"Take Macron off call waiting"
Dead. https://t.co/1V8YrrtKKZ— soonergrunt ???? A Capybara Appreciation Account (@soonergrunt) July 1, 2022
The General Pavel referenced in connection to McDonalds’:
I think we found Trump’s “400 pound hacker”.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) June 27, 2022
One thing dictators cannot stand is mockery. They are, in fact, intimately aware of its power because they do it all the time.
Much of official Russian foreign policy could be classified as literal trolling, from twitter to television to Lavrov's baboonish scat-flinging. https://t.co/YCuZUqoiV0
— Peter Wolf (@peterawolf) June 30, 2022
War For Ukraine Day 129: The War In the East Grinds On
scav
Please. Don’t. Imagine the consequences of provoking Putin into a shirts-off contest with Nato with that in active service.
Oh.
I should have just gone straight to bed.
Jesse
The picture with the huge general looks somewhat fake to me. I find it credible that Putin needs to go to the bottom of the barrel to get people to staff his military, don’t get me wrong. But just look at the way the fat guy’s left shoulder (viewer’s left, not his left) meets the suit jacket of the guy next to him. And the guy has like zero decorations. I thought generals would have a ton of flare, but this guy looks like he got some ammo cloth in bulk from a discount store and made a giant outfit for himself.
Chetan Murthy
@Jesse: Don’t know what to make of him: it’s reported in multiple places, but they all use the same picture, and nobody gives his first name. Can’t find him in Wikipedia either. Smells like misinformation, gotta say.
NotMax
‘@Jesse
North Korean military brass snatched up all the medals.
Quaker in a Basement
“He weighs nearly 300 pounds now”
Who did his workup? Ronny Jackson?
Jesse
@Chetan Murthy: It may well be. Notice that they just refer to the guy without any additional contextual information. As if we’re all supposed to know who “General Pavel” is. It could be a kind of disinfo campaign.
Doug
And they called him Vladimir Longtables, Poisoner of Underpants, Autocrat of Just a Few of the Russias.
Brachiator
This guy looks like he might be the barrel.
And yeah, I note that there might be fakery involved here.
debbie
The Twitter account Darth Putin totally cracks me up.
Tony Jay
I’ll say one thing for General Pavel, hefting around a bulk like that in a country with Russia’s life-expectancy figures, guy’s a survivor.
Also, if you were crafting the ultimate deep-cover agent to drop (figuratively) behind MAGAworld lines…
Ruckus
@Jesse:
@Chetan Murthy:
He was taken out of retirement. what he’s wearing is likely the only thing military like they could find for him to wear. If you are talking like he has no right arm, it looks like he’s got both hands behind his back, which is likely the only place they can touch. As much as this looks weird this is a stance that I’ve seen senior officers use before if they are attempting to look like they are paying attention. They absolutely do not want to stand there with their hands in pockets and so this is not an uncommon pose. Not one you’d normally see in civilian life. Looks like they are listening, paying attention, but really would rather be anywhere else.
JWR
Unless Generalisimo Fat Cheeks is really short, I’d guess much closer to 400lbs, and that’s if the picture is authentic.
And a thought on T***p. I think the reason he’s thinking about getting into the nomination process so early, perhaps as soon as next month, is because he smells indictment.
There, I said it. I believe it. It’ll happen. Watch. It goes something like this…
And so on and so forth. So, if we all just wish really hard… ; )
Tony Jay
@JWR:
Makes sense. We know he’s guilty as sin, they know he’s guilty as sin, he knows he’s guilty as sin. Indict him, take the process away from the political theatre of Impeachment and into the realm of criminal law and let the eagle of truth soar, etc.
And hey, if the MAGAts and their media remoras have a problem with jury bias, I’m sure they can Google some kind of international venue that specialises in criminal activities that require a court to arbitrate them.
Who could possibly object to that?
JWR
@Tony Jay: Exactly. It’s the only trick he’s got. And going after a private citizen versus going after an actual presidential candidate, well, you get the picture. “They’re going after me, your favorite president, because they’re afraid I’ll win again!”
Geminid
@JWR: I hope Trump does begin his campaign this summer. It’s the last thing Republicans need when they are trying to retake the House and Senate. He’ll soak up money and attention, and Trump is becoming a divisive figure within his party.
He’s also a drag on the Republican brand in purple and blue states. There are several reasons Glenn Youngkin won Virginia by two points last year after Joe Biden won the state by ten the year before. The biggest was that Trump was not on the ballot. He won’t actually be on the ballot this fall, but if he’s loudly lurking in the background that will help Democrats.
lowtechcyclist
@JWR: Don’t forget to click your heels together three times…
JWR
@lowtechcyclist: There’s no place like jail. There’s no place like jail. There’s no place like jail.
; )
JWR
@Geminid:
Another of those reasons being Terry McAuliffe. Boy, what a moist blanket of a politician. He was his own dead weight, as far as I’m concerned.
Geminid
@JWR: I think McAuliffe was a good enough candidate, but he did not run a good enough campaign. I thought he was overconfident. My Democrat friends thought he was too, and a couple of them were very emphatic about this.
Youngkin, on the other hand, ran a very efficient, focused campaign. He and his team knew they had a narrow path to victory and they made the most of it.
JWR
@Geminid: I didn’t follow the day-to-day of that campaign very closely, but I did hear a few of his speeches, and whether or not it was overconfidence, I don’t know. But he struck me as very “flat”, just not really there, if you know what I mean.
But I’m over here in The People’s Republic of California, so
YMMVwhat do I know? ; )mrmoshpotato
I’d forgotten about that stupid remark by the Soviet shitpile mobster conman.
Geminid
@JWR: McAulliffe never made a career as a retail politician. He was a Democratic fundraiser with close ties to the Clintons when Virginia Democrats picked him to run for Governor in 2013 and he won a close race against hard-right Republican Ken Cuccinelli. Republicans had sidelined a stronger candidate, Lt. Governor Bill Bolling, by using a caucus and convention nominating process. Bolling would have beaten McAuliffe.
McAuliffe was a decent Governor. Ideologically, he fits right into the liberally moderate, moderately liberal mold of Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, and Ralph Northam. But they come across to voters as empathetic and sincere, and they got where they are through industrious retail politicking. McAuliffe came across as a professional “pol,” which he was. I wonder if he spent so much time talking with elites he never learned to talk to voters as people.
JWR
@Geminid:
Bingo! I think that was probably what it was that made him vulnerable. And thanks for the xlnt reply. Lots of stuff I wasn’t aware of.
JML
@Geminid: I think you’re being a little unfair to McAuliffe; I’ve actually met him before and there’s no question he can do the retail politics. (Dude is a charming MF) I do think he ran a mediocre to poor campaign and really struggled to land a core message that he could stick to. They seemed to mostly be running on “you liked me when I was governor before, let’s do it again!”
The whole 1-term limit for VA governors is just weird.
Geminid
@JWR: As the youngs say, no problem!
I actually did not follow last year’s race so closely, just caught the news and advertising on the radio and read some Washington Post articles. So my assessment of McAuliffe’s overconfidence was tentative. When I posed the question to my Democratic friends they said he was. My friend Debbie snorted and said “He was overconfident enough to print up thousands of signs that said “Terry!.” I had not noticed this myself, but it sums up McAuliffe’s complacency. Besides the fact that Virginia had a lot of new voters who had not been politically engaged or even in the state when McAulliffe was governor, he was acting like he was the people’s buddy. Voters don’t vote for a politician because they are a voter’s buddy, and some may even resent this approach.
Geminid
@JML: I think the one term limit for Virginia governors was established to protect the power of the business elites that ran Virginia much of the last century. The powerful senior legislators and the state’s bureacracy preserved conservative power, and a one term governor had little ability to change this. There never was a chance for a populist-type politician to rock the boat and bring in a more progressive majority over several election cycles.
I think Virginia established an odd-year election schedule for this purpose also.
Geminid
@JML: Yes, the one term limit is wierd. Ralph Northam would have won reelection easily, I think. He and the Democrats in the General Assembly got a lot of good things done including Medicaid expansion in 2018 and a good package of gun safety legislation in 2020. The state was well run and in very good condition financially.
McAuliffe either did not or could not take advantage of this. McAullife also did not succeed in centering the issues of reproductive rights and gun safety in voter’s minds. Youngkin won despite his minority position on these issues because he was able to keep them in the background. I did not follow the campaign closely enough to make a judgement on whether this was McAuliffe’s fault. I wish someone put out a good, critical after-action report on his campaign, but I have not seen one.
Geminid
@JML: I think that McAuliffe had the elements of a good retail politician, and he probably was one within certain demographics (I don’t know yours).
I would contrast him to Mark Warner. When Warner ran his first statewide race, for Senator against John Warner, he like McAulliffe was a wealthy Democratic donor. After Mark Warner lost, he spent many months crisscrossing the state and talking to any and all kinds of Virginians. The rapport Warner developed then helped make him a very popular governor, and I think it stood him in good stead in 2014, a Republican wave year, when he narrowly won reelection against Ed Gillespie.
pluky
@Ruckus: Parade rest IIRC. Intermediate attention and at ease.
Ruckus
@pluky:
I believe I have tried – obviously successfully – to forget that part of military life…..
Another Scott
@Geminid: Northam didn’t do the ticket any favors, endorsing someone other than Herring for AG, for example. He plainly didn’t like the ticket and was a bit petulant about it, IMHO. That hurt more than any supposed failing of Terry Mac’s campaign.
Terry was the only person in history who won with the same party in the WH. It was close, but shouldn’t have been. Northam fighting for the ticket would have helped. (MOM should have done the same thing in Maryland.)
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
That may have been misdirection by Trump.
Another Scott
@Jesse: Yeah, it looks like an urban legend cranked up by an Exclusive from DailyStar in the UK.
Via Google Lens, I found the picture on reddit in GravySEALS (“from 26 days ago”).
Tineye points to its oldest version being on PhotoshopBattles (also from 26 days ago).
None of them say he is “Major General Pavel”.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Lodger
@Jesse: A *nice* description of this guy is Nero Wolfe wrapped in a camo tarp.