Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

No one could have predicted…

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Second rate reporter says what?

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Sunday Evening Open Thread: Glimpses From Russia, & Its Long-Suffering Neighbors

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Glimpses From Russia, & Its Long-Suffering Neighbors

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Glimpses of Russia - STOCKPILE

(John Deering via GoComics.com)


This guy did, per the Washington Post — “David Letterman on his surprise Ukraine trip and Zelensky interview”. Worth reading the whole thing!:

In late October, David Letterman, who, in a previous television incarnation, considered a Taco Bell drive-through sufficiently adventurous for a remote segment, flew to Warsaw, hopped into a van for a five-hour drive to the Polish border with Ukraine, and caught an overnight train to Kyiv. And then, in an active subway station 250 feet below the embattled capital, the 75-year-old late-night legend sat with President Volodymyr Zelensky for a special episode of his Netflix show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.” The program goes online Monday and Letterman, in a Zoom this week from his home, talked about why he decided to go to a war zone for an episode, certainly a departure for an interview program that has featured George Clooney, Lizzo and Kevin Durant in recent years. (This interview has been edited for space and clarity.)

Q: Dave, so very simply, what makes you decide Ukraine is a good idea for the show?

A: Forget the show. Forget me. This is a good idea, period. It seems like we’ve had six to eight years of people talking like we were visiting another planet. And then suddenly Russia attacks Ukraine and we meet Volodymyr Zelensky and he’s saying things and behaving in a way we have not seen manifested by humans in quite a long time. The first time I saw him, he said, “This may be the last time you, my countrymen, maybe the last time you see me alive.” And then he says, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition.” Right away you’re reminded of what you know about Winston Churchill fending off Hitler…

Q: Let’s go back to Ukraine. There is a striking point where you’re walking around a town square and observing these displayed pictures of people who have perished. And it’s heartbreaking to see regular people who have died. And I can’t help but think about 9/11 and those boards that were up around New York City with messages and photos. There’s a kind of trauma that sets in these situations. And the question becomes how much do you confront it and how much do you ignore it? I imagine that is something you were thinking about during this time.

A: You’re visiting the home of these people. And this is the condition their home is in. So you take on that, you realize because people are coming and going about their lives, walking around through this plaza, and it comes over you. Your connection to 9/11 is exactly the same. In the early days of that, you could not walk anywhere toward that area and not feel the heaviness, and that’s the way it was in Kyiv. But they weren’t letting it crush them.

Zelensky said it the other day. He said, I’m not brave, I’m responsible. And that’s an excellent way of putting what he and people are doing. We’re not laughing about this. We’re taking care of business and we’re prevailing, for heaven’s sakes. And smart people have explained to me that, in fact, they will win this, they will win this and winning this is going to be … the transition of them winning this will have such a global impact. If they don’t win, it’ll be more of the same crap. So we’re on the doorstep here of monumental change. Am I talking too much?

Learned a new word here:

Glimpses of Russia - STOCKPILE 1
(Walt Handelsman via GoComics.com)

Reader Interactions

75Comments

  1. 1.

    Chetan Murthy

    More dispatches from the “neighbors”.  This time from an apparently well-known Kazakh journo, to the Russian Ambassador.  The kinda thing you need a cigarette after watching, even if you don’t smoke.

    I don’t know what the 🇷🇺 ambassador to 🇰🇿 really said, but the rebuttal he got was certainly most powerful. pic.twitter.com/34RWwKwMWJ
    — Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) December 11, 2022

  4. 4.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I noticed on Twitter, soon after Brittney Griner was released there were just a bunch of what I assume were Russian bot accounts ready to diss Griner and talk about  leaving behind Paul Whelan. Almost like it was coordinated. I’m sure hands on micromanager Elmo didn’t notice that.

  7. 7.

    Matt McIrvin

    Sociologists think it’s not because their country is killing Ukrainians and destroying their country, but because Russians don’t want to personally participate in it.

    Well, that sounds awfully familiar to this American somehow born in 1968.

  9. 9.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Being a soldier can be boring AF at times.  Anyone who doesn’t know that has never worn a uniform.

  10. 10.

    Ripley

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    Someone on Twitter twigged to multiple comments on various tweets about something that started with “I love the part…”.  Makes it kind of obvious. And sad.

  11. 11.

    kalakal

    @Chetan Murthy: That’s one hell of a reply. If the Russians really piss off the Kazakhs they can kiss goodbye to Baikonur and their space program 10 seconds after the shooting starts. He’s right, they’re idiots, they are not really in a position to bully anyone right now.

    The worst time to start a war is when you’re already losing one

  13. 13.

    OverTwistWillie

    Putin whinging about losing the information war just takes the cake.

    -shakes fist-

    If it wasn’t for those dweebs with Shibu avatars shitposting about a racoon.

  14. 14.

    Ken

    @Ripley: I saw one like that for the UK railway strike. Four tweets supposedly from four different men, all with exactly the same wording. It was incredibly obvious since the message claimed they worked for the railway for 15 years and were earning 48,000 pounds (or some such specific figures).

  19. 19.

    David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch

    Russian Mercenary Group’s HQ Destroyed in Another Blow to Putin—Report

    💣 BOOOM!

  21. 21.

    Chetan Murthy

    @trollhattan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933

    The Kazakh famine of 1930–1933, also known the Kazakh catastrophe,[9][10] or Asharshylyk (Kazakh: Ашаршылық, meaning ‘famine’ or ‘hunger’) was a famine during which approximately 1.5 million people died in the Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic, then part of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic in the Soviet Union, of whom 1.3 million were ethnic Kazakhs.[4] An estimated 38[8] to 42[11] percent of all Kazakhs died, the highest percentage of any ethnic group killed by the Soviet famine of 1930–1933. Other sources state that as many as 2.0 to 2.3 million died.[12]

    One presumes most educated Kazakhs, even those who are friendly towards Russia, would prefer never to be ruled by them again.

  22. 22.

    Ken

    @Chetan Murthy: Plus we now know how to say “You are cannibals who eat yourself”, which (while no “my hovercraft is full of eels”) is useful in any number of situations.

  26. 26.

    Martin

    I just want to note that our Ukrainian soldier here has been doing that dance for years. You don’t get that kind of commitment overnight. That’s some big zoomer middle school having fun with friends energy there.

  29. 29.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Just finished watching Is That Black Enough For You on Netflix and I highly recommend it:

    “With a dense and fascinating mass of clips and interviews with figures in the movies such as Whoopi Goldberg, Zendaya, Samuel L Jackson and Laurence Fishburne, Mitchell fights back against cultural erasure and amnesia: there is a rich and vivid history of African American cinema which blossomed in Hollywood’s pioneering golden age, but was siloed in designated “negro” cinemas.”

  31. 31.

    japa21

    Learned a couple new words from one tweet.  Amazing the reactions people have to the strangest things.

  33. 33.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @zhena gogolia: It was so good!  The only problem is now I gotta rewatch it and make a list of all the films I wanna watch (many being on smaller, subscription streaming services).  But it was such an excellent, comprehensive history of Black Cinema.  Loved it :)

  38. 38.

    Jager

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    No kidding, we had a circus in our barracks one evening in AIT. One young trooper (he was a gymnast in high school) did a double flip, and our DI walked in and asked him to do it again.

  40. 40.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, ICYMI, …

    Thread:

    Tragedy unfolding on Keystone Pipeline near the Nebraska/Kansas border. What @TCEnergy will not admit is that they cannot “clean” this up. They will scrape the vegetation and topsoil, treat it, and haul to a landfill. Riparian (stream) damage for decade+. pic.twitter.com/gemv9NkjAd

    — Wayne Mortensen (@WayneBuildsLNK) December 10, 2022

    (via LOLGOP)

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  41. 41.

    Alison Rose

    Y’all, I’ll let Anne Laurie speak for herself if she wants to, of course, but until Twitter shuffles off this mortal coil, the fact is that it’s still the best place to do this kind of news and information gathering, particularly on a topic like this. Insinuating that by posting some tweets here, she’s supporting Muskrat’s bigotry or something is pretty repugnant. If you don’t want to look at any tweets, you can skip the posts. But expecting FPers to immediately stop using anything from Twitter while also still giving us content is a little daft. I mean…if anyone here is reading this blog on a MacBook or iPhone, you might be interested to learn about Apple’s less than conscientious business practices in its factories. Or if you have a Chromebook or Google Pixel or whatever, they’re also made by a parent company what’s done some sketchy shit. We’re all looking forward to this Letterman/Zelenskyy interview, and guess what, Netflix is run by trashpiles who think transphobia is a cool moneymaker. Every company sucks ass in multiple ways, and we all grin and bear it because we need or want to use what they make. If you don’t want to keep using Twitter, that’s 100% understandable. If you don’t want to read posts that include tweets, you are a citizen of this free country. But using the comments to dump on AL, the damn queen of this site, is not nice and not necessary.

    Ahem. Or something.

  43. 43.

    counterfactual

    @Ken: Russia has three launch sites in its territory. I think they can get to the ISS from Vostochny though they haven’t done so yet. Plesetsk is better for spy sats, and since the last head of Roscosmos was bundled off to be Viceroy of Ukraine, the Russians have started launching again regularly. They’ve sent a spy sat and a GLONASS (Russian version of GPS) sat in the past month from Plesetsk

  49. 49.

    Kay

    The New York Times
    @nytimes
    ·Dec 10
    Official
    News Analysis: Elon Musk has tweeted about political topics regularly since taking over Twitter, often belittling some liberal causes. But what he stands for remains largely unclear.

    This is exactly how the NYTimes characterized Donald Trump from 2015 to 2017- insisted he was pro choice, would protect same sex marriage, was not really a Republican etc.
    They’re all going to have to go thru the same agonizingly slow learning curve we watched them struggle through with Trump for Elon Musk. We’re on like Step One. It’ll take years. No one has time for it.

  50. 50.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @WaterGirl: I’ll try but honestly there was probably a couple hundred.  Lots of classic stars (Belafonte, Poitier, Pam Grier, Dianna Ross etc.)

    But the really cool (and sad) thing was that it shows how many of the biggest stylistic components of current movies were invented by Black People who never get proper credit for it.

  53. 53.

    Dan B

    @Alison Rose: Quite true although at the moment I’m horrified by Elon Musk’s attack on the gay Jewish former exec.  His call that this guy is a pedophile are dangerous.  Twitter still has value as no comparable substitute has arrived yet.  Sigh.

  54. 54.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @zhena gogolia: One of my fave Black podcasters (who raved about the documentary) said you can get a lot of them on the Brown Sugar streaming service (Amazon/Roku) for $4/month.

  56. 56.

    bcw

    Russia is clearly worried about the GENDER GAP.

    America has 72 genders and they can only manage one or two.

    They need a (Drag) Race to catch up!

  57. 57.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    I feel like it’s Donald Trump and Obama’s birth certificate all over again.

    We never, ever seem to learn that these people are conmen even when one (Musk) follows another (Trump) immediately. The trajectory of this thing is Trump-like.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    This is what the US Right wants for US women- to go back to a time when domestic violence wasn’t a crime:

    Russia has been ordered to pay more than €370,000 (£315,000) in compensation to a woman whose hands were cut off by her husband.
    The European Court of Human Rights said Russia had failed to combat domestic violence, and ordered it to compensate four women who were brutally attacked.
    They include Margarita Gracheva, whose husband kidnapped her in 2017 and attacked her with an axe.
    The court told Russia to make urgent changes to stop such attacks in future.
    It said domestic violence against women was happening on a “staggering scale” and Russia had breached two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.
    The court said Ms Gracheva’s case showed how Russia’s laws meant authorities did not spot domestic abuse until it escalated to cause physical injuries.
    It called for a legal definition of domestic violence and for all perpetrators to be criminalised.
    In 2017, President Vladimir Putin signed a law softening the penalties for domestic violence. First offences where the victim is not hospitalised are no longer treated as criminal offences and punishments were reduced.

  60. 60.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I guess that’s possible, and I am jumping to conclusions. But when I saw that headline, my first thought was, “There sure are a lot of people sucking up to Musk!”

  65. 65.

    geg6

    @trollhattan:

    They really are terrifying if they feel threatened by something.  It has happened to me twice and I have no interest in ever fucking around and finding out again.

  67. 67.

    Betsy

    @Kay: I love your political analysis and media analysis and campaign/electoral analysis.  You are one wise person.   Coming here and reading a sentence or two from you — it’s invariably expert, and somehow new while also summing up in a simple, insightful way the morass of what other observers in the media or pol biz are struggling to put their finger on

    What I am struggling to say is, DAMN YOU’RE GOOD.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @Betsy:

    Thanks.

    “People say” Amy Klobuchar is mean and that is true- she does seem to be mean- but I love her :)

    Amy Klobuchar
    @amyklobuchar

    ·I’m a big fan of Dr. Fauci and how he’s calmly guided our country through crisis. Re Musk tweet? Courting vaccine-deniers doesn’t seem like a smart business strategy, but the issue is this: could you just leave a good man alone in your seemingly endless quest for attention?

    “The issue is this” lol

  72. 72.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Those of you who find Twitter so offensives can easily  go post alternative links to these articles Adam is linking too.

    Be part of the solution and all that.

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