Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

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

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

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

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Second rate reporter says what?

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Let there be snark.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

This fight is for everything.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: So It Begins

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  2. 2.

    Anne Laurie

    @Baud: Imagine how much fun it was(n’t) to put together!

    Or, rather, to edit it down.  While doing my usual daily pandemic-related news sweep, I collected enough material to bricolage at least a half-dozen posts like this one… only more harrowing.

  3. 3.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: I woke up to my newspaper’s headlines telling me that rebels had requested help from Russia in fighting off their Ukraninian oppressors. I wish I was making that up.

  5. 5.

    debbie

    And yet, Russia still chairs the Security Council. At this point, does it really matter keeping Russia within the international community? It’s not like they’ve shown any semblance of good faith. This man is Hitler-level crazy. Expel Russia from the U.N.!

  7. 7.

    germy

    #TheWeekInTory

    1. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Minister for Brexit Opportunities and a posturing Regency undertaker, had a busy old week

    2. He said "Britain should unilaterally accept other countries’ regulations", a subtle shift from his earlier "regaining our independence" work

    — Russ Jones (@RussInCheshire) February 23, 2022

    You’ve forgotten Rees-Mogg’s other achievement this week:-

    His investment firm (very luckily) sold all their shares in one of the Russian Banks who had sanctions imposed on them, just a couple of days before they had the sanctions imposed. That was a bit of good fortune!

    — Joe – Monk D’Wally de Honk (@Monk_Wally_Honk) February 23, 2022

  12. 12.

    Zzyzx

    I don’t get Putin at all. Trump was awful but at least he made sense; he wanted money and people to say good things about him. Putin is alien to me.

  13. 13.

    Anne Laurie

    @David Collier-Brown: I also feel sorry for the ordinary Russians and troops…

    An expat editor of Foreign Affairs tweeted ‘Those crack Russian troops?  Visualize a 19-year-old conscript flogging the fuel from his tank to scrounge funds to visit his aunt now that his uncle’s died of covid.’

  15. 15.

    Tony Jay

    @debbie:

    On the one hand it’s just open trolling. Another log of “Ha! Look what I did!” tossed on the burning fire of righteous indignation.

    On the other hand, thanks to a decade or more of successful online propagandising and shady donations to foreign political and cultural organisations, right now tens of millions of ‘patriots’ in dozens of countries are nodding their heads in unison and upticking posts that consist of “What They don’t want You to know is that Nazi was short for National Socialist. Why is that?” and a thoughtful face emoji.

    It’s what they do. It’s all they do.

  16. 16.

    SiubhanDuinne

    There is good and there is evil in this world. Those now praising Putin, showing respect for Putin, calling Putin a genius, are going to regret those words once this horrific war begins.

    I hope McFaul is right. TFG and his continued slavering devotion to Putin is in some ways more horrifying to me than Putin himself.

  18. 18.

    Jeffro

    I know he won’t, but I wish President Biden would wrap up his remarks today with a warning to “fifth-column Republicans who support our country’s enemies” and note that “Ronald Reagan would be spinning in his grave”, etc etc.  Do it while he has a national audience and is on all the national networks. The vast, vast majority of this country opposes these people and the traitors need to be called out.

    I am still somewhat stunned at Tucker Carlson’s complete transparency Tuesday when he expressed his love for er excuse me noted that he shouldn’t hate Putin (and nor should anyone else!) because Putin “hasn’t called [him] a racist, or tried to get him fired”.  The biggest crime in America is to call a privileged white man a racist.  The biggest shame Tucker ever endured (other than when his mom left the family, that is) was getting fired.  These guys are always full of grievance, it’s always top of mind, and it shows.

  20. 20.

    Anne Laurie

    @Zzyzx: I don’t get Putin at all. Trump was awful but at least he made sense; he wanted money and people to say good things about him. Putin is alien to me.

    As far as I can tell at this point, Putin intends to be Emperor of All the Reunited Holy Russian Empire — or die trying.

    Smarter people than I claim he referenced both Stalin & Catherine the Great in his latest speech, and as far as foreign policy goes, that’s one step away from ‘everyone shall wear their underwear on the outside.’

  21. 21.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Meanwhile on CNBC:

     

    Can the stock market survive a nuclear holocaust? “Yes,” says our next guest. And he’ll tell us what stocks to buy and what to sell in the event of a thermonuclear exchange right after these messages.

    personally, I’ve made a killing investing in funeral home stocks and zombie supply chains.

  22. 22.

    germy

    Many people will die for no reason because of the unprovoked invasion by Putin of Ukraine, a sovereign nation. Russia has a weak economy. The U.S. and our allies will target Russia’s economy with sanctions, to create the same situation that caused the Soviet Union to collapse. https://t.co/zGOXRNPWw9

    — Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) February 24, 2022

  23. 23.

    Tony Jay

    @germy:

      His investment firm (very luckily) sold all their shares in one of the Russian Banks who had sanctions imposed on them, just a couple of days before they had the sanctions imposed. That was a bit of good fortune!

    Uh hu. And in a real country with a functioning Press, Jakobivs the Drawler would be slammed across the bonnet of half a dozen front-page headlines and getting bombarded with serious questions about where he got that top-secret information and who he was signalling to by hiding his Russian bribes loot legitimate earnings.

    But we don’t. We live in Brexitannia. Where the Stenographer’s Guild all know better than to make a scene about something so obvious and the ‘Opposition’ won’t dare to push him in case its leadership, advisors and foreign donors are brought into the discussion.

  24. 24.

    debbie

    Do this NOW:

    So something interesting that could be developing at the UN: Ukraine appears to be laying the groundwork to challenge whether the Russian Federation is the legitimate successor to the USSR’s seat and veto on the Security Council
    — Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) February 24, 2022

  25. 25.

    debbie

    The only analysis available to us, any of us, is someone’s personal or national interest. In Putin’s case this would have been a limited operation. That he has chosen to totally ignore this and go for the throat will be a catastrophe for him, but also all of us.
    — Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) February 24, 2022

  26. 26.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Anne Laurie: ​
      Not horsing around – Hulu has a great series on Catherine (staring Elle Fanning)

    Hulu’s best series “The Great” returns this week with a ten-episode second season about power, politics, and sex. At the end of the acclaimed first season, Catherine the Great (Elle Fanning) enacted a successful coup against her husband Peter III (Nicholas Hoult)
    ***

    The wickedly smart and funny writing by Tony McNamara (“The Favorite”) anchored the first season but the show doesn’t work without the brilliant performances from Fanning and Hoult, who seem even more confident this season.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    Carlson and his too numerous ilk in the U.S. side with Putin for the same reason they side with Orbán of Hungary: They want a similar brand of patriarchal, ethnonationalist autocracy here.

  29. 29.

    lowtechcyclist

    Cut Russia off from the world. Full stop.

    No trade, shut down the land borders (other than allowing their overseas diplomats to return home), no commercial or private air traffic with them, cut them off from SWIFT, freeze oligarchs’ bank and brokerage accounts, seize their real estate, the whole fucking nine yards.

    And include any Putin puppets such as Belarus in this treatment.

  32. 32.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jeffro:

    I know he won’t, but I wish President Biden would wrap up his remarks today with a warning to “fifth-column Republicans who support our country’s enemies” and note that “Ronald Reagan would be spinning in his grave”, etc etc.  Do it while he has a national audience and is on all the national networks. The vast, vast majority of this country opposes these people and the traitors need to be called out.

    Hell, he should have done that over Covid, and played off the post-9/11 line: either you’re with America, or you’re on the side of the damned virus.

    But I’d love to see him do it now over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  On both these things (and on others) the GQP is fundamentally a traitorous fifth column operating here in the U.S.

  35. 35.

    MisterDancer

    @lowtechcyclist: Cut Russia off from the world. Full stop.

    Is there an example of this approach working, ever in history?

    It seems, in my recollection, most of the time the country just ends up like North Korea — isolated, still a threat, and now unable to be assailed and pushed to re-join the rest of humanity, into not being that much of a prick.

    Russia’s ambitions need to be stopped. I just am not seeing how trying to slice off a massive chunk of 2 continents from the rest of the world, is going to make that happen.

  39. 39.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jeffro: As you noted, that’s unlikely. But I do think it would be both appropriate and in his wheelhouse for Biden to tie Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine to the attacks on democracies by autocrats worldwide, including Russia’s attempts to subvert and interfere with our elections.

    Russia’s attack on Ukraine is going to have economic blowback worldwide, and at least 27% of our population is primed to blame it on Biden and listen to the lies of the pro-autocracy faction in the U.S., who are saying it’s not our fight.

  40. 40.

    lowtechcyclist

    @MisterDancer: Russia’s ambitions need to be stopped. I just am not seeing how trying to slice off a massive chunk of 2 continents from the rest of the world, is going to make that happen.

    It limits their access to resources to keep the war going.  If they’re cut off, then whatever they’ve got now is all they’ve got.  If their tanks need replacement parts, and their factories need materials from another country, the supply chain ends there.

    We don’t have to help them make war, but as long as they’re integrated into the world economy, the rest of the world is doing exactly that.

  43. 43.

    debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    at least 27% of our population is primed to blame it on Biden and listen to the lies of the pro-autocracy faction in the U.S., who are saying it’s not our fight.

    NPR just interviewed a Russian scholar who acknowledged she had been wrong to accuse Biden of hysteria, but still managed to say he’s the one who made Putin invade Ukraine

    ETA: Link.

  44. 44.

    JPL

    @SiubhanDuinne:  Oh, sure that will happen.   I clearly remember being taught that Lindbergh toured the nation giving anti-Semitic and pro Hitler speeches before WWII.

    not

  47. 47.

    Eolirin

    @MisterDancer: I think in this case it would be effective if the goal is to get Putin deposed. Russian oligarchs are used to a certain lifestyle. Taking that lifestyle away from them will help undermine their backing of Putin. Collapsing the Russian economy will help drive the Russian people into more open revolt. I’m not sure a full border closing is necessary, but at least cutting them off from global financial systems, blocking trade and seizing as many assets as possible and disconnecting them from the internet would all be good. It would have the byproduct of dimishing their influence networks and hampering their psyops and cyberwarfare capabilities too.

    The NK situation is very different. The military has full suppression of the populace there, and Kim only needs to keep the military on his side.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @JPL:

    The sad thing about CNN is that I think they are actually capable of being a decent news outlet.  The will isn’t there, though, except in extraordinary situations.

  52. 52.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I note that Snowjob’s tweet deck has gone silent (after days of whining about tracking SWIFT transfers) and that Greenwald’s tweets have been aging about as well as a fountain Pepsi in a wax cup left on an amusement park retaining wall on a hot summer day.

  53. 53.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @lowtechcyclist: I would imagine the supply chain for the Russian military is domestic. It was set up by the Soviets after all.

    But considering the stories of Russian soldiers selling their stuff off for food that supply chain maybe already breaking. Russia sounds like Milo Mindbender’s paradise so likely most of the Russian army’s supplies are being sold off by Oligarchs

  55. 55.

    lowtechcyclist

    I’m not sure how, but I’m on the (RWNJ) American Spectator’s email list.

    Amazingly enough, they’re on the right side of this one: their header reads, “Evil on a Massive Scale: Putin Launches Full-Blown Attack on Ukraine.”  But the responses in comments are already running against them.  The GQP grassroots are on Russia’s side.

  59. 59.

    p.a.

    Since covid Putin can’t have much cred with his own people, so his control of Russian media spinning the causus belli may not help him domestically, but “rally ’round the flag” has a long and ugly history, and we’re seeing what horrors “make X great again” can do to American democracy; Russians aren’t immune to that, for sure.

  60. 60.

    MisterDancer

    @Eolirin: I think in this case it would be effective if the goal is to get Putin deposed. Russian oligarchs are used to a certain lifestyle. Taking that lifestyle away from them will help undermine their backing of Putin. Collapsing the Russian economy will help drive the Russian people into more open revolt.

    You mean the oligarchs who are so vastly diversified we can’t even put proper sanctions on their wealth? Their money isn’t really in Russia, anymore, save the mineral/oil wealth, and we (The West) would be hard-pressed to allow that to go unmined, at this point.

    (In fact: I’d bet a lot of the Russian overtures to our GOP were as much about ensuring America didn’t develop energy independence and a resilient grid, as anything else.)

    (sigh) Look. I get it. I’m furious, too. Yet I raise this because I’m not seeing anything here I can tie to an actual theory of how to get Putin out of the Ukraine, much less out of power. A theory I can grasp and understand and even communicate as a reasonable set of steps with clear objectives and outcomes.

    If someone has a prior example where this sort of pressure worked, I’m interested. Otherwise, I’m just not compelled by the “block ’em all!” argument, save out of very righteous fury at this situation.

  61. 61.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @David Collier-Brown:

    Fuck ‘em. They accept his rule and support him electorally.  When they start suffering and fighting back, then start uttering performative statements of care.

  62. 62.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Gin & Tonic: easy there, they are just under trained, under feed conscripts with barely any training who will be thrown at the enemy and will die in large numbers because their real job is to be meat shields for the elite units that guard the regime.

    Russia has basically two or three armies the way you look at it, conscripts, regular troops and internal security troops.

  63. 63.

    Jeffro

    Fox News dot com has “Putin attacks” and other mostly factual stuff up on its site at the moment.

    The entire left-side section, which has clips from various “news” segments is as follows:

    • Biden needs to play Putin down, level with Americans (that Biden…always not being ‘level’)
    • It’s clear that Putin doesn’t fear U.S. right now (did he…did he fear trump?!?!)
    • Sanctions will not be enough to stop Putin (so…you’re recommending we commit troops? nuke him?)
    • Obama set this up (yes…it’s Obama’s fault, not Putin’s…)

    and so on.  These people are basically North Korean state TV, and its viewers are essentially North Koreans.  But we already knew all that.

  65. 65.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: Republicans have been speaking out of both sides of their mouths on Ukraine.

    True, but a good part of that is that there are still a fair number of Russia hawks in the party, left over from the Cold War days.  If you spent the first thirty or forty years of your life viewing Russia as an enemy and a deadly threat, it’s hard to brainwipe that overnight.

  67. 67.

    Gin & Tonic

    «Почему ты плачешь, мама?», спрашивает меня мой сын. А я не знаю, что ему ответить.
    — Dr. Lisa Gaufman (@lisas_research) February 24, 2022

  70. 70.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    “What this country needs is a short victorious war to stem the tide of revolution.”

    Turns out that traces back to a Russian, in tsarist times. It was a reference to the Russo-Japanese War, which my brief wiki walk tells me didn’t turn out as well as the Russians would have liked.

  71. 71.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MisterDancer: I do think that international divestment in the South African apartheid regime helped bring it down. But that didn’t really happen to a great degree until the 11th hour, after it had been in place for decades.

  72. 72.

    MisterDancer

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: As a reminder, Putin has a long, LONG history of killing his enemies. And those he doesn’t kill, he throws in jails, where they don’t exactly make a lot of press releases.

    In fact: the only reason Aleksei Navalny got to say anything in public against the invasion was that he was at a court hearing.

    So yeah, I have a lot of sympathy towards the Russian activists, who have been trying for decades to get people to notice that Putin…wasn’t a fair player. Yelling at them, now that it might impact us, isn’t fair to the many in Russia and elsewhere who have been disappeared or flat-out died, for freedom.

  73. 73.

    lowtechcyclist

    @MisterDancer:  If someone has a prior example where this sort of pressure worked, I’m interested.

    Like I said @40, the rest of the world doesn’t have to participate in the resupply of the resources they use up in this war.

  74. 74.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Gin & Tonic: and when they will overwhelm the other side by sheer numbers, history shows they will be pissed at being treated like this and will lash out at anyone they can.  Likely they will just start breaking things in the Ukraine just to spite their leaders (“Here, Putin, your’ fucking factory, sorry we had to burn it down capturing it, war is a bitch”)

    I would bet the Russian generals realize this and warned Putin, which is why Putin per-blamed the Ukrainians in his speech.

  75. 75.

    zhena gogolia

    @Zzyzx: I used to think I kinda sorta understood Putin, but he seems to have gone round the bend.

    I am so sick and disgusted and furious. Why don’t Putin and TFG just die already? The world would be so much better off.

  76. 76.

    Another Scott

    @Eolirin: The world works slowly when it comes to changing government policy and actions.  Biden knows this.

    Regarding the effectiveness of sanctions – compare the DPRK and ROK.  Sanctions weaken nations, but cannot prevent cults from building a large military if they have a few powerful backers. China needs western markets so will not go all-in to support VVP.

    Biden has the stronger hand, but this will not be over quickly.  VVP is getting weaker by the hour, but nobody can predict the end date yet.

    [eta:] This was supposed to elaborate on MisterDancer’s comment above…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  78. 78.

    Eolirin

    @MisterDancer: Iranian nuclear deal was achieved through sanction pressure coupled with promises of sanction relief.

    Though those were much more rational actors. The collapse of the USSR is itself an example though I think.

  79. 79.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: Like everything managed under Nickie II, it ended in failure.

    Anyway, on balance, it occurs to me that this  has been all in the works since about 2009-2010. Ties together the Tea Party, Snowjob’s destruction of surveillance capability, Trump’s rise, Victor Orban, BREXIT, use of the NRA as a cash cutout to American elections….

  80. 80.

    zhena gogolia

    @MisterDancer:

    So yeah, I have a lot of sympathy towards the Russian activists, who have been trying for decades to get people to notice that Putin…wasn’t a fair player. Yelling at them, now that it might impact us, isn’t fair to the many in Russia and elsewhere who have been disappeared or flat-out died, for freedom.

    Thank you. Boris Nemtsov gave his life after protesting the takeover of Crimea. Just to name one. I can remember when we were expecting him to be the new leader of a democratic Russia.

  81. 81.

    Betty Cracker

    @MisterDancer:

    You mean the oligarchs who are so vastly diversified we can’t even put proper sanctions on their wealth?

    Can’t or won’t? Maybe the sticking point is the effect a crackdown would have on our own oligarchs, by puncturing their high-end real estate holdings bubble.

  82. 82.

    Matt McIrvin

    @debbie: The germ of truth here is that, because of alignments and resentments going back to World War II, some Ukrainian nationalists do have Nazi sympathies.

    People echoing Putin’s line like to play this way, way up. Remember Bob in Portland, our resident RT parrot a few years back? He went on about how the Maidan movement was Nazi and the Ukrainian government was Nazis all the time. The point was to portray Russian aggression as “denazification”, just like Putin is saying now. I think it plays well with the kind of American lefty who on some level wants to believe the USSR still exists.

  84. 84.

    oldgold

    What are our offensive cyber capabilities?

    The economic and diplomatic sanctions being discussed/ implemented are all fine and dandy, but I question both the timeliness of their impact and sustainability.

    What can we do now that would meaningfully up the price for this rogue conduct?

  85. 85.

    citizen dave

    NATO, Attack Putin personally.   Announce that 1 of these 5 of Putin’s residences has incoming bombs in 30 minutes, so any staff can leave, and then DO IT.  Hit 2 of the 5.

    No more sanctions and measures bullshit.  Make it clear if he doesn’t want to negotiate, he’ll be living out his days far underground as NATO will be bombing whatever location he is at to try to kill him.

    This was a bit of a rant, no need for jackal experts to post why the above is reckless (but also fine if that floats your boat).  I’m just very tired of Putin.

  86. 86.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Disgusting news to learn, around the mid-day in China. Depressing & made me ill.

    It isn’t enough that the world is dealing with a pandemic & Anthropogenic Global Warming, & continued humanitarian calamity in Yemen, now there is war in Europe, & likelihood of a new Cold War just went up a few notches. Very, very depressing.

  90. 90.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Remember Bob in Portland, our resident RT parrot a few years back?

    Yeah, I do.  It’s funny, growing up in the 2000s, I always heard anti-war and anti-U.S.-friendly-regime people being accused of being just useful idiots for America’s enemies, but I’d never actually met anybody to whom that applied.  Until 2014, when all of a sudden, the Internets were full of trolls and bots whose weren’t just opposing U.S. or NATO policy, but were just spewing transparent Russian propaganda everywhere.

  91. 91.

    Chris Johnson

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: How do you know they support him electorally? Putin has been up to his shit there for longer than he has HERE. They’re completely demoralized. They’re serfs to the oligarchs, kept in line not as a fighting force but to keep ’em from getting unruly.

    It’s a lot like it is over here in fact: break down the reddest of states and you find 30-50% blue and a whole lot of people just trying to survive. That is what a Putin exploits, by making up shit and going ‘let’s you and them fight’.

    Russian people could use rescuing, not destroying. They’re the last people on earth to ‘liberate’ Ukraine, it’s like slave armies.

    Russian house music is phenomenal, but often wordless. They can’t trust anything anybody says, but they can sure dance. They’re surviving as best they can. I can relate to that.

    Fuck Putin in specific. Those aren’t his people, he’s only subjugated them. He ain’t their leader any more than Trump is the true leader of Americans.

  92. 92.

    JMG

    Russia’s stock market lost almost half its value in about an hour and a half this morning before trading was suspended. So while the oligarchs take good care to have big holdings in the West, they also took a hit.

  94. 94.

    Kirk Spencer

    If I may point out the obvious, we should all prepare for (more) supply chain disruptions.

    If you have a must-have item like medication, make sure you are stocked. If you are expecting something that comes from Europe or has to travel via Europe, figure out what you’re going to do with a 60+ day delay.

    Some of that is going to happen even if we don’t do much about Putin. If we really do wind up escalating this – or if Putin thinks that’s going to happen and acts preemtively – then the European transit zone will be distrupted.

  95. 95.

    Eolirin

    @MisterDancer: If Putin’s actions generate enough outrage the distinction matters; western oligarchs only have so much power. They’re not purely dominant like in Russia. If anything is going to puncture the protection they’ve been providing it’ll be stuff like this.

    At a certain point the social and politicial pressure means they need to cut and run rather than get tied to Russian interests.

    Unless Russia succeeds in breaking enough of our governments.

  96. 96.

    Chris

    @Eolirin:

    Yeah.  I have a friend that I thought would know better who keeps insisting that the U.S. is going to send special forces to fight with the Ukrainians or that NATO is going to put peacekeepers in Kiev as a “tripwire” and like… no.  That is simply not happening.  Anything that involves NATO and Russian troops firing at each other, even if you cover it with some too-clever-by-half legal fuckery like resigning from the military and becoming Ukrainian citizens, is absolutely not going to happen absent Russia invading an actual NATO member.

  98. 98.

    geg6

    @Baud: ​
     
    Maybe the new management is changing that. With that asshole Zucker gone, maybe they have decided they want to go back to what they did best: breaking news.

  101. 101.

    Chris

    @Chris Johnson:

    It’s a lot like it is over here in fact: break down the reddest of states and you find 30-50% blue and a whole lot of people just trying to survive. That is what a Putin exploits, by making up shit and going ‘let’s you and them fight’.

    What those 30-50% are trying to survive is the other 50-70% of the population.

    As much as any country and more than many, Russia is soaked to the gills in the kind of fascist-leaning nationalism that’s been rising all over the world, and what keeps Putin in power, as much as anything he’s done to suppress or demoralize people, is that an enormous number of ordinary Russians respond to that and therefore respond to him.  It does precisely no good to pretend otherwise.

  103. 103.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chris: The thing that never ceases to amaze me is that people who consider themselves radical leftists or socialists will join with right-wing blockheads to support a far-right, aggressive, homophobic petrostate kleptocracy that paints itself as the defender of white Christendom against the dusky hordes, just because the US opposes it, and maybe out of a kind of nostalgic inertia because the predecessor to that regime used to call itself Communist. It’s just weird. They used to be more ideological, but this is not even ideological.

  107. 107.

    MisterDancer

    @Eolirin: If Putin’s actions generate enough outrage the distinction matters; western oligarchs only have so much power.

    This is still semi-magical thinking, to be more direct. I really didn’t mean to start a thing, yet since I did say it — look, again, it all sounds great in theory. Yet processes like the Iran sanctions were tied to a host of internation agreements AND Iranian agreements. And they are about as well-balanced as you can get…

    …because we learned from the end of The Great War. We learned that imposing sanctions out of anger — out of vengeance — is not often great strategy. That it can lead to an even greater tragedy.

    I personally am invested in how to actually build plans to hit these people in ways that are useful. I’m less invested in just hitting them, without having a solid understanding of who actually gets impacted. If beating down oligarchs leads to American stock markets crashing, then what happens to the about-to-retire people who have their entire money in 401Ks? The smaller companies that depend on stocks to keep their businesses afloat?

    That’s why I don’t celebrate the halving of the Russian stock markets — it impacts a lot more people than the ones we want to hurt, and in ways that we can’t predict the outcomes of. It’s not the case that every time an economy crashes, people rise up and crush their oppressors.

    That’s really the core of what I’m saying — that any reaction should be thought through, and be as close to WORKING, as possible.

    And, to be blunt, I’d rather have sanctions that make Ukraine free, than to try to depose Putin. Not only because I think that’s a rational goal: no one here can promise that ridding the world of Putin doesn’t put someone worse, in his place.

  108. 108.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think the end of the Cold War genuinely broke their brains.  The old world order had an organizing principle of communism versus capitalism that the new one lacks, and they’ve still never adjusted.  Instead of opposing the U.S. because they sorta kinda mostly support the other side’s ideology, now it’s just “the opposite of what America wants, updated daily.”

  112. 112.

    geg6

    @Baud:

    Totally agree.  I don’t watch any cable news any more.  Not even MSNBC, which I used to watch a lot.  So sick of the talking heads who don’t know any more of what’s going on than I do, I have found.

  114. 114.

    Eolirin

    @MisterDancer: It’s not clear that there’s any way for Ukraine to be free that doesn’t include Putin being out of power.

    And I trust our leaders to have gamed out consequences thoroughly and to respond appropriately on the basis of that. But we’re going to have to endure a certain level of pain here. The status quo of a criminal mob being able to hold world economies hostage while actively undermining democracy around the world is not sustainable.

    Unwinding that is going to be disruptive but the alternarive is that we end up with a globabl kleptocracy and much larger amounts of human suffering in the long run.

  115. 115.

    geg6

    @Baud: ​

    I’m with you on the negativity on LGM. I glance at it, still, every day out of habit but mostly for the grave posts. I really enjoy those.

  116. 116.

    Anyway

    Sickened by the news and hoping for the best for the people of Ukraine.

    Curious where Orban stands on this. He hates the “liberal” west but is he buds with Putin? Given Hungary’s history I’d think they wouldn’t look kindly on Russia’s antics but it’s Bizzaro World these days…

  117. 117.

    Gin & Tonic

    @MisterDancer:

    I’d rather have sanctions that make Ukraine free, than to try to depose Putin

    While I agree that nobody knows who could or would replace him, a President Putin and a free Ukraine, it seems, cannot both exist. He has made that abundantly clear.

    I have to get off before my blood pressure gets too high, but one last comment: Putin is seeking to destroy Ukraine, yes, but he is also seeking to destroy Western democracy. This doesn’t stop at the Polish border.

  118. 118.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    CNN made their bones on this kind of situation (first Gulf War). Their coverage was excellent — so good, in fact, that the three broadcast networks just used CNN’s film. They had to pay for it and they had to acknowledge it. This was a huge boon to the young cable channel, and they’ve always been at their best when they can do this kind of coverage.

    The obvious problem is, though, if you want a really good CNN, you’ve got to accept there’s a terrible war or disaster happening.

  121. 121.

    Wvng

    @Anne Laurie: The covid catastrophe in Russia that you have chronicled for us for two years describes a population that has NO trust in their government (much like red America). I have a dream that the Russian people and the army will just say NO as loudly to this war as they have to vaccines.

  123. 123.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: I think they see countries like Russia and Hungary as the last protectors of the straight, white, Christian male dominance of everything. That’s the only way I can make sense of the Republican love of Russia. For someone who’s 61 (today, yay it’s my birthday!) I can’t express how bizarre it is to see Republicans praising Russia. It’s like another universe bizarre.

  124. 124.

    Kirk Spencer

    Back of the envelope analysis – the Russian plan is to blitz and be complete in less than 2 weeks, with some ability to last 30 days.

    Logistics. They moved a crap-ton of offensive forces into place. The logistic net movements, however, were the biggest reason I wasn’t completely sure we weren’t seeing a fake-out. Or more likely, an intentional stutter. (Put the forces in place. Dance but never cross for 3-4 months to completely embarrass the west’s leaders and intel agencies and make their location the new normal, then move from there. Total surprise.)

    It takes time to set up heavy supply lines. You can do it faster with excellent skilled teams and some luck, or average teams and a lot of luck.

    This, by the way, is why I made mention of supply chain disruptions earlier. Russia’s supply of energy resources to Europe will be disrupted by bringing the logistics for the invasion of Ukraine up to speed. That will cascade.

    But anyway, Russia – Putin – needs to be successful fast or pay a really bad set of prices.

    One question in my mind due to this is – does Putin fall for sunk cost fallacies?

  126. 126.

    MisterDancer

    @Baud: Thus why I said, at the end: “That’s really the core of what I’m saying — that any reaction should be thought through, and be as close to WORKING, as possible.”

    Typos and all :)

    I know these actions hurt people. I’ve read how Iranian sanctions impact people in that country, and it’s painful to grasp. It’s also woefully under-reported, and the two are not unconnected.

    That said: whether one sees sanctions as a form of low-intensity warfare and/or a diplomatic measure, I think my point is to strive to put enough hurt on the right target, with minimum spillover.

  129. 129.

    Kay

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Putin is seeking to destroy Ukraine, yes, but he is also seeking to destroy Western democracy. This doesn’t stop at the Polish border.

    I agree. I don’t even think it’s a close question which side to support in this. They want a Right wing wholly corrupt autocracy and they’re exporting it all over. They couldn’t have made that more clear the last ten years. It’s not an accident that our domestic Right wing corrupt authoritarians all support him. They’re allied ideologically. It had to come to a head.

  130. 130.

    JPL

    It appears that Russia has control of the military airport outside of Kiev.   I hope that arrangements have been made to remove the leadership out of Ukraine.

    just fk

  132. 132.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: Maybe the sticking point is the effect a crackdown would have on our own oligarchs, by puncturing their high-end real estate holdings bubble.

    I think this is a good point. I don’t think tanking our own real estate market in big cities to impose sanctions against Russians would be popular with the American people. I’m already bracing myself for what the stock market will do today. I know it’ll come back, but it’s hard to watch it go down like that. I keep saying “Don’t look at the account”.

  133. 133.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: The Republican support for Putin and Orban makes perfect sense to me–these guys are just like them, they profess to want the same things, and Putin had been specifically working the US evangelical right for years before Trump.

    It’s that leftists fall for this that amazes me.

  134. 134.

    dave319

    @lowtechcyclist: I was always hoping this was a viable Plan B that Free Democracies would roll out immediately. Oh, and while rolling, roll up the Fifth Column Republicans that Putin has bought. Let’s see if they dare to stay bought.

  135. 135.

    Chris Johnson

    @Gin & Tonic: It most certainly has not stopped at the Polish border. Putin has already done enormous damage in the US, the UK, the EU: he uses the same chaos politics techniques he uses at home to try and sabotage the West in every way he can.

    We’d all be doing a lot better (and probably grappling with complacency and similar nicer problems) if not for Putin and continued Russian aggression over the last twenty years or more. Russia really WORKS to break everything we have. They are just comparatively small and resource-less so we don’t always notice.

  137. 137.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I read him avidly back in the day. Tried one of his books again a few years ago, and it was almost unreadable. Also very dated, and not in a good way.

    ETA: Also also, I realise now but didn’t then, the Drury books were so partisan as to be propagandistic.

  138. 138.

    Suzanne

    @Betty Cracker:

    Carlson and his too numerous ilk in the U.S. side with Putin for the same reason they side with Orbán of Hungary: They want a similar brand of patriarchal, ethnonationalist autocracy here. 

    Absolutely right. They will side with anybody who they believe will support a social hierarchy that has white Christian dudes in control.

  139. 139.

    MisterDancer

    @zhena gogolia: it’s hard to imagine anyone too much worse.

    Imagine Putin with better English, talking directly to America, over and again, and pushing his brand of Homophobic, White Nationalist rhetoric on top of blasting social media, openly and covertly, with this message.

    Imagine the chaos such a person could generate, here in the US and around the world. The acolytes they could raise up, in governments and ordinary citizens already primed from years of Right Wing propaganda.

    That’s just one example, something I’ve been personally worried about since the GW Bush years, when a lot of people said he was the worst America could ever elect as POTUS. Others with more awareness of the forces in Russia and across Europe would, no doubt, see other approaches my limited view misses.

  143. 143.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    I agree. I don’t even think it’s a close question which side to support in this. They want a Right wing wholly corrupt autocracy and they’re exporting it all over. They couldn’t have made that more clear the last ten years. It’s not an accident that our domestic Right wing corrupt authoritarians all support him. They’re allied ideologically. It had to come to a head.

    I think the Russian regime is aware that the mere existence of a large block of successful, prosperous, and powerful liberal democratic societies is a mortal threat to their power in the long run, just like it was a mortal threat to their communist predecessors who literally had to build walls to keep their people from running away to it.  Therefore that entire community needs to be brought crashing down.

    It’s, as you say, the same basic ethos that our red staters run on: everybody else should be as fucked up and miserable as them, lest anybody ever realize that things don’t have to be this fucked up and miserable.

  144. 144.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chris Johnson: Russia currently punches far above its weight in two ways: they have thousands of nuclear weapons left over from the Cold War, which gives them a deterrent impunity, and they are historical kings of trolling and disinformation, going back to before the USSR.

  145. 145.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @YY_Sima Qian:It isn’t enough that the world is dealing with a pandemic & Anthropogenic Global Warming, & continued humanitarian calamity in Yemen, now there is war in Europe, & likelihood of a new Cold War just went up a few notches. Very, very depressing.

    Yes, this.

  146. 146.

    Soprano2

    @Chris: what keeps Putin in power, as much as anything he’s done to suppress or demoralize people, is that an enormous number of ordinary Russians respond to that and therefore respond to him.

    I remember seeing a “60 Minutes” segment many years ago that was about Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union; it was probably in the late 90’s. They interviewed people in Moscow, several of whom said they’d like to see the return of someone like Stalin to bring order out of the chaos that was engulfing Russia. This was when all the oligarchs were gaining money and power and completely looting the government. I think when people are used to being ruled by an authoritarian dictatorship, they are quick to want to return to it as soon as things get messy. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of Russians wouldn’t be that unhappy with Putin’s rule.

  147. 147.

    New Deal democrat

    Just as a side note, since apparently Russia is going for a full takeover of Ukraine, I see little reason for Putin not to formally annex the immediately adjacent Transnistria in Moldova, where there is already a Russian “peacekeeping” force, and maybe just to roll up all of Moldova as well, since it too was part of the USSR, is only 100 miles wide, and is not a NATO member.

  148. 148.

    Chris Johnson

    @Mai Naem mobile: Hillary’s always been a serious Russia hawk. I think at this stage we can see how very right she’s been about all that, all along.

    Goes to show how sometimes you can really fall flat on your face by failing to listen attentively to a woman. If we’d been listening to Hillary… well, I guess that so much of this may not have happened and we’d never have learned why we SHOULD have been listening to Hillary. Catch-22. She would have stopped Putin from a lot of this, and so we would never have known and would have instead suspected her of being a big meanie.

  149. 149.

    narya

    @Soprano2: Happy birthday! And yeah, I was just thinking the same thing–it’s just bizarre to have the RWNJ position be in support of VVP invading another country.

  150. 150.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: That’s true because sovereign piles of cash/assets are interconnected regardless of the owners’ citizenship, so seizing the wealth of Russian oligarchs will have ripple effects. It would damn sure be felt in real estate markets from London to NYC, from Palm Springs to Palm Beach, etc.

    But if the goal is to impose consequences on Russia that deter further aggression, doesn’t it make sense to focus on the network that props Putin up? I’m no expert, so maybe there are factors that make this approach untenable. If so, I’d like to hear them. It shouldn’t be off the table because reasons.

  152. 152.

    Eolirin

    @Betty Cracker: There’s also the way that those funds are being used to actively undermine democracy across the whole world. At some point we need to be willing to accept the temporary economic damage in order to put an end to the assualt on our societies.

  153. 153.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Drury’s plot lines were predictable right winger stuff, with characterizations to match.  Beetle-browned commissars cunningly plotting and chortling like comic book villains both in private moments and in meetings with both their friends and adversaries. Well-meaning liberals and naive leftists haplessly taking them at their word, while horseshoe extremists of the left and right get together and plot with the commissars to take out any opposition to a communist takeover of the West.

    Nuance wasn’t his strong suit.

    Where he REALLY goes off the rails is in his love for going through parliamentary arcana and getting bogged down in the procedure of speechifying at the UN and in Congress. It makes one yearn for the Atlas Shrugged John Galt speech as a palate cleanser.

  156. 156.

    WaterGirl

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    “Ukraine is a country,” says William Taylor, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. “The Ukraine is the way the Russians referred to that part of the country during Soviet times … Now that it is a country, a nation, and a recognized state, it is just Ukraine.

    And it is incorrect to refer to the Ukraine

    I will add that it is not only incorrect, it is offensive to the people of Ukraine.

    This isn’t pedantry; it matters.

  158. 158.

    MisterDancer

    https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1496829730103963650

    Anti-war solo pickets like this are popping up in cities across Russia. It’s not much but they’re arrested almost immediately, often upon leaving their homes when the cops know to expect them. Here’s Sofya Rusova, co-chair of Russia’s Trade Union of Journalists.
    And that’s what it means to protest in Russia, today. Or so I’m told.
  159. 159.

    Kay

    @Chris:

    The connections are closer than “basic ethos” though. It’s a political alliance- on guns, on homophobia, on women’s rights, on treating children like property, on deregulation and corruption and ludicrous, nation-destroying levels of income inequality, on extraction industries, on admiring – worshiping – tough guy aggression in political leaders, on the sense of grievance that tells them they’re the victim while they are attacking people. There’s no daylight between them.

  161. 161.

    Soprano2

    @Gin & Tonic: Putin is seeking to destroy Ukraine, yes, but he is also seeking to destroy Western democracy. This doesn’t stop at the Polish border.

    That’s what his support of TFG was all about. That’s why Republicans can’t see this for what it is, because they were so thrilled that Putin and Russia helped put their leader in the presidency. Also, too many Republicans confuse belligerence and strong man tactics for strength. They think Putin is strong because he’s a bully. I think they secretly wish they could assassinate their opponents the way Putin does.

  162. 162.

    MattF

    @Matt McIrvin: I’ve always been skeptical about the notion that extreme-left and extreme-right come together in some sort of nihilist utopian political concord. I think it’s more a matter of a particular personality type running away from the pains and complexities of everyday life. That said, I do wonder how they rationalize their agreements with one another.

  163. 163.

    WaterGirl

    @MisterDancer: If you mean that calling it what it is – a choice rather than an inability to do something – then yes, what you call it doesn’t affect the outcome.

    But this is most definitely not a distinction without a difference.  When we give into the framing of the other side, I think we have lost half the battle.

  164. 164.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    There are only two types of non-military responses: (1) economic and (2) loss of status (e.g., ending diplomatic relations, kicking Russia out of international organizations, etc.).  Anything economic is going to  have a spillover effect on innocent people.

  166. 166.

    Skepticat

    Those now praising Putin, showing respect for Putin, calling Putin a genius, are going to regret those words once this horrific war begins.

    I’m so old that I remember when giving aid and comfort to the enemy was considered treason. Not giving aid and comfort to one’s own people in a pandemic might also qualify. However, I don’t expect there to be any consequences for these people; there never seem to be.

  167. 167.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    But why do you think they “can’t see it”? They seem to “see it” all right. It’s what they want. This is what they believe. Some of them don’t go along with it. Mitt Romney doesn’t. He’s still a Republican. They’re making a decision which side to back.

  168. 168.

    Kay

    @Skepticat:

    The tone changed slightly though when they realized he was really invading and they were now in the position of cheering Ukranian civilian casualties. They miscalculated. They’re all paid tens of millions of dollars for their ability to lie though- I’m sure they’ve come up with some way to shift it a little.

  169. 169.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MattF: Some of them are really fake leftists–the same ones who go on about “wokeism” being a neoliberal distraction. They’re people with basically reactionary attitudes and instincts who are acutely aware that being reactionary isn’t cool, and instead of resentfully embracing uncoolness like the neoreactionary trads do, they instead pretend that their attitude is the true leftism and liberals are a bunch of phonies. Fighting sexism and racism is just what the corporations want you to do to stave off the Revolution, after which all that stuff will melt away by itself.

  171. 171.

    JPL

    @Baud: Wesley Clark was on CNN and suggested that a coalition was putting together heavy artillery to help protect Ukraine.   It might be more than economic sanctions.

  172. 172.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I’m talking about the long-term consequences – they can’t see the long-term problems their approach would create, they can only see the short-term goal of gaining more and more power. Having a smaller and smaller minority ruling over the majority gets harder the smaller that minority gets, and that’s what they’ll have if they get their way. I think they still want “democracy”, only they have allowed their horror at the thought that people like them (white, male, Christian, straight) will no longer be in control of most things to pervert their definition of “democracy” and turn it into “it’s only a democracy if my candidate wins”. This is relatively new in our country. They didn’t like Democrats, but until Obama they didn’t say that Democrats can’t win fair elections and never have a right to be in office (think ‘birtherism’, for example). I think the U.S. choosing the black Democrat as president broke a lot of right-wing brains, and this is the result. Maybe I’m wrong and you’re right.

  174. 174.

    Kristine

    @Soprano2:

    “Don’t look at the account”.

    That’s my motto for the foreseeable future.

    I’m still back on my heels. I know I should’ve expected it.

    The vocal right wing support is sickening.

  175. 175.

    Geminid

    Semi-retired tech culture journalist Xeni  Jardin has been putting out some interesting stuff on @Xeni. She focuses on Russian penetration of Silicon Valley, notably through billionaire investor Yuri Milner and a young Russian lady who Jardin says is to Silicon Valley what Maria Butina was to the NRA. There is a Jeffrey Epstein angle: Jardin reposts pictures from the visit Epstein and investor Esther Dyson made to Russia in the 90’s, ostensibly as tourists.

    Some of this material is retweets of old threads. Jardin has covered these stories for a while now. She herself was involved in this world, attending the Edge Foundation dinners and events financed by Milner and Epstein. The dinners brought together tech titans like Bill Gates and others, and served to network Epstein and Milner with those circles.

  176. 176.

    Baud

    @JPL:

    To give to Ukraine, or would NATO troops be involved?

    I expect the military response will include providing weapons.

  177. 177.

    Soprano2

    @Kristine: I had to say that a lot in 2008 and 2009. I kept telling my boss to quit looking at his deferred comp account, since he didn’t plan on actually drawing any money from it for a long time yet.

  179. 179.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I just want to hold them responsible for their decisions. They don’t assume they’ll be a “smaller and smaller minority”. They control half or better now in terms of federal, state, judicial power. They assume this approach will benefit them politically, and they’ll control more. Republicans like Romney and Cheney are making a different bet, but they all know what they’re doing.

  180. 180.

    Cacti

    It’s time to fight the fascists.

    Hesitation at this point will only bring greater pain down the road.

  182. 182.

    Kay

    @Cacti:

    Not only that, but the fascists kind of forced our hand. Which is good. They should clearly be the aggressor and they are. No one wanted this but them.

  184. 184.

    narya

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Where he REALLY goes off the rails is in his love for going through parliamentary arcana and getting bogged down in the procedure of speechifying at the UN and in Congress. It makes one yearn for the Atlas Shrugged John Galt speech as a palate cleanser.

    That guarantees I will never read any of his stuff.

  185. 185.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I had no idea till after week that Evgeny Lebedev owned a majority share in The Independent and Evening Standard UK papers. And the second shareholder in the Independent is a Saudi businessman. This on top of Rupert Murdoch owning The Times, Daily Mail and Sky. I cannot believe the Brits allowed this situation.

  186. 186.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Well, now, this doesn’t sound good:

    Advisor to Ukrainian interior ministry says Russian forces entered Chernobyl and that fighting there destroyed a nuclear waste storage facility.

    It’s from a Richard Engel tweet (yeah, I know, but I don’t think he lies about stuff like this). Went up maybe 20 minutes ago.

  187. 187.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    It almost seems like Putin thought he was losing the U.S. long term, and had to act.  Otherwise, why not just wait until the GOP was back in charge?

  188. 188.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It’s true that at a certain point, if it doesn’t look like a duck, walk like a duck, or quack like a duck, it becomes very difficult to maintain that it is in fact a duck.

    The “lefties” who are in the tank for Putin at this point are the Glenn Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard types.  They haven’t taken a meaningfully left-wing position on anything or supported a left-wing politician for anything in years.  All of their public appearances and input into the political system at this point are on Fox News and all of the politicians they’ve praised and told us to get behind have been Republicans, and balls-to-the-wall far-right Republicans at that.  Time and time again on every possible issue, when given a choice between supporting the right and supporting the left, they support the right.

    I’ve been comparing them to those 1930s leftists who suddenly became pro-fascist after Molotov-Ribbentropp, but even that doesn’t really apply.  The more accurate comparison is simply someone like Mussolini: they might have been a socialist at one point in the past, but they switched sides, they have zero interest in looking back, and it just doesn’t tell us much about them or their current politics to note that at one time they supported something else.

  189. 189.

    Kay

    @delk:

    Oh, the attack on LGBTQ kids just killed me yesterday. Makes me cry. I want them protected by decent adults. So vulnerable. I understand it was partly about attacking them to distract from another huge corruption scandal, and that was just the icing on the cake. Scumbags.

  190. 190.

    Kristine

    @Soprano2: Made it through that same timeframe by Not Looking At Statements. I’m retired and currently living off that account, so in addition to worrying over the state of the world and what the hell is happening, I get to relearn the lesson that everything is connected.

    I find myself wishing that, for the good of us all, certain individuals would drop dead, and that’s not really nice, is it?

  191. 191.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Good points. I want to hold them accountable for their terrible decisions, too. I wish the press would call them out at every turn for their support of Russia and Putin. In the past it truly would have been unheard of for politicians to support the invader of a country we are allies with. This is truly unprecedented, and the press and Democrats should say so loudly and often. Try to imagine any elected Democrat saying in 1990 about the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait “Well, that Saddam sure has a point about the way the Great Powers divided up the Middle East after WWI”.

  192. 192.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @MisterDancer: I think that specific pressure can be put on the oligarchs, no matter how diversified they are. Their specific monetary assets can be frozen, to a degree. They’re properties can be confiscated, to a degree. Their financial business activities can be curtailed, to a degree. It may all add up.

    Hell, if it were up to me, I’d just take ’em off the street or from their home and physically remove them to Russia. Not even a flight to Moscow — just drop them at the border (some small town on the border of the NATO country with the current worst weather) in their underwear. They’ll figure out how to get home from there. I’m not 100% certain that this isn’t illegal, either.

  193. 193.

    MisterDancer

    @WaterGirl: I’m…confused? Not sure how saying that plays into a right-wing framing.

    Because: My point is that no one can be certain how to unwind all this without taking down the whole damn economy. I submit it’s not just a “limited term of suffering,” to rip trillions out of even just the American economy. Indeed, John Rodgers — who’s well-up on studying these systems thru his work on LEVERAGE, just said this:

    We probably shouldn’t have spent the last 20 or so years building a world economy around money laundering for these oligarchs — I am not exaggerating — and it’s probably too late now.

    I don’t agree it’s too late to look at these systems. I do think — upon relfection for this comment — that process is more nuanced and complex than “hammer the oligarchs until we get democracy back,” in no small part because I know we, as a country, haven’t actually has a democracy for everyone by any stretch, but for a very narrow slice of time. The idea that this is all pretty new…ugh. Y’all: it’s not a stretch to say that Jim Crow was American oligarchs restoring what they could of their pre-Civil War power. And then figuring out how to spread their viewpoints (and power) across the whole of the US…and elsewhere. (which is a vast simplification, so please bear with me.)

    Prying these sources of power and money out of our systems is going to be more than just cut off money. It’s going to mean we need to get a grip on a lot of situations that money is making worse…but that money didn’t create in the American psyche.

    Just as, right now, Ukrainians are calling for support for marginalized populations in their country, in fear of the same forces that animate Russian fascism impacting them post-invasion.

    I also know that implementing this effort certainly means taking down whatever government does that unwinding.

    And thus, my point through this has been, “how does that happen? What can be done to manage that process, be it to stop this invasion or the larger issues, in ways that minimize suffering?”

    I do not think it’s naive to assert that balance as a goal. And that said process involved potentially massive cultural changes, because just getting rid of wealth doesn’t auto-fix the kind of issues we’re seeing. We’ll need more, and we should consider what that means — assuming you can even get agreement on the financials, to begin with.

  194. 194.

    Baud

    @Chris:

    The “lefties” who are in the tank for Putin at this point are the Glenn Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard types.  They haven’t taken a meaningfully left-wing position on anything or supported a left-wing politician for anything in years.

    Before the invasion, I saw Corbyn in UK pushng the ‘blame the West” line.   I don’t know if he’s issued any kind of statement post-invasion.

  195. 195.

    Chris

    @Baud:

    If he’s going to do anything that embarrasses the U.S, isn’t it better to do it under a Democratic president than a friendly one?

  196. 196.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Baud: Maybe so. One of the primary characteristicsts of the Russian assaults on the US throughout the years is how patient they’ve been. Long-term planning is a distinct signature. The attack on Ukraine seems to be driven by panic.

  197. 197.

    Soprano2

    @Kristine: Oh man I’m sorry, that makes it a different situation than mine. Hang in there and have faith that it will come back, probably tomorrow! The market has been weird like that lately, way down one day and way up another.

  199. 199.

    Baud

    @Chris: Do you think he’s invading Ukraine to embarrass the U.S. or because of his own interests in having a client state on Russia’s border?

  200. 200.

    Chris

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    Frankly, just nationalize all the oligarchs’ assets in the West.  Then do whatever we have to to cause the least economic pain possible, but in the meantime, take them the hell out of their owners’ hands.

  201. 201.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @narya:

    It is amusing material in that the character of his most virulently pro-communist plotter is Senator Fred Van Ackerman (D-WY), aided by very willing dupes in his legislative alliance from Arkansas and South Carolina.

  203. 203.

    gvg

    @Tony Jay: In this case, the whole public in most of the world had knowledge that investing in Russian banks right now is a bad idea, so I am not sure it actually qualifies as insider trading. I would wonder why any idiot stayed investing in them this long?

  204. 204.

    Chris

    @Baud:

    Oh, I think the main consideration is absolutely his own interest in a client state, but while he’s at it, it makes much more sense to do it in a way that embarrasses one of his enemies than one of his allies.

  205. 205.

    Cacti

    @Baud: Matt Taibbi is also completely in the tank for Moscow, but likely due to kompromat, as he frankly admitted that he was a sexual predator when he lived there.

  206. 206.

    Kay

    @Chris:

    My 19 year old is a Lefty and we had a good discussion on this last night. I think (hope) he’s reexamining in light of the fact that he (now) admits that they were wrong about this. He’s only 19. I just want him to do his own thinking- I’m disappointed when he doesn’t. He’s smart. Too smart to listen to bitter, middle aged formerly famous “radicals” like Glenn Greenwald. He was reading some Finnish Leftist who is anti-Putin and that’s what got him questioning what he was being told. I don’t want to drag him. I want him to get there by himself. They don’t have the same context we do. It’s a real liability in terms of being bamboozled.

  207. 207.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    Hopefully the ACLU will let Nazis handle their own free speech cases and reallocate their resources toward people with real pain.

  208. 208.

    MisterDancer

    @MisterDancer: I also know that implementing this effort certainly means taking down whatever government does that unwinding.

    This is unclear. I mean that any government that does this unwinding is almost certainly spelling its own doom. Unwinding all this without broad economic impacts is hard to imagine, thus my comment.

  210. 210.

    Betty Cracker

    @Chris: Maybe Putin thinks unleashing all this economic turmoil during a Democratic administration sets his American allies up for a restoration. It’s not a crazy thought either.

    This is one reason I really hope Biden and all Democrats go all in on framing this conflict in Ukraine as part of a larger war on Western democracy. It’s true, and people should understand the stakes and who aligns with whom.

  211. 211.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: If the 2024 election were held today, Trump would probably stroll back into the Presidency in a landslide, and the savvy takes would all be about how liberalism is dead forever, like all the other times that happened. Short-term events can have far-reaching effects.

    (I sometimes think about how if the 2004 election was instead in November 2001, Bush would probably have gotten something like 535 electoral votes, a supra-Reagan win, instead of the squeaker he got. And if his first term had somehow been extended by another year he’d have lost. Timing counts for a lot.)

  212. 212.

    Kent

    Today is going to be an interesting day at school.   Vancouver WA is a fairly large center of both Russian and Ukrainian immigration and I have both Russian and Ukrainian immigrant kids in my classes.  Recent immigrants who are still learning English in some cases.

    I’m curious how it is going to play out locally.  I have no idea what kind of politics the local Russian and Ukrainian communities have.

  213. 213.

    David Rickard

    I for one look forward to days (week?) of every member of the Wingnut Wurlitzer simultaneously saying that the Russian invasion is the bestest thing ever and that if Biden had been a Real Man™ he would have stopped it.

  214. 214.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I think someone has to try to explain it them. No telling if they’ll get it or even be open to it but it is the truth and someone should try. Someone other than Hillary Clinton, who did try. I smiled a little at the Tulsi Gabbard show yesterday. Yup. Clinton nailed that.

  216. 216.

    MisterDancer

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    National ACLU’s response to the Texas Trans horrorshow:

    Attorney general Paxton’s opinion and Governor Abbott’s letter have no legal effect, can’t change Texas law, and can’t override the constitutional rights of Texas families. No court anywhere in the country has ever found that gender-affirming care can be considered child abuse.

    Texas ACLU’s press release included this bit:

    Adri Pérez (they/them), policy and advocacy strategist at the ACLU of Texas:

    “Gender-affirming care saved my life. Trans kids today deserve the same opportunity by receiving the highest standard of care, rooted in decades of scientific research. No partisan political attack can change that. Our state’s leaders need to focus on helping our youth and all people in our state instead of falsely attacking parents and doctors who are lovingly advocating for their children with the medically necessary care. We will never stop fighting to protect trans kids and their families in Texas.”

    And in fact, I don’t recall that the ACLU has taken up a defense-of-Nazis free speech case in years. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite.

  217. 217.

    Sanjeevs

    @Mai Naem mobile: Look into Richard Dearlove, former head of  MI6, who became a prominent hard  Brexiter.

    After he retired from MI6 Dearlove created the Cambridge Security initiative.
    It was at one of their events that General Mike Flynn met Svetlana Lokhova (not clear why she was invited as she was supposedly a banker).

    They became ‘friends’ and soon after Flynn was fired by Obama.

    The rest is history.

  218. 218.

    Kent

    @The Thin Black Duke:@Baud: Maybe so. One of the primary characteristicsts of the Russian assaults on the US throughout the years is how patient they’ve been. Long-term planning is a distinct signature. The attack on Ukraine seems to be driven by panic.

    Agreed.  Every day that passed meant Ukraine was slipping further west and the population more anti-Russian.  He had no long-term strategy for Ukraine because there was none available.

    Now we see countries like Finland contemplating NATO membership.  He is basically making the case for NATO.

  220. 220.

    gvg

    @MisterDancer: ​
      NOT blocking them is strategic malpractice I think. You just don’t keep trading with enemies you are at war with. The thing is, sanctions alone don’t finish off a country, there does have to be some fighting and eventually a good plan for rebuilding. Right now most people want to believe there is a way to avoid a complete long bloody war so they are over hyping sanctions.
    There does have to be serious blockading and sanctions. Its just that is only part of it. We cannot do other things but leave the finances and trading alone.
    And my evaluations of really serious economic sanctions for decades is that they do over time seriously weaken a country which falls further and further behind even if they don’t collapse in a few months. Look, The whole Warsaw pact countries, Cuba, Iran, North Korea…..those countries did not prosper while being cut off. Arguably the Warsaw Iron curtain countries did fall because of sanctions…and their own internal problems that they couldn’t fix.

  221. 221.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MisterDancer: I know some very free-speech-absolutist, center-left types who are really disappointed that the ACLU has backed down on the purity of their principles by not defending bad guys any more.

  223. 223.

    Cacti

    @MisterDancer: And in fact, I don’t recall that the ACLU has taken up a defense-of-Nazis free speech case in years. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite.

    They kind of fucked up with their stance of unlimited corporate cash is protected free speech in Citizens United. Which played no small part in shaping the current political branches of government.

  224. 224.

    Kay

    @MisterDancer:

    No disrespect the ACLU but “no legal effect” is kind of nonsense in the real world of abuse, neglect and dependency. They’re county agencies and they’ll be before county judges. This idea they have that is rigidly statutory is nonsense. They have a TON of discretion. The ACLU won’t even know it’s happening unless they plan to monitor each children services agency and juvenile judge in Texas. It’s a very elite lawyer view – “the STATUTE says…”. It’s a little …messier on the ground.

  225. 225.

    MisterDancer

    @gvg: OK. Let me be really clear.

    I’m responding to the idea that you just block EVERYTHING, attack EVERYTHING. That’s what the comments I was responding to, read to me as.

    I’m saying let’s be smart and thoughtful about what we do attack (and yes, I use this term delibertly). Well, I’m saying a lot more, too, but I seem to be (likely because I’m writing so damn much) being taken as saying that we shouldn’t sanction, and that’s not the case, gang!

    It really, really isn’t.

  226. 226.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @The Thin Black Duke: . Long-term planning is a distinct signature. The attack on Ukraine seems to be driven by panic.

    Yes, it does. The whole invasion seems half assed, doomed to fail, most likely in a lingering Afghanistan like insurgency that will suck the life out of Russia and put Russa in constant confrations with NATO.

  227. 227.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    There’s a lot I’ll forgive or at least be more patient with from teenagers and young adults, simply because, well, they’re teenagers and young adults.  When you’re just starting to stretch your intellectual/political muscles, you’re apt to stop and consider at least a few pretty loony ideas at some point.

    Heck, when I was 19, I’d become pretty much sane, but when I was 16, I was basically a neocon.  I got better.  In college I met some people who were way worse than I ever was, literal little proto-Trump/Tucker Carlson types that even my neocon-self would have been repelled by, and nevertheless a few years later they turned into boringly ordinary liberals.  Everything’s still in flux when you’re young.

    (It’s much rarer to have a road-to-Damascus moment when you’re significantly older, which is a thing I applaud Cole for).

  228. 228.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chris: There are so many things that could be a new organizing principle. There’s the need to get off of fossil fuels to save the earth’s biosphere from devastation. There’s the rising tide of bigoted, violent ethnonationalism to oppose. There’s just supporting truth against disinformation, for God’s sake, on every subject from war to COVID. These are all causes that can be comfortably “left”. But these people are taking the other side. They’ve always got some weird, next-level-clever “counterintuitive” justification for why up is down.

  230. 230.

    Chris

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    The entire thing has given me the vibe of a tough guy getting into somebody’s face just to make him back down as a dominance display… only then he didn’t back down, and now you have to fight him, otherwise people will think you’re the one who’s chicken.

  231. 231.

    Cacti

    I’m going to say it now.  If Biden lets Ukraine fall, it will be a mark of shame on his Presidency forever.

  232. 232.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Cacti: The turning point was Charlottesville–they supported the fascists’ right to demonstrate, in the spirit of the Skokie case, and they turned into a murderous mob. The ACLU did a lot of reassessment at that point.

  235. 235.

    Yarrow

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    I cannot believe the Brits allowed this situation.

    Can’t believe it in what sense? I mean, it’s not like it’s been hidden. It’s been going on for years. Decades. The Tory party in particular is funded with Russian money.

  238. 238.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: The ACLU might have learned something from their role in the 2017 Charllottesville rally. The city had moved the rally from crowded downtown to spacious McIntyre Park a mile away. The organizer insisted he had to have his rally at the Lee  statue he pretended he was trying to protect, and the ACLU backed him. Of course, the federal judge the ACLU argued before didn’t have to go along, but he did.

    It was a terrible decision made two days before the rally. That same Thursday the State Police had a briefing; their spokesperson said they expected this to be the largest gathering of American white nationalists in decades.

  239. 239.

    Baud

    @Cacti:

    We won after we were attacked, and before we were attacked, we supported the allies without guaranteeing their victory.  If Putin attacks the U.S. directly, I’ll be happy for the U.S. to take on the responsibility of winning it.

  240. 240.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Soprano2:

    For someone who’s 61 (today, yay it’s my birthday!) I can’t express how bizarre it is to see Republicans praising Russia. It’s like another universe bizarre.

    Happy birthday! And as someone who’s just days away from turning 68, I’m with you all the way here.  It wasn’t like either party was against containing Russia during the Cold War, but the Republicans were always much more vehement about it.

  241. 241.

    Peale

    @MisterDancer: There was a time when one could argue that Nazi’s weren’t well enough funded to warrant pro bono help. Now they have their choice of several billionaires willing to foot the bill.

  242. 242.

    Cacti

    @Baud: We won after we were attacked, and before we were attacked, we supported the allies without guaranteeing their victory.  If Putin attacks the U.S. directly, I’ll be happy for the U.S. to take on the responsibility of winning it.

    Again, this was the position of the isolationists in the 1930s. 50 million lives later, do you think that was a wise choice in retrospect?

    And going by historical examples, was there ever a violent expansionist fascist movement that was subdued through non-violent means?

  243. 243.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud:

    If Putin attacks the U.S. directly, I’ll be happy for the U.S. to take on the responsibility of winning it.

    The result would, of course, probably be the extermination of most of the population of both countries and the end of human civilization as we know it. But my impression is that everyone involved is aware of that.

  244. 244.

    Baud

    @Cacti: Not jumping into and escalating wars is usually a wise choice, and hindsight is the last bation of scoundrals.  But this is America, where everyone has the privilege to invent and impose litmus tests on Democratic presidents, so I certainly don’t want to deny you your god-given rights.

  249. 249.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Soprano2: I don’t think tanking our own real estate market in big cities to impose sanctions against Russians would be popular with the American people.

    I don’t think it can be done.  What’s happening specifically in urban real estate isn’t a bubble, there’s just a lot more people who’d like to live in cities than there are places to live in relatively safe neighborhoods, so the prices keep going up.

    Going after the oligarchs’ domestic holdings isn’t going to cause the market in $1M townhouses to collapse.  The high-end demand reduction may cause formerly $50M properties to become $30M properties, or something like that.  It’s really only going to affect you if you’re genuinely rich, rather than merely at the high end of upper middle class.

    But the genuinely rich people obviously can get the attention of the politicians more easily than the rest of us can.

  251. 251.

    DB11

    @MisterDancer: This assumes that there is a neat, correct way of applying sanctions (and/or other non-military measures) that doesn’t create blowback against assets / systems we want to protect — if only we would take our time and think it through.

    My view is it’s more like the Afghanistan situation: there’s no way to unwind something neatly that was wound up through corruption, false pretences and the narrow (financial) interests of the super rich.

    Given that the Russian invasion is all-out, the bigger risk (and not just to Ukraine) is the West being too measured (i.e. timid) in it’s response.

    There is no way to push back sufficiently against Putin without breaking things we’d rather not be broken. If we instead focus on protecting those things short-term, we risk losing the entire game in the longer term.

  255. 255.

    Chris

    @lowtechcyclist:

    On the one hand, yes.  On the other hand…

    I think it’s unappreciated just how much the Cold War (or the West’s part of it, at any rate) was a liberal project.  The foundations that would dominate U.S. policy for all of it were laid under Truman, mostly by a bunch of carryovers from FDR, with buy-in from Republican moderates to provide bipartisan cover.  And it was basically exactly what these people wanted to do in the 1930s when facing the rise of fascism – an alliance with the other major democracies, a major military commitment to Europe, a united front against the rising totalitarian tide, all of it paid for by tax hikes on the rich and ensured by a major expansion in the role of government, and underlined by New Dealish domestic policies that would blunt the appeal of the enemy ideology for people at home.

    All of this was anathema to right-wing conservatives, and indeed, there was a lot of argument in the late 1940s among Republicans about whether anticommunism was worth abandoning their traditional isolationism (until Ike came along and put all his prestige onto the side of the internationalists, effectively burying the argument for a couple generations).  What really turned right-wingers on to the Cold War was the Red Scare era, when McCarthy showed them how Cold War politics could be used as a convenient bludgeon for them to attack their domestic opposition with.  And indeed for most of the Cold War, right-wing “anticommunism” mostly takes the form of incessantly sniping at Democrats for Not Doing Enough To Stop Communism, more than an interest in actually stopping communism.

  257. 257.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Cacti: Name a single violent expansionist fascist movement that was brought down non-violently

    How many expansionist fascist movements have there been? I think we’ve got a small-sample-size problem.

    Franco wasn’t expansionist. Orban isn’t expansionist. Trying to think of any besides Hitler and Mussolini (and now Putin if you include him) that were.

  259. 259.

    Miss Bianca

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think it plays well with the kind of American lefty who on some level wants to believe the USSR still exists.

    And this is what I don’t get. Lefties in the 1930s? Sure, they could have kidded themselves about the USSR being a “worker’s paradise” (unless and until they actually went there, that would have been a rude – even deadly – awakening). But lefties *now*? smdh

  260. 260.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Cacti: What level of US involvement are you advocating?  Non-lethal aid?  We are doing it.  Supplying weapons and ammo?  We are doing it.  Air support?  Military advisors?  Ground troops?

  261. 261.

    Kent

    Frankly Putin seems bound and determined to turn Russia into the next Venezuela.

    This is only going to accelerate capital flight out of Russia and disinvestment in the Russian economy.

    As the Venezuelan example shows.  Dictators can cling to power for a very long time as their economy collapses around them.  I expect the same thing will happen with Russia.  Oil wealth is no guarantee of anything as Venezuela and Nigeria have shown us.

  263. 263.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: He might be able to effectively defeat NATO with enough nuclear brinksmanship if the breaks go right for him. All he has to do is attack a NATO member and make it very clear that he is now suicidally insane, he no longer gives a shit, and any response whatsoever WILL be met with an apocalyptic, thousand-warhead nuclear strike. The Nixonian “greater madman” strategy. Of course he’d be gambling that we won’t call his bluff. But if he’s sufficiently convincing, the alliance falls apart. Or if he’s actually insane, maybe it’s the end of the world.

    In other words, it’s like old times! Roll out the RAND Corporation game theorists.

  265. 265.

    Miss Bianca

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    likelihood of a new Cold War just went up a few notches.

    New *Cold* War? *New* Cold War? Where have you been? We seem to be in the middle of a hot war right now, and Russia basically declared cyber war on the US a long time ago. There’s nothing “new” or “cold” about it, imho.

    What is the Chinese official take on this action? Have they issued one?

  268. 268.

    Chris

    @Miss Bianca:

    Yeah.  I’m not necessarily going to call for World War Three right here and now, but… it seems noteworthy that what Russia has been doing to the U.S. for nearly a decade now is way more of a casus belli than we ever had for the entire Cold War.  At a certain point, you can’t not react.

  269. 269.

    Kent

    @Miss Bianca:And this is what I don’t get. Lefties in the 1930s? Sure, they could have kidded themselves about the USSR being a “worker’s paradise” (unless and until they actually went there, that would have been a rude – even deadly – awakening). But lefties *now*? smdh

    In my mind it isn’t so much pro-Russian as instinctual anti-Americanism.  There is a certain strain of thought on the left that reflexively opposes anything American going back to Vietnam and before.  The US does have a lot to answer for in terms of it’s actions around the planet in the latter half of the 20th Century.  Chile, Guatemala, Iran, Vietnam, etc.  But not every world event can or should be viewed through that lens.

  270. 270.

    Xentik

    @Cacti: Name a single instance of a nuclear-armed, violent, fascist, expansionist state being brought down violently without triggering a nuclear war.

  271. 271.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Miss Bianca: And this is what I don’t get. Lefties in the 1930s? Sure, they could have kidded themselves about the USSR being a “worker’s paradise” (unless and until they actually went there, that would have been a rude – even deadly – awakening)

    They did, here is one account of that.

    https://youtu.be/Wkw21YfvpBk

  272. 272.

    Kent

    @Miss Bianca:What is the Chinese official take on this action? Have they issued one?

    They strongly opposed Russia’s recognition of the breakaway Donbas region.  Which I suspect they viewed through the Taiwan lens.  If breakaway republics are legitimate in one part of the world then they are legitimate with respect to Taiwan as well, which is, in effect, a breakaway province of China.

  274. 274.

    Kattails

    @Chris: saw a photo a couple of days ago that showed four of the oligarch’s superyachts parked in a single seaport in Spain. One had just been taken out for a run. The suggestion was to seize all of them. Wish I could remember where I saw it.

  276. 276.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kent: The US does have a lot to answer for in terms of it’s actions around the planet in the latter half of the 20th Century.  Chile, Guatemala, Iran, Vietnam, etc.  But not every world event can or should be viewed through that lens.

    And even then things aren’t simplistically black and white as the Hard Left tries to pretend. Chile, for example, was always presented to me as this peace loving democracy until Nixon and the CIA screwed it up and reading up on it, Nixon basically backed the group of vicious bastards who were winning in a three way civil war. Seems more likely the CIA damn fault the US got blamed for it because the CIA took credit for a coupe that already had succeeded.

  278. 278.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Matt McIrvin: Remember the Good Old Days when we used to duck underneath our desks in school to prepare for a nuclear attack? Holy Missiles of October, Batman.

  280. 280.

    Matt McIrvin

    @The Thin Black Duke: I was JUST barely too young for that–my first awareness of the threat was my teacher mentioning that they had those drills when she was in school, but now the bombs are so powerful that they don’t bother any more.

  281. 281.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    “What happens when confidential cases where state court judges have no real public oversight also issue gag orders against participants and control whether you ever get your kids back in the most conservative Federal judicial district/appellate circuit?”

    You pegged it – elite intellectual lawyers against garden variety trial judges…

  283. 283.

    Soprano2

    @lowtechcyclist: Thanks!, and yes, Republicans were constantly calling Democrats communists who were sympathetic with the Soviet Union and Russia. It’s head-spinning for me to see Republicans supporting a Russian dictator!

  284. 284.

    Kent

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:And even then things aren’t simplistically black and white as the Hard Left tries to pretend. Chile, for example, was always presented to me as this peace loving democracy until Nixon and the CIA screwed it up and reading up on it, Nixon basically backed the group of vicious bastards who were winning in a three way civil war. Seems more likely the CIA damn fault the US got blamed for it because the CIA took credit for a coupe that already had succeeded.

    My wife is Chilean and lived through that coup as a little child.  Her extended family are all wealthy and pretty right-wing.  But her immediate family were on the cusp of immigrating to New Zealand in the aftermath but never pulled the trigger.  From what I understand of that history, it likely would have succeeded regardless of whether or not the US intervened.  The Allende regime was already crashing and burning and extremely unpopular with the middle and upper classes who ran the country and the economy.  Although perhaps American support strengthened and prolonged the Pinochet regime after it took over.

    But the larger point is that I suspect much of the  pro-Russian bullshit from the usual lefty suspects is really just reflexive latent Anti-Americanism rather than any sort of thoughtful pro-Russian argument.

  285. 285.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kent:

    In my mind it isn’t so much pro-Russian as instinctual anti-Americanism.

    Yeah, that I get. Hell, I suffered from knee-jerk anti-Americanism myself for most of my youth. Of course, there *were* plenty of examples of terrible American behavior to fuel that stance.

    I just don’t understand how anyone can kid themselves *now* that the alternatives of any stripe are somehow more laudable than democracy, flawed as America’s example might be.

  286. 286.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kay: the attack on LGBTQ kids just killed me yesterday. Makes me cry. I want them protected by decent adults. So vulnerable.

    Abbott is unleashing an anti-trans pogrom.  I don’t think any lesser word suffices.

    First they took thousands of kids away from their refugee parents at our southern border.  Now they’re going to be taking trans kids away from their parents in Texas (and I bet other states follow suit, if nobody stops Abbott from proceeding).

    This is becoming a real thing with them.  Family values!

  287. 287.

    geg6

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: ​ That’s been pretty much who he is always. He lurves him some boom boom and dead people in the streets. He gets to look like a tough guy on camera, guys! What else is there in life than that?​
     
    I have despised him for years and, since he showed his true colors in Afghanistan, I’m happy to see I’m not the only one any more.

  288. 288.

    debbie

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    Jesus, yes. I also remember looking over and seeing my baby brother run around the playground trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue. Some smartass older kid had just said his dad had heard Kruschev’s missiles had made the snow radioactive.

  289. 289.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Eolirin: Best comment of the thread, IMO. Heck, even in the short term we are now living the consequences of the Kremlin Kriminals eroding democracies around the globe.

  291. 291.

    Xennial Dysentery Dodger (fka as Texasboyshaun)

    @Spanky: today for me is a good day. I barely slept last night so the coffee is working extra hard!

  292. 292.

    Bill Arnold

    @Cacti:

    So, what is an acceptable number of countries to sacrifice to him?

    What is your probability estimate that Mr. V. Putin is in power in Russia 3 years from now? Even absent a hot war with the West?
    (And if Russia starts a nuclear war, even with a false flag detonation on their territory, Russia will be destroyed and survivors worldwide for the next 100 years will hunt down remaining Russians and kill them.)

  293. 293.

    Bill Arnold

    @Kent:

    Dictators can cling to power for a very long time as their economy collapses around them.

    Russia is the land of open window accidents and “heart attacks”, sometimes with associated head trauma. Not to mention poisoning and simple killing by firearms.
    How much does Mr. V. Putin trust his guards? Can they really defend him from angry intelligent billionaires?

  294. 294.

    Bill Arnold

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Of course he’d be gambling that we won’t call his bluff.

    And that his brains won’t be exploded by a (Russian) bullet. (Members of the USSR military have been documented to have blocked at least two thermonuclear exchanges on their own initiative. [there might have been more such cases.])

  295. 295.

    J R in WV

    @zhena gogolia:

    Why don’t Putin and TFG just die already? The world would be so much better off.

    While I have no idea who in Russia would replace Putin, we know who in America would fight with one another to replace Trump the day he passes to his ultimate reward, whatever that is for an evil vessel filled with evil scum.
    Fucker Carlson, Beck, Jones, Rafael Eduardo Cruz, Greg Abbot, De Santis… etc. So many more of them I can’t list them here.
    Fifth column indeed, all people in favor of our enemies, whether a virus or a pathological murder in command of a military with nuclear weapons. Call them out as the Fifth Column!

  297. 297.

    J R in WV

    Here’s my thought on sanctions:

    Make Russians drive Russian cars. Update the current class of Mercedes Benz cars to only run 1500 RPM, and stop the supply of parts, oil filters, repair advice, etc. Same for Audi, Volvo, all the European cars, Caddy, Buick, all of them. Lock all the doors, freeze the engines via over the air updates. Would take a while, a lot of work with many big companies, but not impossible.

  298. 298.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling*s Dog

    @geg6: They’re great!  Born in Ashtabula at the age of eleven, her father moved to Winnetka to become the first Department Chair of Higher Mathematics …

    I’ve learned a lot over there, not only about writting and editting either!

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