33Comments

1. 1.

   funlady75

   August 25, 2025 at 9:14 pm

   thanks Adam…good for Norway PM…

   Reply
2. 2.

   Gin & Tonic

   August 25, 2025 at 9:15 pm

   “At present, honestly, we are using our long-range weapons of domestic production. And lately, we have not been discussing such matters with the US,” he said.

   You want to know who’s losing in this war?

   Reply
3. 3.

   Gin & Tonic

   August 25, 2025 at 9:18 pm

   Zelensky also previously revealed that Ukraine had developed another domestic weapon, the hybrid Palianytsia missile-drone.

   Funny thing here – the word “palianytsia,” which is a type of rustic bread, is also a sort of shibboleth, in that it is easy for a Ukrainian to pronounce correctly but challenging for a russian.

   Reply
4. 4.

   J. Arthur Crank

   August 25, 2025 at 9:20 pm

   If JD Vance is not the most pathetic person in the world, he has got to be in the top two.  Christ, what an asshole!

   Reply
5. 5.

   Adam L Silverman

   August 25, 2025 at 9:23 pm

   Time to get cleaned up and rack out.

   Reply
6. 6.

   Adam L Silverman

   August 25, 2025 at 9:23 pm

   @Gin & Tonic: The US.

   Reply
7. 7.

   Adam L Silverman

   August 25, 2025 at 9:24 pm

   @funlady75: You’re welcome.

   Reply
8. 8.

   J. Arthur Crank

   August 25, 2025 at 9:24 pm

   @Gin & Tonic:

   Funny thing here – the word “palianytsia,” which is a type of rustic bread, is also a sort of shibboleth, in that it is easy for a Ukrainian to pronounce correctly but challenging for a russian.

   Here it goes: paw lee eye Annie stay shuh (rhymes with duh). How did I do?

   Reply
9. 9.

   Gin & Tonic

   August 25, 2025 at 9:25 pm

   @J. Arthur Crank: Valeriy Zaluzhny understands important old-fashioned concepts like honor and responsibility. JD Vance, on the other hand….

   Reply
10. 10.

    Gin & Tonic

    August 25, 2025 at 9:26 pm

    @J. Arthur Crank: You’d be shot. Sorry.

    Reply
11. 11.

    Adam L Silverman

    August 25, 2025 at 9:28 pm

    @J. Arthur Crank: Even more so because he knows he’s not white. His cousin says the family is melungeon.

    Terra Vance – Marked Melungeon
    July 16, 2024
    ·
    Oh, I’ve got a lot more to say about JD Vance, born JD Bowman.
    In case you missed it— yes, we share some ancestors.
    But, I was born and raised an actual Vance in the actual hollers of Appalachia. My family has been in Central Appalachia for centuries or millennia.
    We’re not, as JD Vance fictionalizes, “Scots-Irish.”
    But first, let me introduce you to some of my ancestors and still-living relatives.
    See those first two pictures? These are some of my direct ancestors from the Hatfield-Vance clan. The woman is Mary Elizabeth Hatfield. The man is Jacob Marcum.
    They’re from what’s now Wayne County, WV. That’s where the family reunions were.
    We never saw JD Bowman “Vance” at the family reunions.
    But let me ask you…
    Do they look Scots-Irish to you?
    I’m from Island Creek where Bad Jim Vance and Devil Anse Hatfield are from. We have been in this area since before anyone was called “Vance.”
    JD Vance is not even from Central Appalachia, and neither were his parents.
    His grandparents with a Vance surname moved from Kentucky to Ohio.
    JD Vance assumed the name of his maternal grandparents to siphon off the Hillbilly credentials of my actual Vance family while erasing my family and doing a thoughtless job of characterizing Appalachians.
    JD Bowman “Vance” didn’t do a thoughtful job of explaining why Appalachians are Poor.
    Let me break that down for you.
    My dad worked 60-72 hours a week in the mines for 40 years. Three times, mountains collapsed on him. One time, a two-ton rock in a collapse fell on his head and caused his chin to go down with such force that it snapped his sternum.
    Another time, he saved a man’s life by pushing him out of the way. His steel-toe boots were not rated for mountains, and that steel toe collapsed and basically cut off his toes. They managed to save the toes but now he doesn’t have toenails.
    Now, he has tons of improperly-healed remodeled bones that cause him tremendous pain he never mentions, he has total black lung (but no black lung “benefits”), and no cartilage left in too many of his joints.
    JD Vance claims Appalachians are Poor because they don’t want to work. We work ourselves to the grave and then get bragged on at our funerals for our work ethic.
    JD Vance would know that if he had been to all those family black lung funerals.
    But no amount of work ethic can make a man comfortable if the only jobs are mines, and when a seam of coal ran out, the mine shut down. Any savings was depleted.
    It wasn’t for lack of effort or initiative.
    His dad, also a real Vance from Logan, WV, inhaled a mine blast that scarred his lungs.
    His dad’s brother, also a real Vance actually from Logan, WV, was crushed in the mines a month later.
    His grandfather, also a real Vance from Logan, WV, which is actual Appalachia— and the best friend and cousin of Cap Hatfield, had to go head-to-head with the KKK— hired thugs of mine operators— with a pair .38s in Logan, WV.
    You could read about that from my great Uncle William Preston Actually-Vance’s memoir and ACTUAL-hillbilly elegy, The Way It Was.
    Many of the men in my actually-Appalachian ancestry died in or because of the mines. I put a couple of my recent ancestor documents in this slideshow so you could get an idea of how actual Appalachian poverty came to be.
    You could read my still-living 96-year-old grandmother, Bertie Lou VANCE’s actual-hillbilly elegy. It is also set in Logan, WV, because she has a about a century of lived experience as an actual Appalachian.
    I, an Actual-Vance, wrote the forward to that book. My birth certificate has Vance on it. I didn’t even have to tokenize, appropriate, erase, or dehumanize a single ancestor in order to write it.
    I didn’t have to philosophize [poorly] about anything. I just wrote about my lived experience because I have actual-lived experience.
    I didn’t mention the word “hillbilly” because Actual-Vances don’t talk about ourselves that way.
    Mamaw Bertie’s daddy was killed (likely poisoned) when she was 7 years old. Her mom was pregnant with her 7th child when that happened. He was a weights and measures man— the guy who made sure mine companies paid their workers accurately without cheating them.
    So, she grew up starvation-Poor because her dad was [almost-certainly] murdered by the mines— and not because he was lazy and had no drive. In fact, he invented and installed exhaust fans and blast doors in the mines that have saved countless lives.
    He was a prolific musician and banjo picker, but Mamaw Bertie recalls that after he died, they only had any music in their home until the battery died in their radio.
    They never could afford to replace it, so the music died, too.
    That local union hat from Stirrat, WV? That was my dad’s. He’s an Actual-Vance. Stirrat is where Devil Anse Hatfield was from. It is 1-2 miles from the holler where I grew up. That was my maternal grandfather’s union branch.
    You can see my great grandfathers’ documents, too. Note the occupations and locations.
    See that family photo with the matriarch, kids, and grandkids? Those are my Vance-Hatfield ancestors from Logan, WV. Do they look Scots-Irish?
    I’ll comment under the images, but close to the end are some of my direct actual-Vance ancestors, Sarah Ellen Actual-Vance and Mary Actual-Vance. Do they look Scots-Irish?
    The Vance/Hatfield clan was not Scots-Irish. They were European-born Romani (largely French/German), Cherokee, Shawnee, possibly-African, likely Middle Eastern, and maybe other things. They were mixed.
    Most of the people who are old-mix actual-Appalachians in the coal camps are descendants of Melungeons. They’ve been treated like expendable cheap resources because of structural racism being the norm.
    You can’t talk about Melungeons without talking about why they have such profound generational trauma. You can’t do that when you don’t talk about white supremacy.
    The one authentic thing that JD Vance did that is keeping up with Melungeon tradition is changing his name and appearing to be from somewhere he’s not in order to obscure his ethnic heritage.
    That would maybe have panned out for him a little better if he’d gone further than Wikipedia to learn about his ancestors.
    But we are not the Irish Vances. That name was a Whiteness costume originally, and so it’s fitting JD Vance would put it on.
    Incidentally, I have Bowman ancestors, too. Some are on JD Bowman “Vance’s” paternal side. I put their photos as the final two so you can tell me how much they beam with “Scots-Irish” pride.
    JD is an Outsider, and he knew that before he tried to put on the hillbilly costume just to distance himself from actual-Vances and other coal camp Melungeons.
    He put MY family name on in order to benefit off a legacy that he has not lived through the consequences of… he just whitewashed it, fictionalized it, and then condescended to as he set himself up as a supreme harbinger of rising above his hillbilly white-trashedness.
    We actual-Vances can define ourselves, and we don’t have to whitewash ourselves to do that.
    If you want to learn about real Appalachian history, you can follow my page. My ancestors and living family deserve better than Hillbilly Elegy, and I try to do my due diligence to tell their truths as closely as I can.

    Reply
12. 12.

    J. Arthur Crank

    August 25, 2025 at 9:33 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:   So you are saying that I would be roughly analogous to Chekov asking about the nuclear “wessles” in 20th San Francisco?  This is one of many reasons that I am not a spy.

    Reply
13. 13.

    J. Arthur Crank

    August 25, 2025 at 9:37 pm

    @Adam L Silverman:   Thanks for that excerpt.  Vance holds all of the tiebreakers in the Who-is-the-biggest-asshole tournament.  He usually starts off tournament play with the top seed.

    Reply
14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    August 25, 2025 at 9:37 pm

    @J. Arthur Crank: Miller is even worse.

    Reply
15. 15.

    Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom

    August 25, 2025 at 9:55 pm

    Thank you Adam. Especially for saving me from having to even think about watching Hillbilly Elegy. I sure af wouldn’t consider reading it.🙄 I have standards.

    Reply
16. 16.

    Jay

    August 25, 2025 at 10:04 pm

    Just to further bag on “Baggar” Vance, the couchfucker.

    oh, come on. this such a stupid and easily-batted-down lie. World War Two ended with the unconditional surrenders of Germany, Italy and Japan.

    but oh no no no, World War Two was negotiated to an end, insists JD Vance.

    that Harry S. Truman, he must have been one fuck of a negotiator, to get Hitler to agree to put a bullet in his own head — and wouldn’t you have loved to have sat in on the phone call where Truman bargained Mussolini down to being a urine-soaked corpse hung upside down in the street?

    ‘Benito, have I got a deal for you.’

    look, JD Vance is highly educated. he graduated from Yale with a law degree. he knows how World War Two ended — so why on earth would he spew such laughable twaddle? does he think we’re that stupid? spoiler alert: yes, JD Vance thinks we’re that stupid. he also knows that MAGA is that stupid, and will believe anything he tells them. fair point, JD. we’ll give you that one.

    jefftiedrich.com/p/no-idiots-world-war-two-didnt-end

    Reply
17. 17.

    Jay

    August 25, 2025 at 10:05 pm

    Thank you, Adam.

    Reply
18. 18.

    persistentillusion

    August 25, 2025 at 10:26 pm

    @J. Arthur Crank: In WWII, the resistance in Holland would find ways to make  people to say “Groeningen”, non Dutch speakers would find it difficult. That, and Wilhelmina rings were ways the resistance persisted, as must we all.

    ETA Wilhemina was the queen in exile and wearing her ring was a symbol of resistance that was subtle.

    Reply
19. 19.

    kindness

    August 25, 2025 at 10:44 pm

    I’m glad Ukraine will have access to systems that won’t have the US’s restrictions placed upon their use.  I fully expect Trump to act like he can tell Ukraine what they can and can’t hit with the new missile.

    Reply
20. 20.

    hotshoe

    August 25, 2025 at 10:45 pm

    “Russia has the right to create a buffer zone in Ukraine for the sake of its security,”

    Yeah, I know that’s Russian propaganda, and I know that the function of propaganda is not to tell the truth — but lord do any of their tools stop to think for one moment how stupid and self-contradictory that “buffer zone” idea is?

    Reply
21. 21.

    Carlo Graziani

    August 25, 2025 at 10:58 pm

    According to Reuters, following Ukrainian strikes on RF energy facilities, oil prices have risen.

    Well, yes. But Russian pipeline oil, at least, also sells at that increased price. The key metric is what is happening to Russian oil revenues in consequence of the drone campaign. I’d love to see estimates.

    If Ukraine’s national strategy is now “not lose on the ground” while forcing Russia to suffer painful revenue losses through an expanding strategic drone campaign against oil and gas targets, then we have a sensible metric of the effectiveness of that strategy: Russian energy product revenue. A sustained downward trend in that revenue is what brings the Russians to For Reals negotiations, according to this strategic theory.

    Reply
22. 22.

    Jay

    August 25, 2025 at 11:14 pm

    @Carlo Graziani:

    nitter.poast.org/GrandpaRoy2/status/1959632624852652177#m

    nitter.poast.org/evgen1232007/status/1959713905972048058#m

    Yesterday, in ruZZia’s Far East, motorists were limited to 10L of fuel, (diesel and gas) only. Today, no diesel or gas is available.

    ruZZian oil and fuel exports in dollar value, have continued to drop, 18% month by month since 2023, add in the ruble, and it’s a loss of $6.6 billion dollars a month to the ruZZian “State” since the invasion of Ukraine.

    Reply
23. 23.

    Westyny

    August 25, 2025 at 11:31 pm

    Thank you, Adam.

    Reply
24. 24.

    Carlo Graziani

    August 25, 2025 at 11:52 pm

    @Jay: Thank you. These are helpful, illustrative anectdotes.

    What I’m actually looking for, though, is time-series data, estimated as best as possible, on overall Russian energy export revenues, month-by-month.

    The Ukrainian theory of victory seems to me to be that their strategic offensive against Russian oil will cause that time-series to decline consistently month-over-month, until Russian leadership panics and negotiates an end to the war that Ukrainian leadership finds acceptable.

    It actually makes sense to me. I’d just like to know how well it is working.

    Reply
25. 25.

    glc

    August 26, 2025 at 12:20 am

    @Carlo Graziani:

    The chart at energyandcleanair.org/july-2025-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/

    seems informative in that respect.

    Reply
26. 26.

    Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom

    August 26, 2025 at 12:31 am

    @Carlo Graziani: If you want the what on the Russian economy follow Prune60 on bluesky. She will drown you in data and I mean that in a totally good way. The Russian agricultural sector is suffering badly, and the price of groceries in Russia is so bad, people were stealing butter. The automotive industry is collapsing because no one can afford to buy a new car. And so on.

    Reply
27. 27.

    Jay

    August 26, 2025 at 12:39 am

    @Carlo Graziani:

    Unfortunately, most analysis of ruZZian oil and gas is trade related, not war related.

    The impacts of Ukraine going after the “Western” built refineries, now, with repeat strikes against critical structure, won’t be known for a while, but Industry Experts believe that that the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery will be out of service for 2 years, if Chinese Cracking Catalysts are used for the repair, with a 30% reduction in production and quality, maybe longer, until the lift of Western sanctions. That’s a 5% loss of ruZZian production, and effects quality fuels and lubricants significantly.

    Reply
28. 28.

    wjca

    August 26, 2025 at 1:03 am

    @Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom:

    The Russian economy, as seen by the Russians generally, may be imploding.   But what matters is the Russian economy as seen experienced personally by the oligarchs.  They will no more care about starving peasants (under whatever label) than they care about meat cubes dying at the front.  What impacts them is what Putin has to watch.

    Reply
29. 29.

    Jay

    August 26, 2025 at 1:22 am

    @wjca:

    Yacht prices?

    Villa’s in the Cote d’Azure?

    Golden Passports?

    Mansion prices in Londongrad?

    Costs of their Princelings and Princesses to live in the Degenerate West?

    Increase in the price of Epstein Visa’s?

    Window glazing?

    Reply
30. 30.

    wjca

    August 26, 2025 at 2:44 am

    @Jay: All of which cost money, for which rubles must be exchanged.  Bad economy leads (eventually) to a falling exvhange rate.  Meaning buying and maintaining all those little luxuries outside Russia** becomes harder.  And the Russian super rich are ar least as avid about hanging on to as much wealth as possible, whether they actually have any use for it or not.

    To us, it seems like a trivial difference in what they can have.  But then we aren’t oligarchs.  At least nobody here is admitting to being one.  Especially not a Russian one.

    ** Because, on the evidence, the only wealthy Russian who voluntarily spends most of his time, or a significant portion of his money, in Russia appears to be Putin.  And even he has got lots of money and lusuries tucked away in the West.

    Reply
31. 31.

    Chetan Murthy

    August 26, 2025 at 2:53 am

    @wjca: The West is where he sends his concubines when he’s thru with ’em.

    Reply
32. 32.

    BretH

    August 26, 2025 at 7:30 am

    “Just the basics” LOL

    Comprehensive and detailed as always, thank you Adam.

    Reply
33. 33.

    AlaskaReader

    August 26, 2025 at 1:16 pm

    Thanks Adam

    Reply