same way he’s taking over the US. Putin has chosen his tactics because Russia is nowhere near as strong as it pretends to be. A full-on invasion would tax the Russian military to the limit, and it would probably be enough to severely jeopardize his hold on power.

  27. 27.

    Davis X. Machina

    @NobodySpecial: When the alternative is a woman president, or a black president, you do what you have to do. Necessity knows no law — and the stakes are that high.

  29. 29.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I still don’t see how “tough guy Trump” squares with “kissing Russian ass”. Maybe the vaunted GOP is base is nothing more than a pack of beta male sissy boys and all their talk is just bluster but I think this is only a matter of time before it blows up in Trump’s face. Even it is they are to dumb and blinded by hate for Obama, Trump is still kissing Russian ass when it’s all said and done.

  30. 30.

    liberal

    @Feebog: Even if you attribute malice, from a strategic perspective, why would Russia want to actually occupy Ukraine and the Baltic states? (Ukraine, maybe occupying the eastern part, but not the entire country…)

  31. 31.

    PeakVT

    Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

  32. 32.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @tpherald: In November 2000, my father told me that I shouldn’t be so upset, that the deserting coward was “a good man”.

    Several years later, he admitted to me that he was wrong about that.

  33. 33.

    liberal

    @debbie:

    …especially the part where Putin bombed his own people as an excuse to invade Chechnya.

    Are you talking about the apartment bombings?

    I’ve never heard any evidence that he did that, though my gut feeling has always been that it was a false flag operation to, as you say, invade/bomb Chechnya.

  35. 35.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Feebog: If Russia could just roll over the Ukrian, don’t you think they would have done it by now? It’s like not even with Obama the US would bother to go to war to keep the Ukraine Americun.

  37. 37.

    liberal

    @Yutsano:

    Amendment 25 or impeachment or whatever.

    Until the deplorables lose faith in him, there’s no way the Republicans are going to impeach him.

  38. 38.

    JordanRules

    Awwww geeez. Everyday it hurts more to watch this all go down.
    But he can’t fight all of us.

    Such a fuckboy. King of fuckboys actually.

  40. 40.

    SiubhanDuinne

    You know that wobbly walking-the-floor-in-the-fun-house feeling of being really unbalanced, lurching precipitously from one handgrip to another? That’s pretty much the feeling I have every time I contemplate what we’re facing beginning three weeks from today. Just completely disoriented.

  41. 41.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @MazeDancer: But Obama is blah!

    That’s all these fuckheads think about. The color of the man’s skin, not the content of his character (endlessly greater than his predecessor or his successor) or his accomplishments, in the face of the most obstructionist opposition seen in this country since the 1850’s.

  42. 42.

    Another Scott

    @Roger Moore: Especially given NATO’s increased cooperation with Ukraine.

    Putin doesn’t want to invade (the rest of) Ukraine or the Baltics – as you say, he really doesn’t have the military wherewithal to do that. He wants them to do his bidding without having to do a full-on invasion. It’s another variation of Putin trying to use Gazprom to turn off the heat in border states a few years ago. Putin wants to be the big man via never having to act in the worst of his implicit threats.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  43. 43.

    JMG

    @liberal: Once the tax cuts are signed in, and Trump signs the bills gutting Medicare and Medicaid, they might well impeach him, if the grounds were flagrant enough, Putin is not popular, even among Republicans.

  44. 44.

    Seth Owen

    @liberal: The Russians, based on their historical experience, are much more comfortable having some buffers between them and the border. Stalin took over the Baltics, Eastern Poland and part of Romania for the extra distance.

    As evil and unjust as it was, it was also strategically sound. As it was, even with that extra space, the panders got close enough to see the spires of the Kremlin. Suppose they had started 200 miles closer?

    It may seem absurd to us, but it doesn’t seem absurd to the Russians.

  45. 45.

    Davis X. Machina

    @liberal: History? Tradition? Grandiosity? Because he can?

    When did nation-states become reliably rational actors?

    I mean, Iraq? Really?

  47. 47.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @liberal: Germany has been economically conquering Europe for the past 20 years. More effective and less traumatic than the effort in the 40s.

  48. 48.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Seth Owen: Panzers maybe?

    It’s not just Stalin. It goes back to Peter the Great at a minimum. The reason for the push into Siberia was bad memories of Russia actually being turned into a tributary of the Mongols back in the 13th century, when the only successful winter invasion of Russia succeeded where all others have failed.

  49. 49.

    John Revolta

    @liberal: Vlad wants to Make Russia Great Again. He wants to go down in history as the guy who got the USSR back together.

    He’s obviously got Trump’s balls in a salad shooter. I can’t wait until he has no further use for him and releases the videos.

  52. 52.

    Calouste

    @Villago Delenda Est: More like 40 or 50 years. In the late 1970s the Bundesbank would change the interest rate and all the other Western European central banks would follow with the same change within 24 hours.

  54. 54.

    Anya

    @pat: Totally. I wanted to rt that to Matt Taibbi who’s doubting the Russia hack storyline. Basically Putin is admitting he won by helping instal Orange Berlusconi.

  55. 55.

    Roger Moore

    @Seth Owen:

    As evil and unjust as it was, it was also strategically sound. As it was, even with that extra space, the panders got close enough to see the spires of the Kremlin. Suppose they had started 200 miles closer?

    It wasn’t strategically sound. Their attempts to gain strategic space by partitioning Poland actually put the Nazis closer to their border than they otherwise would have been, and helped to destroy another army that would have been fighting to keep them away. Agreeing to the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact was incredibly shortsighted.

  56. 56.

    germy

    Trump Allies Argue That Obama’s Sanctions on Russia Are Too Weak

    The Heritage Foundation — which has played a central role in staffing Trump’s White House — argues that Obama’s sanctions are “too little, too late.” Is this the conservative think tank’s sly attempt to pressure Trump into adopting an even more hard-line stance against Russia?

    Meanwhile, the man who was one mustache away from becoming Trump’s deputy secretary of State offered similar talking points on Fox News.

  61. 61.

    Calouste

    @John Revolta: People have to keep in mind that Putin’s goal is to weaken the West, and that the recent election results are just one step in that. What Putin has no need for is a right-wing dictatorship in the US, because he would have to play second fiddle due to economic realities, and Trump is mad enough that he could turn on Putin on a dime. So when Trump has done his job of weakening NATO and other alliances, and making clear to the world that the US isn’t going to stand up for anyone, it’s in Putin’s best interest to stab Trump in the back and create more chaos in the US. A civil war and/or the US splitting apart is the ideal outcome for Putin.

  62. 62.

    Betty Cracker

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Summary: “This post is stupid and Hillary sux, blah blah blah.” After some investigation, I think I figured out what happened: He went back to edit the comment to note that he meant to leave it in the comment thread of the post below, and WP ate the edited comment. There is a glitch around the edit function — never experienced it myself, but others have complained. Anyhoo, I left it in WP’s gullet since he says he meant to post it elsewhere anyway. Will restore it to this thread if he requests it (and if I happen to see the request — no promises!).

  64. 64.

    Corner Stone

    Every R elected politician should be asked about their agreement/position with this Trump tweet.

  67. 67.

    Mike in DC

    I think the “why is it our business” thing comes across as a little bit callous. Ukraine is a fledgling democracy which suffered terribly under Russian rule, and again under a Russian proxy. They overthrew a corrupt leader, and their reward was invasion. I think sanctions were highly appropriate.

  68. 68.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Foreign policy question: If under the Trump idiocracy we’re supposed to jump to do whatever Netanyahu wants us to do, and also to jump to do whatever Putin wants us to do, what if our new masters have contradictory wishes?

  69. 69.

    ericblair

    @Another Scott:

    Putin doesn’t want to invade (the rest of) Ukraine or the Baltics – as you say, he really doesn’t have the military wherewithal to do that. He wants them to do his bidding without having to do a full-on invasion. It’s another variation of Putin trying to use Gazprom to turn off the heat in border states a few years ago. Putin wants to be the big man via never having to act in the worst of his implicit threats.

    Putin’s number 2 goal is to Make Russia Great Again. He wants to be a Player, and he wants to divide up the world between the US and Russia like it was the 19th century again. Putin’s number 1 goal is Make Putin Great. He and his pals are robbing Russia blind and the majority of the populace are watching his propaganda on the teevee and cheering while he takes the food out of their children’s mouths.

    Putin is an authoritarian and a paranoiac. Only a few great men (maybe a woman or two) are important, and everyone else is just a pawn. He has been telling lies about Western interference in Russia for so long he believes his own bullshit. In the 2000s, Russia’s main complaint was that the world was ignoring it, but now the government is firmly convinced itself that the West has spent all this time trying to tear Russia down.

    So all this bloody adventurism and intrigue, however successful it looks in Ukraine, Syria, and the US, it has served delusional goals. The wars in Ukraine and Syria are stalled with no easy way out: Ukraine is a stalemate, and Putin has tied himself stupidly to a Syrian dictator who now has no reason to compromise with the majority of his country that hates him (the third ceasefire of the year is falling apart already). He’s helped push Trump over the finish line, but the US never was trying to force a “color revolution” in Russia or anywhere else.

    Meanwhile, Russia is running out of money. There’s an oversupply of oil on the global market, and all the non-Western producers are desperate for cash and won’t be shutting off their wells in any quantity. Russia’s wealth fund is going to run out in 2017, and they’ve been tapping their pension fund already for Crimea and other uses such that they’ve started to give out IOUs to poor pensioners. They have to keep paying off the Chechen warlord or it’s time for another Chechen War. Putin’s already worried, and has made himself a Praetorian Guard to defend himself personally from internal enemies. This is all happening whatever the West does or doesn’t do.

    Trump being Putin’s friend means it gets rather difficult on 21 January to blame the US for all Russia’s problems. The only real big help Trump give to Putin is to stop oil and gas drilling in the US, and I would pay good money to see him try.

    Long story short, Putin’s done a lot of damage to the West, but it won’t do anything to save a sinking Russia. The US has never been the problem, just the excuse, and many are suffering because of the delusions of a paranoid fool.

  70. 70.

    debbie

    @liberal:

    Yes. As detailed in the documentary, a few years later they found an unexploded bomb in an adjacent apartment building and it had FSB’s signature.

  71. 71.

    burnspbesq

    I imagine that there are folks in Latvia and Estonia who are not enjoying this at all.

    Lithuania, as well.

  73. 73.

    debbie

    @ericblair:

    Remember how upset Putin was during the D-Day 70th Anniversary commemorations because no one mentioned Stalin, who Putin thought was as much a freedom fighter as FDR and Churchill?

  74. 74.

    ericblair

    @Mike in DC:

    I think the “why is it our business” thing comes across as a little bit callous. Ukraine is a fledgling democracy which suffered terribly under Russian rule, and again under a Russian proxy. They overthrew a corrupt leader, and their reward was invasion. I think sanctions were highly appropriate.

    More than that, the US signed the Budapest agreements, which promised that we would respect Ukrainian sovereignty and use our power in the UN Security Council to protect them from aggression. We obviously didn’t end up helping very much, and it’s debatable what we realistically could have done given Russian hysteria, but we have more than enough legal justification for helping them.

  76. 76.

    Mnemosyne

    @PeakVT:

    IANAL, but the lawyers here have been saying that “treason” only applies if we have declared war on someone. What if they’ve declared war on us and we were too stupid to realize it?

  77. 77.

    Cacti

    @debbie:

    Remember how upset Putin was during the D-Day 70th Anniversary commemorations because no one mentioned Stalin, who Putin thought was as much a freedom fighter as FDR and Churchill?

    Stalin was a great foe of Hitler after his collusion and friendship efforts with him failed.

  78. 78.

    PaulWartenberg2016

    @D58826:

    Treason? Sedition? something?

    IT’S OKAY IF YOU’RE REPUBLICAN.

    Trump can invite the Russians to take all of the West Coast and Fox Not-News would declare it a victory for Real America and Congress would give Putin a 500 Billion loan to pay for the demolition of Seattle-Tacoma.

  79. 79.

    Manyakitty

    @Anya: Dear god. Where is the outrage???? I’m fucking horrified at the silence. Does this qualify as sedition? Seriously, where are the Feds?

  80. 80.

    fuckwit

    @Calouste: but, why? what’s the end game for pooty poot?

    that’s what i can’t wrap by brain around. what does putin gain by weakening the west?

    money? fame? territory? revenge? what’s the motivation?

  83. 83.

    Yutsano

    @JMG: Prediction: they do. Once they have their sweet sweet tax cuts there’s no more real use for the buffoon. But not until after 2018 to ensure they keep his rabid supporters on board.

    Side note: I’ll laugh if Justice Roberts grows a spine and says he can’t administer the Oath of Office because The Yam will be in violation right away.

  84. 84.

    ericblair

    @fuckwit:

    but, why? what’s the end game for pooty poot?

    that’s what i can’t wrap by brain around. what does putin gain by weakening the west?

    What’s bad for the West is good for Russia. What’s good for the West is bad for Russia. That’s what they believe.

    There is no grand plan. There is no endgame. There is opportunism until the opportunities run out.

    That’s it.

  85. 85.

    Gravenstone

    @pat: Not when you consider that a key motivator for Vlad to interfere against Clinton was his direct and personal animus towards her. The fact that it elevated a manifestly incompetent and easily manipulated buffoon like Trump is just a pleasant bonus where Putin is concerned.

  86. 86.

    Mnemosyne

    @Manyakitty:

    Certain people (*cough*GlennGreenwald*cough*) keep demanding proof that the Russians really did meddle in the election. At this point, I’m pretty sure that even if Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump held a joint press conference announcing that Putin had arranged Trump’s election and Trump was now turning the country over to become a Russian province, those same people would still insist they needed more proof.

    I know that C.S. Lewis is out of vogue, and The Last Battle is definitely the weakest book in the Narnia series, but there’s a scene in it where Armageddon has happened but there’s a group of dwarves that is still convinced that they’re hiding in a barn away from the battle. The group of protagonists does everything in their power to convince them that they’re sitting in the middle of a large, sunny meadow and not a dark barn, but the dwarves stubbornly refuse to believe it.

    That’s kind of how I’m feeling right now with the “left.”

  88. 88.

    gene108

    @Roger Moore:

    Agreeing to the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact was incredibly shortsighted.

    Poland was part of Imperial Russia. Seems to me the USSR was and Putin is trying to recreate the old Romanov-era Imperial Russian borders.

    Some sort of pathological drive that if you rule in Moscow, you need to have power over all the old territories that were once ruled from Moscow.

  90. 90.

    Suzanne

    @ericblair: Agree. I realized about a year ago that Putin is the most dangerous man in the world for exactly this reason. He doesn’t want to enrich his countrymen or anything logical. Just to be powerful, for no real ends that I can determine,

  91. 91.

    Chris

    @germy:

    Is this the conservative think tank’s sly attempt to pressure Trump into adopting an even more hard-line stance against Russia?

    Of course not. It’s their attempt to keep the entire conversation on Obama rather than discussing the puzzling question of just why Putin is so much happier to have Trump in the White House than any previous president.

    Like I said yesterday: the conservative message on this is basically “Neville Chamberlain ruined us totally. British power on the decline. Germany gaining everywhere. Sad! That’s why you should vote for Oswald Mosley.”

  94. 94.

    p.a.

    @Yutsano:

    Side note: I’ll laugh if Justice Roberts grows a spine and says he can’t administer the Oath of Office because The Yam will be in violation right away.

    I would pay good money to live on that planet right now.

  95. 95.

    Chris

    @ericblair:

    Furthermore, if Russia is heading for as big a fall as you say, it probably makes sense to them to ensure that the West goes over a big fall of its own at the same time. That way they’re not at a disadvantage vis-a-vis their nemesis.

  96. 96.

    gene108

    @debbie:

    Understood, but no one could call Stalin a freedom fighter.

    Churchill wasn’t much of a freedom fighter either. He relished the idea of dictatorial rule of white’s over non-whites.

  97. 97.

    p.a.

    @ericblair:

    What’s bad for the West is good for Russia. What’s good for the West is bad for Russia. That’s what they believe.

    There is no grand plan. There is no endgame. There is opportunism until the opportunities run out.

    kinda like Cleek’s Law! authoritarians all the way down…

  98. 98.

    Chris

    @Mnemosyne:

    Not related, but that book also includes the priceless quote “you think true freedom means doing what you want? Well, you’re wrong. True freedom means doing what I tell you.”

    Which I’ve long thought should be the epitaph on the tombstone of our conservative movement. (You know, whenever it finally goes…)

  99. 99.

    Mnemosyne

    @Manyakitty:

    This is when it’s nice to live in deep blue Southern California and work in a very liberal industry. All of my coworkers and friends are totally fucking horrified at current events.

  100. 100.

    Roger Moore

    @ericblair:

    The only real big help Trump give to Putin is to stop oil and gas drilling in the US, and I would pay good money to see him try.

    He could also stir up a war in the Middle East that would drive oil supply down and prices up. As I’ve said before, I think it would be long-term beneficial to have higher oil prices right now because it would drive down consumption and encourage adoption of renewables.

  101. 101.

    Suzanne

    I was also enjoying the Trump tweet from 2013, asking if Putin would come be Donald’s new best friend.

    FFS, almost half of this country fell for this shit. They are that fucking stupid. Well, then they now have the president they deserve. And I’m no longer interested in helping them succeed. If any Trump voters lose their health insurance, I shall laugh cruelly at their GoFundMes.

  102. 102.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    What if they’ve declared war on us and we were too stupid to realize it?

    That’s not how a declaration of war works. A declaration of war is exactly what it sounds like; a formal and public declaration. If Russia had issued one, we’d know, since letting people know is the whole point of a declaration of war. If we think they’ve decided to open hostilities without a formal declaration of war, we could issue a declaration that a state of war exists; since that would require a majority in Congress, you can see how unlikely it would be.

  103. 103.

    Calming Influence

    The great big bag of dicks Trump should eat should be so large that no greater bag can be conceived.

  104. 104.

    Captain C

    @ericblair: This. A lot of Putin’s adventurism is to cover up the fact that Russia’s economy is fucked and getting worse, and he has no way to make it better, especially since doing so would mean dismantling the kleptocracy that he’s set up to benefit himself and his backers.

    The only things that anyone wants to buy from Russia are hydrocarbons, cheap weapons, and maybe caviar. The first are on their way out, as a good chunk of the world (especially Europe) is switching to renewables as fast as they can, China may well outcompete Russia on the second in the next decade or two, and it’s not possible to fund a large state’s modern economy on the third.

  107. 107.

    Anya

    @Manyakitty: I am legit horrified. I don’t know what to think or what to expect. I was reading today that Theresa May is cozying up to Trump. I was hoping at least the opposition from democratic governments will somehow prevent the worst.

  108. 108.

    Captain C

    @fuckwit:

    what’s the end game for pooty poot?

    Staying in power and continuing the cash flow into his secret accounts. I suspect he gives no fucks about what happens to Russia after he croaks.

  110. 110.

    Captain C

    @ericblair:

    What’s bad for the West is good for Russia. What’s good for the West is bad for Russia. That’s what they believe.

    Russia, as a whole, never seems to have understood the concept of win-win.

  111. 111.

    azlib

    @Roger Moore:

    Agreeing to the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact was incredibly shortsighted.

    Stalin was simply buying time. He knew a war with Germany was inevitable. He thought Germany would get bogged down fighting the French to give him time to build up the Red Army and was surprised at the rapid collapse of France in 1940.

    His mistake was moving the Red Army into the conquered territories without the time to build a lot of defensive fortifications. This allowed the Germany blitzkrieg tactics to work almost flawlessly for the first two months of the war.

  112. 112.

    Another Scott

    @ericblair:

    So all this bloody adventurism and intrigue, however successful it looks in Ukraine, Syria, and the US, it has served delusional goals. The wars in Ukraine and Syria are stalled with no easy way out: Ukraine is a stalemate, and Putin has tied himself stupidly to a Syrian dictator who now has no reason to compromise with the majority of his country that hates him (the third ceasefire of the year is falling apart already).

    Yup.

    I was just in the car, (trying to go to our recycling center to get rid of a bunch of cardboard, but the county closed it due to “illegal dumping” :-/), and heard Steve Clemons talking with Robert Siegel on NPR about Putin and Syria. I was a bit taken aback how Steve was pretty much saying it was a great win for Putin without also mentioning that it shows the weakness of Russia.

    Russia has been Syria’s ally for decades and has a (small) naval base there at Tartus. They have an air base there (now) as well. It would have looked horrible to him to have Assad lose and for Russia to lose access to his only base(s) in the Mediterranean. If Russia were really a great power with the ability to shape the Middle East, then Assad wouldn’t have come so close to losing the war in the first place.

    Putin had “no choice” but to save Assad and to flatten East Aleppo to try to defeat the rebels. They won a tactical victory, but they are far from winning the war. Putin has made the commitment that Assad will not be removed from power, and now he has to make sure that does not happen (except on Putin’s terms). Trouble for him is, the conditions that caused the civil war in the first place have only gotten worse, and many more people want Assad to go. A shaky cease fire that doesn’t include all the warring parties (though welcome to protect the civilians) doesn’t solve the underlying problem or even put the parties on a path to a solution.

    It’s going to be even messier, and Putin isn’t going to be looking like the “winner” when this is over, I don’t think.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  114. 114.

    burnspbesq

    @Mnemosyne:

    deep blue Southern California

    I’m finding this nascent movement for state legislatures to call for a Constitutional Convention to be rather amusing in this context. If one is called and Jerry just doesn’t bother to send a delegation, is that equivalent to secession without the need for a ballot referendum?

  116. 116.

    Seth Owen

    @Roger Moore: The Nazis would have taken all of Poland then. And Army Group North would have been halfway to Leningrad.

    Stalin bought himself critically needed space. Even with that it was a near-run thing.

  119. 119.

    debbie

    @Suzanne:

    In the documentary I mentioned, Putin’s first job after the KGB was as Vice Mayor of St. Petersburg. One of his first actions was to commission a biography of himself, which he titled “Power.”

  120. 120.

    Chris

    @Captain C:

    @debbie: No one mentioned the Red Army’s three division invasion of Stalin Beach in Normandy? How sad.

    Yeah, that’s what I thought when reading that. Why should Stalin be mentioned? Definitions of “freedom fighter” aside, none of his troops were in Normandy. You might as well ask why we didn’t mention Chiang Kai Shek. I mean, do they sing songs to Roosevelt and Churchill while commemorating Stalingrad?

  123. 123.

    janeform

    @Corner Stone: Every Democrat should be asking this whenever they get airtime. ALL of them. We can also ask our repug representatives at their town halls, or visit them at their offices.

  125. 125.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Another Scott: I was thinking I should recycle cardboard, there was a lady ahead of me with a bunch of cardboard. I do recycle it, I just don’t take it to the recycling center and get money.

  126. 126.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: Weather’s kind of shitty for the garden portion. I went to downtown LA yesterday afternoon/evening for pictures during the “golden hour” and afterwards.

    ETA: Since I upgraded my membership, I got 2 guest passes and gave one to our friend who joined us for Christmas dinner.

  127. 127.

    Chris

    @Anya:

    I was hoping at least the opposition from democratic governments will somehow prevent the worst.

    The fact that we can’t count on that is one of the things that’s horrified me for a month and a half now. The British have made it clear that they’re not interested in doing anything but roll over, and the fascist tide is rising fast everywhere else in Europe. The French and Germans governments might still be in a more antifascist mood, but we’ll see how well that holds up after next year’s elections. Even then, France and Germany will only get you so far without British and American backing. And given Merkel’s behavior in re southern Europe in the last few years, it’s going to be damn difficult for her to rally the EU.

  128. 128.

    Mnemosyne

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Nah, the gardens are nice when it’s raining, if you have the right shoes. Clears all the tourists out. Probably not good for photography, though.

    We had a good time at the zoo yesterday — my BFF’s kids loved the river otters as much as I do.

  129. 129.

    Jeffro

    @Roger Moore:

    A full-on invasion would tax the Russian military to the limit, and it would probably be enough to severely jeopardize his hold on power.

    Plus, invading – actually attacking other countries, getting your soldiers killed, trying to hold on to actual pieces of land – is so 20th century. Why do all that when with a little hacking and a lot of flattery, you gain total control over a foreign head of state and half its legislators??

  130. 130.

    Chris

    @Captain C:

    what’s the end game for pooty poot?
    …
    Staying in power and continuing the cash flow into his secret accounts. I suspect he gives no fucks about what happens to Russia after he croaks.

    I believe that.

    After spending a decade as a mafia state in the nineties, it’s no surprise that the Russian population would be so traumatized that it’d run right back into the arms of the KGB. Unfortunately, all that means is that instead of having a free-for-all with a bunch of different mafias stealing everything they can, they now have one mafia that runs the government and has consolidated everything under its own umbrella.

  132. 132.

    Jeffro

    @fuckwit:

    what’s the end game for pooty poot?

    that’s what i can’t wrap by brain around. what does putin gain by weakening the west?

    money? fame? territory? revenge? what’s the motivation?

    Money: YES…$500B in oil revenues minimum. Plus ending the sanctions.

    Fame: ? Not sure if he is that kind of person

    Territory: YES…in a way. Being able to expand Russia’s sphere of influence in its immediate neighborhood, plus co-opt its greatest adversary, counts as some sort of territorial gain

    Revenge: ABSOLUTELY…he hates the West and the US especially.

  134. 134.

    Chris

    @Jeffro:

    Revenge: ABSOLUTELY…he hates the West and the US especially.

    Yeah. From their POV, the West has spent the last couple decades screwing them or at least lording it over them – I think there’s a lot of people in Russia who view the end of the Cold War basically the way the Germans once viewed the end of World War One. I can well believe that sticking it to the West for its own sake is high on their agenda.

  135. 135.

    Captain C

    @Chris: I just read a good book on the current state of Russia called Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, by Peter Pomerantsev, a Brit with Russian ancestry who worked in TV there for a decade. It makes Russia seem like an authoritarian mafia state designed by Derrida and Baudrillard. Surreal isn’t the half of it.

  139. 139.

    Calming Influence

    The evidence that the Russians hacked the RNC in addition to the DNC, but only released negative info about Democrats seems to have been forgotten. And if they hacked the RNC, couldn’t they have hacked into computers of state and local representatives?

    If you were looking at the possibility of controlling a U.S. president through blackmail based on past secret or illegal dealings, would you choose Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?

    If you were looking at the possibility of controlling the U.S. congress through blackmail based on past secret or illegal dealings by members of one the two parties, would you choose the Democratic or the Republican party?

    To save ourselves, maybe we should think about an amnesty of elected officials, give them a short window of opportunity to bare their souls, and innocculate our government from a (hypothetically) but potentially devastating blackmail campaign by a foreign government?

    I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a conspiracy nut. So tell me why the Russians never released negative info on Republicans or Trump. And did Republicans all fall in line after the election only because Trump ran as a Republican?

    I’m serious. Good Germans might have had these same thoughts, but were uncomfortable expressing them out loud.

  140. 140.

    Chris

    @Captain C:

    Yeah, the impression I got was that Putin was aiming for a sort of halfway point between Soviet totalitarianism and 1990s mafia-capitalism, resulting in Russia being a weird amalgamation of Mussolini-era Italy and Capone-era Chicago.

    And also that Trump is aiming for a milder version of this.

  142. 142.

    Scamp Dog

    @tpherald: I remember hearing that comment from W and immediately thinking, come on, Putin’s KGB, he doesn’t HAVE a soul. They remove it during training.

  144. 144.

    Archon

    @Chris:

    Trump wants a milder version of Putin’s Russia? If anything I think Trump deep down wants a more aggressive and kleptocratic version of what Putin has. Trump is every bit as corrupt, maniacal, and egotistical as Putin, more even.

    Our institutions of expecting honest and competent governance are far stronger then Russia’s but Trump’s very election has definitely made a mockery of the idea that our institutions alone can prevent a jackal, intent on plunder and chaos from getting elected President.

  145. 145.

    Это курам на смех

    @Chris: Devo captured the conservative mind in the lyrics to their song, “Freedom of Choice.”

    Freedom of choice
    Is what you got.
    Freedom from choice
    Is what you want.

  151. 151.

    HinTN

    @burnspbesq: Nope. Several states’ delegations to the original Constitutional convention were conspicuously absent and yet ratified/remained in the fold.

  152. 152.

    Elie

    We are going to have chaos and a lot of “palace intrigues” in his administration and Congress. I still believe that there will be new alliances forged out of the chaos. While he has a lot of power and many prerogatives, there are limits. He is way way way underestimating his ability to do things and way underestimating willingness to obey him — even from his own party – and the many agencies that make up our government. This will take a little while for things to set up… right now everyone is watching and taking his measure. They respect he still has his followers’ backing. This is happening all over the world as foreign leaders assess the situation. He will be bloodied sooner or later and then we will see what is what. I expect some major surprises — good and bad….

  153. 153.

    Elie

    Through all this pro Putin/Russia stuff, he has no idea how deeply he is driving at least this citizen further and further away. To have him allow a Russian leader to mock a seated current US President and significantly interfere with our electoral process to me is almost an act of war. I am so stunned by the largely Republican acquiescence that I don’t know if I will ever again feel that we are one country with a shared sense of allegiance to a set of values and beliefs based in a commonly respected Constitution. It was always tricky in places with civil rights being the worst, but I never thought that I would see the day when a foreign power — ANY foreign power, much less the Russians, would be allowed to bully and disrespect us like this!! What is in my heart is very very dark and very furious…

  154. 154.

    fuckwit

    @debbie: Churchill was a murderous sociopath. The fact that he was on *our* side is a win, I guess. But his thirst for blood seemed to have no bounds. By the end of WWII the British people had quite enough of war, but Winnie just wanted to keep on going. His party got voted out of power for that reason, as I recall.

  156. 156.

    cmorenc

    @Roger Moore:

    The only way he’s taking over all of Ukraine is the same way he’s taking over the US. Putin has chosen his tactics because Russia is nowhere near as strong as it pretends to be. A full-on invasion would tax the Russian military to the limit, and it would probably be enough to severely jeopardize his hold on power.

    Ask Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolph HItler how well that worked out for them.

  157. 157.

    J R in WV

    @debbie:

    Well, truthfully, the Russian Red Army did yeoman’s work first in stopping the Nazi Panzers, and then in driving them back past Berlin. We would never have been able to invade Europe without that Eastern Front drawing millions of Nazi fighters away from the French coastline.

    Not to say that Stalin wasn’t just another flavor of monster, he was. But he (or more properly the Russian Army) was important in defeating the Nazis. Even at D-Day.

  158. 158.

    Ella in New Mexico

    Every day, Trump BEGS the Republican Party to just fucking DO SOMETHING and stop him from having to become President.

    Again, with Pence as the VP, there’s no reason to keep Trump on any more. He’s begging to be impeached on Day One. He’s so deep in Putin’s asshole, he’s this close to being tried for treason.

    Why doesn’t he just fucking resign already?

  160. 160.

    Sue

    How do we know tRump isn’t tweeting what Putin tells him to tweet? He’s way to chummy with this guy…and I don’t think it’s just recently. Hillary was right when she inferred tRump is a puppet.

  161. 161.

    Debbie1

    @Anya: Re: In victory, magnanimity. Well, that’s one way to look at it, that is they’re taking a victory lap. But this victory lap, if that’s what it is, confirms interference in our elections despite all their past hemming and hawing about the issue. The other thing I thought after reading the quote is that it seemed kind of inconsistent with their first response, which was to shake their fist at PBO/USA and yell, “We’ll get even! You’ll see!” Their response is all over the place, and rather Trump-like. It’s posturing and lacks confidence.

  162. 162.

    Calvin Spell Caster

    he knew he was smart just because his a business man. not all that he owns came rightfully but its the world we live in.
    Hillary might have been right when she inferred to Trump is a puppet.

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