President Biden speaks LIVE from Brussels, Belgium at 3 pm. They moved up the press conference to 1:15 pm, so it’s already over. But you can still watch here.
He will announce additional sanctions, and I believe he will announce much more than that.
Plus a bonus Cory Booker while we wait – nothing is going to take away his joy.
And Alex Padilla, who I understand was also good. I am about to watch it now.
Open thread.
trollhattan
Wonder how long before Finland decides to join NATO? They were happy to remain “neutral” but any reasons to hesitate must be quickly evaporating. Also, too, an opinion piece on how Russia already “lost” no matter what lies ahead. Among the conclusions, an extended Ukrainian insurgency will be like nothing the world has seen before.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: I would think that every nation in that corner of the world is rethinking their view.
WaterGirl
They started this nearly 2 hours early. So you can watch now at the link up top.
zhena gogolia
Between Ukraine and Jackson, I can’t get any work done . . . .
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: It is hard to focus.
Old School
@WaterGirl: These Biden events, right? Always starting early.
WaterGirl
Biden spoke very briefly and then opened up for questions.
I thought we might be hearing about this humanitarian force from Poland and other nations.
WaterGirl
@Old School:
hahahahaha
Butch
@WaterGirl: I thought the questions Biden got reinforced the view of the press as the south end of a northbound horse.
The Moar You Know
@trollhattan: I am sure that such could be done in secret (and probably should be for now). Sweden and Finland both I am sure are going full speed on joining up, if it hasn’t been concluded already.
dmsilev
@trollhattan: There’s been some muttering that Finland and Sweden are thinking about applying for NATO membership together, as a package deal or something like that.
ian
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t know if it should be. Secret alliances have had a very negative impact on modern European history- they work much better as a open deterrent.
WaterGirl
This was kind of a nothing burger of a press conference. I guess you never know.
laura
Shout out to Senator Padilla! He and Jon Ossoff and Maisie Hirono have distinguished themselves in this proceeding and it furthers both my pride in being a Democrat and the future of the party. We are sending our best and there seems to be a deep bench. Compare and contrast.
Calouste
@trollhattan: The other thing that Russia already lost on are the sanctions. They won’t go away any time soon as long as the current regime stays in power, and no Western consumer company wants to risk being the first one to move back into Russia and face a massive backlash.
CaseyL
@WaterGirl: I think a lot of the problem is how much needs to be left unsaid.
VOR
Finland and Sweden both possibly joining NATO. Germany committing to spending an extra 100B Euros on defense and increasing their defense spending by 1% of GDP. Former Warsaw Pact countries trading in their old Soviet equipment for newer NATO gear. These are strategically bad outcomes for Putin.
Gin & Tonic
@trollhattan: There are US SOF in Poland training Ukrainian resistance already.
Martin
@trollhattan: They’re joining. Public support has grown with every poll. Sweden will likely join as well.
Adam has a better feel for the global military alliance reordering here, but the economic side carries a lot of weight as well. Blackrock is out there saying this is the end of globalization, but I disagree, mainly because the global interdependency that has been created really can’t be undone. I mean, sure, you can change where you buy your commodities like energy or wheat, but value-added goods aren’t going to lose their globalization.
But I do think that Russia is forcing trade relations to be more tightly coupled to security and military relations. That will affect both sides of the equations – a shifting of economics as well as a shifting of military alignments (or perhaps a shift toward more intensity in those alignments).
We’re seeing a rapid disinvestment in Russia and Belarus, for obvious reasons, but also because social pressures are getting too great. 20 years ago you’d never know if KFC had a big operation in Belarus, but social media is making that impossible to downplay and so KFC can’t operate there nearly as easily. Or at least, operating there comes with an opportunity cost in other nations. Americans may not care, but Germans might, and they might lose more business in Germany than they gained in Belarus. 30 years ago corporations were viewed more as unifying forces – bringing McDonalds and Pepsi to Russia would help them see the light of the wonders of the west. That’s gone. Nobody sees it that way any more. If it hadn’t already been dead, Russia just murdered it. The public now views corporations as vehicles for financing bad acts or profiting from them. They are no longer seen as vehicles for social/moral good, but vehicles for social/moral evil. That might be unfair, but that’s what’s happening. It doesn’t matter how much benefit Chick Fil A might bring to the world, that they oppose gay marriage is a sufficient evil to veto the benefit.
That’s causing a host of changes to take place. Investments in China are becoming increasingly difficult to justify, and disinvestment is taking place. Apple’s latest two computers aren’t made in China, they’re made in Malaysia. Is Malaysia a better beneficiary of those jobs? Objectively, who knows, but subjectively yes. The public’s view on China is clear, and their view on Malaysia is undefined. At least for now. But what matters is that it’s a disinvestment from China, which China will have to come to terms with.
What I think we’re seeing here, backed up by Biden Q&A after the NATO meeting today, is an effort to more tightly align economic and security policy from the US and allies. He’s calling for a sanctions enforcement vehicle aligned with NATO. Biden appears to be pushing for a durable effort to wield sanctions and financial controls to shape global policy, in a way to not negate nukes having performed that role throughout the Cold War, but in a way that economic controls + nukes beats nukes alone. But in order to do that, this new body (or subunit of NATO) needs to be able to enforce 2nd order effects. China cannot act as a ‘reseller’ of sanctioned goods to Russia, which means any evidence that is happening needs to be subject to sanctions against China. In effect, NATO gets a veto against all international economic activity of which is doesn’t approve, wielded as a kind of kindred spirit to the UN/international community. And I would think Finland and Sweden want to be a part of that, along with the entire rest of Europe.
In effect what the west is doing is what nukes are designed to do – complete destruction of the Russian economy in a way that Russia cannot counter. But that requires that *all* inputs cease. Germany has to turn off the tap completely for oil/gas. The middle east has to turn off the tap completely for wheat, etc. That requires a very different restructuring of the global trade arrangement because that trade needs to be replaced. Wheat from the US and India and Canada for Russian wheat. Oil, if not from the US and Norway, etc., then substituted by renewables, and so on. You still have globalization, but you have globalization within this more structured preservation of global order, which now excludes Russia (likely as long as Putin is in power) and could exclude China depending on China’s actions.
It’s a sort of functioning UNSC, where Russia and China don’t get a veto. It’s putting down a marker for China to choose between their military and economic interests (knowing that China has a lot more to lose economically than militarily) and basically inviting the rest of the world to be good military powers if they want economic benefits. It’s a gamble. Previously, you could have seen an alternate alliance form and shift finance and trade of key commodities through a Russia/China/Iran etc. but this is a gamble that Russia is now too hot to touch and is too weakened to succeed with such a plan, and that the west is much more galvanized and aligned.
And I don’t think Ukraine is really the reason for it. I think the meddling in various democracies is and rise of authoritarian groups all across the west is the real driver for it. Ukraine simply provided the right time and sufficiently plain-to-see action to get it going. But a lot of what is happening isn’t directly related to Ukraine. I think the west is seeing a window of opportunity to pivot from whatever this post-cold-war period was to something new.
Martin
@Gin & Tonic: Biden was an hour late for the EU meeting where he was supposed to speak, so yeah. He’s too kind to the reporters.
NotMax
No Belgian waffling.
;)
WaterGirl
@laura: I just googled Jon Ossoff so I could watch that. I never fail to be impressed with Ossoff and I imagine this time will be no different
He gives me hope for the future.
Cameron
Enough Sleepy Joe Biden! Here’s what Your Favorite President is up to: https://patch.com/florida/southtampa/s/i6n6f/trump-suit-accuses-clinton-attempt-cripple-election-bid
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: That’s great news. How do we know that?
Roger Moore
@VOR:
Another thing I’ve seen is that some of the captured Russian equipment has been sent to the US for examination. This is something that could easily be ignored, since we’ve had plenty of opportunity to see equipment in former Warsaw Pact countries, but this includes some newer equipment that Russia has never given to other countries.
Jay
@VOR:
Russia gets almost nothing when NATO Nations upgrade their Warsaw Pact gear. Germany does, Poland does, (Twardy), Ukraine does, France does, Israel does.
Ukraine was pretty much the “industrial” heartland of the Soviet Military Industrial Complex. Rockets, missiles, tanks, IFV’s and APC’s, artillery, fighter jets and transport aircraft.
When ex-Warsaw Pact NATO upgraded/upgrade their Soviet gear, it’s mostly electronics, computers, scopes, sights, radars, comm gear, hardpoints to make them compatible with standard NATO gear, comms, procedures and munitions.
Ksmiami
@Calouste: not to mention Russia is taking over foreign company assets so any company that even wanted to get back in wouldn’t risk it…
Frank Wilhoit
@ian: The process, not the outcome. Keep a tight lid on the negotiations, then spring the announcement as as big a surprise as possible.
PJ
@Martin: It wasn’t random that so many countries in the West lined up to enforce sanctions against Russia in such a short period of time. I would guess the Biden Administration, going off their intelligence about Russian plans to invade, had been working on them since the beginning of this year (or before), but I would also think that it came about so easily (relatively) was because so many countries hated what the Russians had been doing in their own countries, not to mention what Putin had done in Russia, Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine.
Biden ran for President on the idea that the soul of America and democracy were at stake. I think other countries see that, too. As you note, this current invasion of Ukraine was the catalyst for so many in the West to act. Since the end of the Cold War, we’ve had thirty years of intermittently feckless and incompetent (when not illegal and immoral) US foreign policy (with a few bright spots) which has enabled democracy to come very close to being snuffed out through corruption and hatred. It is encouraging to see so many countries searching for a better, stronger, democratic order.
Of course, the biggest enemy for most of us not in Ukraine is not a greedy, violent, corrupt, immoral dictator next door, it’s our greedy, violent, corrupt, immoral neighbors right here at home. If we tackle one problem without reducing the other, both are doomed to fail.
Jay
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: You’ll have to trust me.
Betty Cracker
@PJ:
Amen to that. They are interconnected too, so best to address them at the same time.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin: You might have meant that reply for someone else.
BC in Illinois
Lindsey Graham:
This gives me the opportunity to make two points.
First, I can once again express my contempt for Lindsey Graham.
And second, while the press conference may have been fairly ho-hum as far as breaking news, it gave Joe Biden the chance for two extended views of his thinking.
He got to hold forth on sanctions, deterrence, and the need for long-term unity on the sanctions as the way to influence Putin’s decision making.
And he was asked, by a reporter for Der Spiegel, about the 2024 elections, which gave him a chance to look back on what brought him to the presidency; to mention the need to hold the House and the Senate in 2022; to tell the story about telling the European allies in 2021 that the US was “back” and them responding “Yes, but for how long?”; and then his comment regarding the next election that “I’d be very fortunate if I had that same man running against me.”
It was not the carefully-crafted response that I would want the President to make, if I were his speechwriter, but it was a refreshing view of how he’s thinking about himself, the world, and politics.
And I like how he thinks.
Martin
@WaterGirl: It was reported somewhere (can’t recall but I’ll look) that US SOF had been in Ukraine training their military since 2014 to deal specifically with a Russian invasion.
I’ve not seen any reporting of continued training since the war started, but I wouldn’t be surprised. We usually find out after the fact that the US was doing a bunch of stuff behind the scenes.
Martin
@Gin & Tonic: Indeed I did. I was eating lunch. That’s my excuse.
Jay
Matt McIrvin
@ian: An alliance with a military deterrent, nuclear or no, is like the doomsday machine in “Dr. Strangelove”: the whole point of it is lost if you keep it a secret.
On the other hand, secret preparations might make sense, before the actual alliance is official.
Gin & Tonic
Just in case anyone who was still looking to contribute $ to help Ukraine was thinking of the Red Cross, here you go:
The International Committee of the Red Cross is complicit in crimes against humanity. They sat around in Ukraine, accomplished nothing, and are now “helping” in Russia, which means assisting with civilians who have been kidnapped and forcibly moved to Russia. Since we’re all so sensitive to war crimes and Geneva Conventions on this blog….
Gin & Tonic
@Jay: So they don’t float?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@BC in Illinois: Graham has made such an ass of himself over the last few days, that I need a detox break before I read his stupidity again. How can he live with himself and not collapse from mortification?
Matt McIrvin
@Jay: oh no, they’ve got underwater tanks now
Old School
@Cameron:
I’m not sure he’s thought this thing through.
Baud
@Old School:
There’s a four year statute of limitations on civil RICO claims so I is especially confused.
Probably about fundraising. I can only imagine the email solicitations.
Heidi Mom
What a living/breathing/speaking refutation of the “Biden’s lost it” allegations that was! The President was forthright, concise (the answer to one two-part question: “No, and no”), jocular when appropriate, chastising when appropriate, and thoroughly in command of the facts. And ready, maybe even a little eager, to face TFG again in 2024, if things should turn out that way. Really, we’ve gone from the worst to the best.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
Yeah, we are. Sorry you aren’t.
Roger Moore
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I believe a shameectomy is mandatory before assuming high rank in the Republican party.
Roger Moore
@Old School:
I look forward to discovery.
gvg
Russia’s economy would not have been so wrecked by the sanctions if they had not first, come to depend on us. Before the iron curtain came down, they produced most of their stuff at home, or went without. They apparently did somewhat better at the production but were falling further and further behind in goods even though most of their citizens didn’t know it. So building up trade with them in the past, actually worked out for us now.
Keeping them under sanctions is likely to gradually hurt their ability to cyber attack us as they can’t acquire the latest equipment or parts. That is good.
In theory, they should after a while, be able to build some of their own supplies again and ignore us, but I am not sure they really can with the level of corruption they have.
China has built their economy much smarter and can make things. We can’t hurt them as much this way and it would hurt us much more than Russian sanctions. That means we need a different strategy for them. It does not mean we should helplessly give up before they do anything.
North Korea is more like the old USSR, with no economic links to us. They also would need a totally different strategy. The different problem states have different levers. I am glad Biden and staff found Russia’s weak points.
Covid disruptions were already teaching most countries that some self sufficiency is safer. This war is reinforcing that. I do worry about Covid and the Russian and Ukrainian armies. I am almost certain the results are going to be bad.
Martin
@Old School: Indeed he has not. I’m sure the DNC would LOVE to have discovery on that.
schrodingers_cat
Deleted.
Jay
@Martin:
US and NATO training missions were in Ukraine, as Ukraine agreed to deploy forces to UN Missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The goals were professionalism, communication, interoperability, tactics.
Those training missions expanded over the years as Ukraine followed the NATO model of aggregating Combined Arms Teams from various units at the Company level, to tailor forces to the mission, (mix and match).
If the whole UA was trained up, then Ukraine missions would not be limited by unit training ( for mix and match).
UA deployments in both theatres received unit citations from their allies and Command Staff for their performance.
Cameron
@Old School: I’m not sure he does that “thinking” thing.
matt
@BC in Illinois: Graham is such a tiny little man. The President can talk about what he wants to talk about. He has spoken at length about Ukraine and is working every day on it. He is winning. Shut up.
Gravenstone
@dmsilev: Well, no one can tell those Norse apart anyway…
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I suspect this is a fundraising lawsuit rather than one that’s expected to go anywhere. From the reporting I saw, the lawsuit was facially flawed, e.g. failing to specify what relief they expected if they won. Somebody else said the statute of limitations has already passed, too. So it’s a cheap way to generate some publicity and then claim the courts are stacked against him without having to deal with pesky problems like discovery after the case is summarily thrown out.
gvg
@Gin & Tonic:
Humanitarian organizations HAVE to talk to belligerents in a war. So do Diplomats. There is a lot of talk talk that doesn’t do shit until sometimes something works. Many times it doesn’t work. This is not a situation where shunning Russia will do diddly squat. It would be malpractice for them not to talk.
Of course, that does not mean that the Red Cross guy is doing good. It just means that the info provided does not actually prove the organization is corrupt. It’s…nothing.
I haven’t been impressed with the RC for awhile because they take too high a % of donations for administration, and don’t always get $ to victims quickly, compared to other organizations.
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
it’s more that Oryx has been dealing with using open source information to confirm losses, both Russian and UA,
he and his group have been working 10 hours a day, (plus their day jobs) and they have a massive backlog of lost Russian weapons to confirm.
now he and his group have to identify a lost Russian AFV/Tank, just from the tank treads sticking out of the water.
He’s seriously considering just GTFU and classifying it as an “Unidentified Russian Naval Loss”.
The Moar You Know
@Martin: I saw that. Read their release. I think they’re dead wrong.
Martin
@gvg: Russia has two problems. There’s the corruption as you’ve noted, but also they’ve not kept pace with the west technologically. And that’s a really hard problem to solve.
Think of a pretty standard industrialized country industry – automaking. All modern automaking is to some degree automated. Robots and shit like that. Can Russia build robots? Nope. They can build cars, but not robots. Robots come from Japan and Germany mostly. China is getting there. The US has some. So Russia now potentially has access to Chinese robots, but no others. Can they build that industry? Sure, but it’ll take a decade. And they’ll still be a decade behind if not more. And this stuff compounds. They’re going to have to pick and choose, so the stuff they stay reasonably on top of will come at the expense of stuff they make almost no progress toward.
For instance, Russia kinda doesn’t do oil/gas exploration. The hire US companies to do it. They’ve all left.
And where does Russia get the financing for this? Are they going to be willing to send their best people out of the country for education, knowing they probably won’t come back? And Russia isn’t a rich country. Per capita GDB was about $10K before the war. They’re going to emerge with a substantially lower per capital GDP than China, or any country in Europe. And while Germany is still buying their gas, nobody is buying their oil. They’re putting oil up 30% below the global price and getting no takers.
Martin
@Roger Moore: We really need to be a lot more aggressive sanctioning lawyers.
The Moar You Know
@Frank Wilhoit: you understood my somewhat incoherent post. Exactly. Fait accompli.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
I scanned the complaint and it alleges some continuing activities after the 2016 election including “to this day” so the statute of limitations may be only a partial issue.
Gin & Tonic
@gvg: The ICRC accomplished exactly jack shit in Ukraine.
Geminid
@Martin: These were Army Special Forces- “Green Berets”- who were training Ukrainian soldiers in recent years. The Pentagon announced during the week before the invasion that “all” U.S. troops had left Ukraine, but I doubt that the Special Forces unit went far. A battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division is posted in eastern Poland and that’s a logical place for the Special Forces unit. They and the 82nd Airborne share Fort Bragg, North Carolina as their stateside base.
Jeffro
I’m laughing my ass off at trumpov suing everyone he ever had a grudge against while ignoring the very real consequences of discovery.
I’m seething at Moscow Mitch refusing to vote for Judge Jackson, with his #1 complaint being that she didn’t come out forcefully against SCOTUS expansion. It’s very telling. He and Leonard Leo and all of those scumbags must be terrified that all their hard, corrupt work buying a majority on SCOTUS could be undone in an instant. It must be on their minds all the time that if we Dems played by #McConnellRules, the Court would already have 13 members.
Wapiti
@gvg: This is the IRC, not the US Red Cross, so the fundraising numbers might be different. The IRC is the organization that is typically involved in watching the well-being of POWs, for example. Do they sometimes seem hapless? Yes, but someone has to serve the role of the POW/interned civilian advocate. That’s their role.
Betty Cracker
Interesting moment:
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
There’s a limit to how secretive democratic countries can be about this kind of thing. The driving force behind Sweden and Finland thinking about NATO membership is public opinion, so keeping the fact of the negotiations on membership secret is not going to be popular.
burnspbesq
You wonder whether there aren’t quiet conversations going on between Poland and Lithuania about a potential opportunity to “do something” about Kaliningrad.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: The whole answer is good, not just the quoted line.
marcopolo
Lol, here is yet another Twitter thread ? regarding how bad the Russian army in Ukraine is at logistics: basically says RU logistics are un-pallet-ably screwed up ?:
https://mobile.twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1507056013245128716
I will now show myself out…
trollhattan
Contemptible pair being held in contempt.
It’s saying a lot that Navarro was one of the Trumpers who got my blood boiling faster than nearly all the others.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: One thing that complicates it is that there are now a few NATO members that are going hard authoritarian or are authoritarian-curious–Turkey and Hungary, arguably Poland too. Biden has to be thinking about that already.
trollhattan
@BC in Illinois:
Aww, sounds like little Lindsay needs a hug. Where’s DiFi?
Martin
So, the ship sunk last night Ukraine is claiming was taken down by a Bayraktar. That might square with what we saw. I suspected it wasn’t a ballistic missile as was first claimed because there was clearly a fire before any explosion, but one way (maybe the only way) a Bayraktar could take down a ship of that size would be to fire into an open cargo bay holding munitions, and the front bay was wide open. Basically, Ukraine threw a match into a pile of oily rags. The ship then destroys itself from the inside out.
It’s a clever solution, and a really tough one to counter. Requires a bit of luck that you hit something flammable/explosive (most things in war are) but being guided remotely lets you assess that, and it’s cheap to try, and the payoff is big if it works.
Martin
Also being reported that Ukraine is out of capacity to house POWs.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
Would it be OK for other countries to take those POWs off their hands? Asking for a multi-national alliance entirely capable of managing this.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
It’s very likely G&T has friends, associates, and family being war crimed against. I’m saddened by your remark. Sensitivity is only successful when it’s mutual.
Jay
@Geminid:
there weren’t just US SOF forces in Ukraine engaged in training missions with the UA.
every NATO member has had training missions rotating through helping train the UA on everything from Logistics to Command and Control.
Since Afghanistan the key role of SOF has been “eyes forward” and small unit “lightning strikes”, not “resistance” creation. As “Wali” has noted, the key role of a sniper team these days, in more conventional combat, is unseen eyes and ears deployed forward of the “lines”, reporting back.
it’s not so much overwatch and defrenstration, or even counter sniper.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
Apparently at least one of the lawyers on Trump’s team has been sanctioned in the past:
I doubt the tweet will show up properly, but it shows Peter Ticktin, the lead attorney on the case, previously had his license suspended for 3 months.
geg6
@Martin:
I completely agree with this. Kind of amazing to see.
dmsilev
@Cameron: RICO, huh? Has anyone done a wellness check on Popehat yet?
zhena gogolia
@debbie: And I have loved ones whom everyone on here is wishing dead.
Calouste
@Martin: Russia not being able to sell its oil is a double whammy for them. First they don’t get any money for it, second it costs money to either store excess production somewhere, or to lower their production so that it doesn’t outrun domestic demand.
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: I do.
Lyrebird
I guess I’m still shaking off the memories of the Trump maladministration. Watching a competent and caring grownup do a good job, particularly with something important, is glorious to see.
Thanks for posting the press conference link as well as the rest!
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: I’m not sure complicating is the issue. I think that rise is why we’re seeing NATO galvanizing, and why booting Russia out of Ukraine isn’t the only goal, but also stopping the influence campaigns coming out of Russia, China, etc.
Jay
@zhena gogolia:
Putin’s your Uncle? Thomas is your Godfather?
Whom exactly do you think that “everyone here” wishes were dead?
Fair Economist
@gvg:
Not when it comes to computer chips. Those require enormous economies of scale today and one country can’t do it without selling a lot to the rest of the world to pay for it all. And those are the key to all the good stuff, both militarily and cyber.
Ksmiami
@zhena gogolia: No one is wishing your family Ill – we just need the current Russian government to fall and for them to stop their criminal war ok.
Fair Economist
@zhena gogolia: I haven’t seen any call for Russians in general to be dead, just a few strategic ones like Putin and top authorities. Certainly I don’t wish ill on Russians as a people.
Kelly
@Fair Economist: It’s even more than economies of scale. Equipping and supplying a chip fab is as globalized as you can get.
zhena gogolia
@Ksmiami: I do too.
ETA: It’s not family, but as good as. Better than, really.
I’m responding to
“we just need the current Russian government to fall and for them to stop their criminal war ok.” — I agree.
Spanky
@zhena gogolia: Look, I’ve got a long list, but I doubt you personally know anyone on it.
Uncle Cosmo
And Fux Noise will slice & dice the video to make it look like Uncle Joe’s a senile old fool for the benefit of their
advertising revenueviewers. (I’m sure you know this.)Still pondering how the truth might break through to those people, each of whom, truth be told, has exactly as many votes in the next election as a thoughtful and ethical Democrat who might live up the block…:^(
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gin & Tonic:
I listened to it live. Thought the Red Cross asshole was going to give Lavrov a sloppy blowjob at the dais.
Something is seriously wrong there. Those “talks” should have been concluded by day 3 of the war.
Even my wife was commenting on the effusive praise and the call out by first name.
Ksmiami
@Gin & Tonic: the Red Cross is a bad charity.
geg6
@zhena gogolia:
FWIW, I feel deeply for most of the Russian people. Those who oppose Putinism and even those who are just too propagandized to see what is really happening. I have always felt that for Russians. But there are a lot of Russians (just as there are here) who are pure evil and must be stopped by all means necessary. I haven’t seen anyone else here wishing death and destruction on the Russian people as a whole.
Captain C
@Old School: Hillary’s lawyers are probably salivating over discovery in this lawsuit. “Yes, we’d like all communications between Trump, his Org, and the Russians. Why? To show that they were working together…”
Ishiyama
@marcopolo: For want of a nail, the shoe was lost — pallets are so easy to produce, too.
Ruckus
@Butch:
Not all of the press is that bad. Too many of them are far worse.
piratedan
the hurdle that will eventually need to be addressed is how to handle all of these folks that have been lied to and how do we get information to people to make an informed decision. Be they here in the US, India, Russia etc… the people who are in charge of the narrative and the message, they need to be dealt with
Martin
Here’s another component of this that I’m seeing activity on, but having a hard time telling where it will lead. Beyond the usual economic sanctions, we’re seeing some work being done to defang the money anonymity. I want to be more optimistic about this, but the US LOVES money anonymity, so I have a hard time believing it will happen.
I think everyone agrees the situation is completely out of hand, between oligarchs laundering money through the west, shell corporations, tax havens, and in the US dark money, hidden donors, etc. and this is part of what’s allowing influence campaigns to work, etc.
All of these individual sanctions require a system to unwind this to be in place, mainly by being able to reach into these countries and trace how the money is moving around. Getting countries like Switzerland to apply sanctions is a big deal.
The US did some good work on it during the Obama admin WRT foreign tax havens, but domestically things got massively worse due to citizens united. If the US doesn’t have the ability to get Congress to do it directly, doing it through NATO which Congress isn’t going to push against might work.
Martin
@Roger Moore: I think so. Hopefully we could spread the burden out to other countries not dealing with so many refugees.
Speaking of which, the US will take 100K refugees. It’s a start. I propose Biden agree to take one refugee for each life lost to Covid in the US. Give the GOP a choice going forward.
Fair Economist
@marcopolo: Also some speculation that those kinds of mundane logistical issues are how the Ukrainians managed that spectacular ship sinking this morning. That ship had been unloading for three days and still wasn’t done, so the Ukrainians could just lob a Bayraktar missile into a hatch with something flammable/explosize and BOOM.
Captain C
@Jeffro:
“Ah say, Ah say, this [girl]’s* obviously biased, she won’t pledge to repeal the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.”
*In lieu of something probably worse.
JPL
@Ksmiami: It has been for decades.
trollhattan
While Clarence eats hospital Jell-O, things get more interesting for the missus.
JPL
@Captain C: ha She needs to commit to be against court packing, which is not something the Supreme Court decides.
The only one who can pack the court is Mitch.
JPL
@trollhattan: Thomas has a severe case of heartburn and needs to resign.
Ruckus
@Martin:
Well said.
Now.
It doesn’t matter how much benefit Chick Fil A might bring to the world, that they oppose gay marriage is a sufficient evil to veto the benefit.
They bring benefit? Certainly it’s not with the food and I know it’s not with their opposition to gay marriage, so what benefit could they possibly bring?
WaterGirl
@Ksmiami: Well your comment yesterday that Russia should be destroyed was not helpful.
Jay
@Ishiyama:
pallets are easy to produce, the thing is you need pallet jacks, pallet cranes and forklifts to make pallets work.
as the thread noted, a truck transporting palletized MLRS rockets didn’t even have tie down points to secure the double stacked pallets, with predictable consequences.
a semi professional driver would never drive with an unsecured load. A farmboy conscript used to hauling turnips would.
Martin
@Kelly: Yep. Equipment to make chips comes mainly from Netherlands and Japan. Dies come from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, US. Software from the US. IP from the US mostly, some from UK. Stop any one of those and you’re pretty much out of business. The US has a LOT of influence on IP and software. Even China really doesn’t have a lot to offer here.
Russia is about 15-20 years behind the rest of the world on semi, and they were losing ground even before this. And then you put the scale issues on top of all of that.
The Lodger
@Ksmiami: Does anyone know if there’s another charity (besides the Red Cross) that handles blood donations?
Cameron
@Roger Moore: Well, since the Ukrainians’ wheat export crop has been screwed by the invaders, maybe they should offer their customers a chance to replace wheat with…soylent green! I smell profit – when life hands you prisoners, make prisoner-ade!
Ksmiami
@WaterGirl: it’s currently a rogue terrorist state with nukes; the only path forward is a new government and a complete redo of their civil / economic structures so this doesn’t happen again. That doesn’t mean Russia itself is destroyed but yes their current corrupt system needs to be burnt to the ground.
Ksmiami
@The Lodger: I think KOS is linking to a Ukraine medical charity
Geminid
@Jay: The Russians might not have enough straps. They’re probably easy to sell.
debbie
@Baud:
The whole friggin’ conference was great!
Ksmiami
@JPL: Agreed… most of the money is for executives and administration anyway
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
You’re exaggerating. “Everyone”? You know that’s not true.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: video by Robert Costa/CBS news
CBS News @CBSNews · 16mBREAKING: Copies of text messages obtained by CBS News and The Washington Post reveal Ginni Thomas, Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, exchanged texts with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
ETA: Shit. Did I break the blog?
Ksmiami
@Martin: the best thing we could do is give money to Poland, Moldova and Romania to help the Ukrainians resettle etc – those countries are doing the lions share and what we give there will go further
MomSense
I think there are Russian officials, members of government, oligarchs, military officers and personnel who must be prosecuted for war crimes. If it were up to me they would already have been tried for what they did in Syria. Aleppo was the trial run for Mariupol. Then there is the Orthodox Church and I’m sad to say there is an element within the church that has always been willing to justify war crimes. They have never been held accountable for some of the things the church supported in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, also too Chechnya.
I think the subject of Putin is an extraordinary one because of the threat he poses to the world. It would absolutely be the lesser harm if he were to be removed (from office – from the earth). Then there is the 60% of the population who support this war and previous atrocities committed by the Russian state. We have to insist on a truth and reconciliation process not just to have a hope of something better for Russia after this, but also because the same ethno nationalism and authoritarianism is spreading in Poland, Turkey, Greece, Hungary, the United States, etc. There has to be a rigorous, public process. I don’t see another way forward.
I have sympathy for the people who are in thrall to the disinformation and propaganda but it cannot be an excuse. We have to demand better. There must be some kind of consequence, formal acknowledgement or accountability for the people who disseminate and consume this shit.
We can’t just go back to whatever it was before. Humanity is in crisis. Assuming we survive this we are facing a climate that is rapidly incompatible with life. Enough is enough.
sdhays
@Roger Moore: I asked that question yesterday (?) – although not as pithy you – and the answer I got was that there are Geneva Conventions on these things and the country the POWs go to should be a neutral country that both Ukraine and Russia agree on.
I assume that means a country that hasn’t imposed any sanctions on Russia.
Martin
@Ruckus: I said ‘might’. But let’s say jobs. And their food is pretty darn good. Shame it’s not good enough.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Meadows to Ginni:
Ginni to Mark:
Who do you think she means by “my best friend”?
Ksmiami
@MomSense: Seconded. This isn’t about whether Russia has good people or not (it does), it’s about a country that has enabled a government to pose an existential threat to its neighbors and the world. Enough.
WaterGirl
@The Lodger: Depending on what you’re asking I may have an answer for you. I believe that one of the five charities we have in the thermometer up top – the vets one – us doing medical supplies, blood etc. So if you’re looking to donate to one that will actually help you know civilians who have been injured I believe that would be a great one.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Thomas’s medical issue looking pretty convenient.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: no you did not. At least not on my phone.
Leto
@WaterGirl: @Martin: Here you go:
The US Army’s Green Berets quietly helped tilt the battlefield a little bit more toward Ukraine
And as others have noted, they’re not the only SF there doing these missions. Poland’s SF has been training their Ukrainian counterparts, as well as Ukrainian civilians, in a number of different areas. The US has spent a lot of time and effort in training our fellow NATO members (I was involved with a number of those missions), ensuring that the competency level is very high for any joint force utilization, as well as ensuring that the individuals are able to take those skills back to their respective units and train their people. It’s been a core competency of the US military since the late 50s. As Martin pointed out, it’s a way of tying economic and military security together.
Geminid
@Fair Economist: There might also have been a deficiency in air defense. The Bayraktar TB-2 is a relatively slow platform that operates best at several thousand feet of altitude, making it vulnerable to surface to air missiles. Reporting is that the Ukrainians are approaching targets at a low altitude to avoid detection, but they still are vulnerable when they ascend to an altitude suitable for firing their air to ground missiles. The Ukrainians may have refined this tactic, but it may be that Russian forces didn’t have SAMs or were too slack to employ them.
trollhattan
@MomSense: My assumption is Russians aren’t as isolated from media as Chinese are, and can access accurate information about Ukraine et al if they wish to. Just because every remaining Russian mass media outlet is effectively Fox News, doesn’t mean the diet needs to solely consist of Fox News.
Martin
@MomSense: I’m guessing we’ll see a repeat to Serbia. Declare the appropriate people including Putin to be war criminals and the sanctions stay on so long as they are kept in power. Sanctions relief comes with justice. It’s up to the Russian people to decide when and how that comes about.
debbie
@MomSense:
Well stated. ?
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: her husband?
Wapiti
@The Lodger: In Puget Sound area, blood donations are handled by Bloodworks Northwest. When we lived in the Palo Alto area, I donated at Standford Hospital’s blood center. I’m not sure if most other areas have Red Cross exclusively.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: duh Probably not Anita, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she drunk called her again.
dmsilev
@WaterGirl: John and Abigail Adams should sue for copyright infringement.
(for those who don’t know, they wrote endless letters to each other, with the salutation ‘my dearest friend’)
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Her husband according to Jane Mayer.
You can read the article here
Jay
@Geminid:
as has been noted by the Road and Truck Maintenance comments on Twitter, most of the RA trucks don’t even have tie down points for securing cargo.
Roger Moore
@Ishiyama:
It’s not just pallets, though. To get the full benefit of palletized freight, you need to have the whole infrastructure for picking it up and moving it around- cranes, fork lifts, pallet jacks, etc. It sounds as if it’s that infrastructure that Russia doesn’t have on their military transport, so they’re having to handle everything by hand.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Her sock puppet.
Ruckus
@Martin:
I’ve eaten there. Before. Then I found out. Never again. It isn’t even close to that good. And you should know that the ship I was on almost had a mutiny over dinner one day. Lifers I was sitting on the mess deck with were discussing breaking into the gun locker and taking over the ship. I know bad food, passable food and good food. I’ve seen/eaten food that people wanted to get up in firearms about and perform mutiny. At best Chikc Fil A was/is passable. OK that does make it better than another famous place, with some sort of arches, which has given me food poisoning. Twice. Two different states/times. And no I haven’t eaten again there either, in 32 yrs.
satby
@Gin & Tonic: Never give to the Red Cross. Ever.
schrodingers_cat
This would make a great short story or a novel.
Geminid
@Geminid: The Times of Israel reprinted a good AP story on the TB-2 drone on March 17, titled “Cheap, lethal drone surprisingly effective at bolstering Ukrainian defences.”
The authors posited that the TB-2 drones would become less effective as Russian air defenses were stood up, because:
Evidently that did not stop that Bayrakar from getting a shot off at the ship.
The article also said that the TB-2 is produced by Baykar defense industries, owned by the family of Solcuk Bayraktar, who happens to be the son-in-law of Turkish President Recip Erdogan.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
That org is very good as far as I know and been able to determine.
evodevo
@Old School: Ya think? That discovery process is gonna be spectacular…
zhena gogolia
@Geminid: Bayraktar means “standard-bearer.”
WaterGirl
@Baud: I had the same thought.
Jay
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/03/a-call-for-arms-weapons-that-ukraine.html?m=1
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: I wonder if one of Mr. Bayraktar’s ancestors had that job long ago.
Jay
@Geminid:
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2021/12/a-monument-of-victory-bayraktar-tb2.html?m=1
zhena gogolia
@Geminid: I know a Montenegrin restaurateur whose name has that root. I think it might be fairly common.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
satby
@Ruckus: Loath as I am to defend them, Chick-Fil-A has a policy of hiring ex-offenders, often the only large company in an area willing to.
I still like Popeyes better.
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh please, let this take him down. I’m not holding my breath, though.
ETA: The Coke can didn’t do it.
The Lodger
@Wapiti: I’ll check the situation in Portland, OR. Thanks!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
How can he be taken down? The GOP wouldn’t vote to remove him even if he had been at Jan 6.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Spoilsport.
The Lodger
@Wapiti: And… there’s a blood connection center just off I-205 in Vancouver. Close enough.
marcopolo
@Fair Economist: Lol, of course. Amazing how interconnected stuff is.
Leto
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: well Thomas said that none of his families seditious connections will have any bearing on his rulings. So just, you know, trust his word… (hard sarcasm/vomit going on here)
@satby: Popeyes is the superior chicken. Bojangles is close behind.
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: 13th century Ottoman warlord: “You get a banner! And you get a banner! And you get a banner!”
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was just looking to confirm the part that Anderson’s parents were Goldwater, not Rockefeller, Republicans, but the rest of it…. why can’t these people just get therapy? no kindly priest or preacher to find a kindly way to tell young Ginni, ‘You know, your parents were assholes…” (I’m an unkindly atheist, so I could never fill that role)
Jay
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-people-taken-russia-1.6396247
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Still better than being a lawyer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
If Durbin had the balls to use his Gavel! //
Spanky
@piratedan:
“Pack your bags, kids! We’re heading to FEMA Camp!”
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
Unfortunately it would be about a paragraph longer.
One of the lifers, in deference to partaking in a mutiny, took his tray up to the wardroom, dropped it on the table and told the captain “This is my dinner, this is all my dinner, what are you going to do about it?” (I had 2 separate confirming reports, one officer and one a steward that I knew) He then had to explain and the XO went down to the mess deck and there was a bit of yelling back and forth between him and the cooks and about a minute later the Captain came on the intercom and stated, “This is all we have for dinner but you can eat all you want and the galley will stay open til the last person is full.” It got marginally better. And BTW we’d been out to sea for weeks and there wasn’t much food left which is why it was a problem. Awww the navy life…….
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Heh. Never bring a knife to a gavel fight.
Jay
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/american-volunteer-foreign-fighters-ukraine-russia-war/627604/
Ruckus
@satby:
Few are all bad, all the time. I’m sure they have good intentions. OK I’m not real sure but I’ll give them the benefit. But think about it, they will hire ex prisoners but allowing gay anything is too much? Maybe they could just mind their own fucking business? Just a thought.
WaterGirl
@Jay: oh my god.
Geminid
@Ruckus: I know that Chick Filet’s owner told an interviewer some years ago that he opposed same sex marriage, prompting a boycott. Has anyone developed evidence since then that company discriminates against employees on the basis of sexual orientation? Or is this just being inferred?
Brachiator
@Geminid:
Don’t know how individual restaurants treat employees. I don’t know how they could get around the law.
An eatery in Southern California that I have visited is kind to all customers, including gay families.
I think it’s goofy that they are closed on Sundays.
Kalakal
@Jay: What a horrible way to die
Geminid
@Brachiator: I think shutting down on Sunday is good for their employees. So long as they give Saturday Sabbatarians like Muslim, Seventh Day Adventist, and Jewish people Saturdays off I have no problems with this.
I used to live near a pastry factory owned by Seventh Day Adventists. It was big. Covered gondola rail cars delivered flour and sugar that was vacuumed into the building. Lard came in heated tanker cars. No one worked there from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, not even contractors.
I always thought that a war on diabetes could be started there on a Saturday with a couple of 2000 lb. bombs. “Unwrap this smile, Little Debbie!”
Ruckus
@Geminid:
I have no idea. But if he’s the owner he has a lot of clout because he has money. I’m not giving him any of mine. There are other options for food. And yes I have eaten there and it isn’t as bad as some places. I don’t think it’s great.
There has to be a reason he was asked or gave the information. If it was a source that is prejudiced or if is a source that accepts that kind of info as important is not important to me, he made the statement. He has the right to feel that way and I have the right never to eat in his place of business.
The Pale Scot
@Jay:
Holy Shit. Jerry Pournelle’s world of light infantry ruling the battlefield because of effective AT and AA missiles is becoming fact. t
marcopolo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: See, it is shit like this that makes me doubt the existence of God cause if there were a god this story would have broken on Monday and some D senator would have been able to ask KBJ if she would recuse herself from a case before the court that potentially implicated her spouse in a criminal conspiracy to overthrow the US gov’t.
Roger Moore
@The Pale Scot:
Part of the reason the Ukrainians are able to be so effective is because the Russians aren’t coordinating well. Tanks are supposed to work closely with their own infantry, who keep enemy infantry from getting “scary close”. Then the tanks can use their heavy weapons to attack bunkers and pillboxes the infantry would have a hard time with on their own. This is the basic concept of combined arms: you use the different kinds of troops together so they can cover for each other’s weaknesses.
Geminid
@Ruckus: I was actually curious. I would draw the line at patronizing Chick Filet if they had a reputation of discrimination. As it is I eat there maybe once a year if that. Their waffle fries seem to have less fat so I guess they are healthier, but I don’t get fast food for it’s health value, more the opposite.
Mr. Cathy, the owner, made his notorious comments about same sex marriage to a reporter from a religious publication. He did not seem to go out of his way to make them but he did and he had to live with them. The comments may have helped his business overall but I don’t think he had that in mind.
Uncle Cosmo
IMO that’s highly likely. Reümember that Turks did not have surnames until required to by the Surname Law of 1934. And many chose surnames that reflected personal or family history. Until 24 November 1934, the founder of the Turkish state was known as Mustafa Kemal Pasha – Kemal (clever) a nickname he’d earned as a student, Pasha (general officer) his army rank. The Grand National Assembly insisted he take the surname Atatürk – “father of the Turks” in the same sense as George Washington was “father of his country.” His right-hand man and eventual successor, Ismet Pasha, took the surname Inönü after the location of his greatest victory. /tmi
Jinchi
It’s won’t be an insurgency if Russia never takes control of the country.
Uncle Cosmo
Gosharootie, Buffalo Bob, I nearly “fell in” with that bunch in my late 20s – though I never heard anything about nekkid fat-shaming. 8^O (I was saved by a snowstorm that kept me from driving down on the night I was spozeta join. Much more to the story but not worth the keystrokes…)
SiubhanDuinne
@Old School:
Such a sore winner.
Leto
@Geminid:
Chick-fil-A’s Owner Is Bankrolling Hate Groups Targeting Trans Kids
I mean, it’s like a 5 sec Google search to bring up a ton of articles from at least 2019 forward showing they’re still funding hate groups.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Pale Scot: Hold your horses on that. The Russians are doing armored warfare poorly and getting their asses kicked. It does not follow that that armor is no longer effective.
Ruckus
@Leto:
I had never looked but the sources that I had heard about seemed realistic, as I see that they actually are. I figured where there is fire their must be some sort of heat. And there is.
Geminid
@Leto: Well, I was curious, but I was not asserting positively that Chik Filet had no record of employment discrimination, which is what I thought the commenter was implying and I was speaking to.
Thank you for this information about their political propagandizing.