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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

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

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

When we show up, we win.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

We will not go back.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

You cannot shame the shameless.

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Open Thread:  Hey Lurkers!  (Holiday Post)

Open Threads

You are here: Home / Archives for Open Threads

Saturday Morning Open Thread: The Anniversary

by Anne Laurie|  January 6, 20247:32 am| 142 Comments

This post is in: Jan 6: Insurrection, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat

Saturday Morning Open Thread 26

(Clay Bennett via GoGocomics.com)

My thoughts ahead of the third anniversary of the January 6th insurrection. pic.twitter.com/0nGR0ZuMpC

— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) January 5, 2024

12:43am, three years ago at this moment: Trump commands Republicans to “FIGHT” as Congress prepares to certify the 2020 election pic.twitter.com/KKZ8CFfE9U

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 6, 2024

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President Biden: "These MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump on January 6 have abandoned the truth and abandoned democracy. They made their choice… now the rest of us have to make our choice." pic.twitter.com/1shwOturB1

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 5, 2024

Trump lost:
—The popular vote by 7 million
—60 court cases
—In GOP-controlled states
—Before judges he appointed
—At the Supreme Court
—Recount after recount, in state after state

Yet he still doesn’t understand the basic truth: you can’t love your country ONLY when you win.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 6, 2024

"The conspiracy theories are still very prevalent and the lie about 2020 is still very prevalent amongst Republican voters because Republican leaders, elected officials continue to lie about it," @lbarronlopez tells @JeffreyGoldberg. pic.twitter.com/cvunfe5nhv

— Washington Week with The Atlantic | PBS (@washingtonweek) January 6, 2024

Saturday Morning Open Thread 27

(Ann Telnaes via the Washington Post)

Saturday Morning Open Thread: The AnniversaryPost + Comments (142)

Early Morning Open Thread: Biden’s Speech At Valley Forge

by Anne Laurie|  January 6, 20245:26 am| 48 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, Open Threads, President Biden, Proud to Be A Democrat, Readership Capture

President Biden: 2024 is the first national election since the January 6 insurrection placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy. We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is, who are we? pic.twitter.com/JZOW77RRtK

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 5, 2024

Remember, social media users: Sharing is caring!

President Biden: "We’re the only nation in the history of the world built on an idea.

We have never walked away from the idea.

And I promise you, I will not let Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans force us to walk away now." @Acyn pic.twitter.com/KudJkrSWBe

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) January 5, 2024

President Joe Biden warned that Donald Trump’s 2024 bid poses a grave threat to the country, the day before the third anniversary of the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol by then-President Trump’s supporters. pic.twitter.com/0VbZUi6HGL

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 5, 2024

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As President @JoeBiden said near Valley Forge today, “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-America.” pic.twitter.com/Mtd8O3tYAf

— Doug Emhoff (@DouglasEmhoff) January 6, 2024

Biden: He's threatened the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff with the death penalty. This coming from a president who called dead soldiers suckers and losers. pic.twitter.com/wh7kr3xdSD

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 5, 2024

"He thinks that's funny. He laughed about. What a sick f–" Biden, referring to Trump and attack on Paul Pelosi, says in speech on Jan. 6. "Sometimes I'm really happy the Irish in me can't be seen."
Trump's now promising a full-scale campaign of revenge and retribution, he says. pic.twitter.com/VRO7vY0fs7

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) January 5, 2024

President Biden: The choice is clear. Donald Trump's campaign is about him. Not America. Not you. He's willing to sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power. Our campaign is different. For me and Kamala, our campaign is about America and our democracy pic.twitter.com/S3VEyiPdny

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 5, 2024

Great kickoff to the 2024 campaign

— Christine Galea (@chrisgalea) January 6, 2024

If you missed the whole speech yesterday:

What a brilliant speech.
Every sentence, every word, was so powerful and passionate because it was true. https://t.co/UrXgO0qfWp

— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) January 5, 2024

Transcript: Biden's first campaign speech of the 2024 election year https://t.co/1MOxK4DFdA

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 6, 2024

Rep. @jamie_raskin: That was a remarkable speech from President Biden which spoke directly to the moment. It was the kind of speech that will mobilize millions of people across the country to get in this fight for democracy pic.twitter.com/ENvsDX94yW

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 5, 2024

TFG gave a speech, also…

I don't want to make election outcome predictions, but I will make an adjacent argument: There's been a media blackout on Trump. Once the American electorate gets exposed to more of this, many will remember that they hate it. https://t.co/ymN5E7ROa8

— Magdi Jacobs (@magi_jay) January 5, 2024

Early Morning Open Thread: Biden’s Speech At Valley ForgePost + Comments (48)

War for Ukraine Day 681: Air Raid Alerts Shortly After Dawn

by Adam L Silverman|  January 5, 20247:51 pm| 25 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military, Open Threads, Russia, Silverman on Security, War, War in Ukraine

Screen shot of painting by NEIVANMADE. It has a grey border. On the left is a Ukrainian apartment block in the background. In the left foreground is an armored forearm and fist blocking incoming Russian rockets and missiles. The Russian rockets and missiles are red and have the "Z" symbol on them. The backgound is black. Above the armored arm and fist, written in white, is "Every Single Day in Ukraine."

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Air raid alerts were once again activated of large portions of Ukraine this morning.

⚡️Air raid alert reported in Kyiv Oblast.

Air raid alerts were activated in Kyiv Oblast at around 7 a.m. on Jan. 5, the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration reported.

Ukraine’s Air Force has also warned of the threat of Russian drone attacks in Kherson, Kirovohrad,…

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) January 5, 2024

⚡️Air raid alert reported in Kyiv Oblast.

Air raid alerts were activated in Kyiv Oblast at around 7 a.m. on Jan. 5, the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration reported.

Ukraine’s Air Force has also warned of the threat of Russian drone attacks in Kherson, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Cherkasy, Vinnytsia, Chernivtsi, and Khmelnytskyi oblasts.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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Enduring this year means enduring the entire war – address by the President of Ukraine

5 January 2024 – 20:16

I wish good health to the Ukrainian men and women!

I just had a phone talk with President of Türkiye Erdoğan. It was a very substantive discussion. As always, we are using every day of this week to intensify our international efforts so that this year starts yielding results from the first weeks.

I expressed gratitude to President Erdoğan for the achieved level of cooperation in various areas, including defense. We have joint projects that are already successful, and this year, we must do even more to strengthen our states and our nations.

Much depends on Ukrainian-Turkish cooperation, especially security in our region, the Black Sea, and worldwide – including food security. I am thankful to President Erdoğan personally and to all of Türkiye for supporting our work on the maritime export corridor from Ukraine. As of today, over 14 million tonnes of cargo have been transported through the corridor since its inception – nearly five hundred vessels. It is a big gain – both economically and in terms of security and geopolitics. We demonstrate that we can restore security to our region despite all existing threats. We see how the strength of our partnership adds strength to our entire region.

Today, I discussed our work on the Peace Formula with President Erdoğan. I informed him about the preparation for a new advisors’ meeting scheduled to take place in Davos in January and extended an invitation to a representative from Türkiye. Türkiye confirmed its participation.

Each country’s involvement in this collaborative effort, now with the work of advisors and later involving leaders, will demonstrate the importance of international law functioning at its full capacity, starting from the UN Charter and all other norms that guarantee respect for nations and the territorial integrity of states.

Special attention was given to the point of the Peace Formula concerning the return of all prisoners of war and deportees. I discussed this today with President Erdoğan, emphasizing the return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russians, as well as the return of prisoners of war and those facing repression in the occupied territories, particularly in Crimea. Türkiye’s mediation is crucial for the release of Crimean Tatars and all others – adults and children, military and civilians, held in Russian captivity.

We are working with all partners to ensure that Ukraine receives an adequate volume of security packages this month. We already have another defensive step from Germany for Ukraine, including missiles for air defense, 155mm artillery, and other essential items. Thank you! It’s a very timely package. We are expecting similar steps from our other partners, including the United States, to ensure that Russian terror cannot prevail this winter, just as it couldn’t last year.

Of course, I am always in touch with the military and our commanders. Every day, every night of this year has seen new intense battles. The most intense fighting is in Avdiivka, near Maryinka, Bahmut, Lyman, Kupiansk, the southern part of our country. The work of our soldiers is absolutely heroic – all the forces of defense and security, every brigade on the front lines, every unit, everyone working in defense, and everyone providing assistance.

Our state’s top priority remains unchanged – to ensure everything necessary for Ukraine’s defense and our active operations. Ammunition, drones, equipment, personnel. Enduring this year means enduring this entire war. It’s a crucial and decisive time. Grateful to everyone who realizes this, who helps the state become stronger and who gives our soldiers the ability to defeat the enemy.

Thank you, guys, for your precision! Thank you for your resilience! Thanks to everyone who adds strength to Ukraine!

Glory to our people!

Glory to Ukraine!

The cost:

We owe our freedom and lives to individuals like Oleksandr Korol (born 2002) and Dmytro Bohdanov (born 2001), who went from being best friends and baptizing one another's kid to serving together in the military and making the ultimate sacrifice in action. Rest in glory pic.twitter.com/GD64POtSD8

— Olena Halushka (@OlenaHalushka) January 5, 2024

Last December, Mriya Foundation fulfilled the dreams of children of war prisoners. Among a busload of gifts, one stood out—a mobile phone. The boy took it, turned away, tears streaming down his face. In stunned silence, volunteers discovered the child's dream: his dad, in a… pic.twitter.com/6eD2txbEMo

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) January 5, 2024

Last December, Mriya Foundation fulfilled the dreams of children of war prisoners. Among a busload of gifts, one stood out—a mobile phone. The boy took it, turned away, tears streaming down his face. In stunned silence, volunteers discovered the child’s dream: his dad, in a Russian prison, would call him on that very phone.

Since then, the boy has always kept the phone close.

Two days ago, the boy’s father finally called.

Soldier is coming home.
You don't need translation. pic.twitter.com/2bY2n5dwJt

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) January 5, 2024

Kyiv:

/2. For better understanding. Warhead does not match the shape of the missile. It’s located inside of it. Marked with red on the second image. https://t.co/vTwV5BBTvM

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) January 5, 2024

The Donetsk front:

russian air defense on fire 🔥

In one week, three enemy Buk M2 air defense systems were destroyed on the Donetsk axis.

📹: @SOF_UKR pic.twitter.com/YR2DHMdGEq

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) January 5, 2024

/2. Videos of the detonation of the 2S19 Msta-S. pic.twitter.com/wjlUBB1QSH

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) January 5, 2024

/4. Geolocation of Msta-S detonation and civilian buildings shown by Russians. (Petrovskoho St.125 and 123) pic.twitter.com/Qxl0WaTexJ

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) January 5, 2024

Kherson Oblast:

Strikes on the Russian 9K33 Osa air and BUK- M3 air defense systems. The results of the strike on BUK are unclear, OSA is destroyed. Kherson region.
OSA location- (46.4129170, 32.4200280)https://t.co/dndauyAu2k pic.twitter.com/G2LJkC74Nd

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) January 5, 2024

Zaporizhzhia front:

Two tightly parked Russian 2S9 NONA self-propelled 120mm mortars destroyed, as said, by HIMARS strike. Zaporizhzhia front. https://t.co/eEJjYbF2PG pic.twitter.com/5w1h1YEDOf

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) January 5, 2024

And we all know what time it must be!

Saki, Russian occupied Crimea:

I want to revise this post after being notified by Dmitri (@wartranslated). I quoted Crimea Wind, which is usually quite solid, but they used a Pro-Russian source which is rather dubious. The actual number of casualties is unclear. It could be less, and it could be more.

All… https://t.co/xS8k3nyqAg

— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) January 5, 2024

Kremlyovskaya Tabakerka is a fake channel run by someone with a decent sense of humour but zero credibility nonetheless. For instance, they recently claimed that enraged Putin wants to send Kirkorov to Avdiivka to assault Ukrainian positions as infantry after the latter took part…

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) January 5, 2024

Kremlyovskaya Tabakerka is a fake channel run by someone with a decent sense of humour but zero credibility nonetheless. For instance, they recently claimed that enraged Putin wants to send Kirkorov to Avdiivka to assault Ukrainian positions as infantry after the latter took part in the infamous naked party.

 

I’m quite convinced the channel is run by Russians to obfuscate reality. It is posting deliberately anti-Russian sentiment and keeps the comments always open to attract attention.

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) January 5, 2024

For you drone enthusiasts:

The nightmare for occupiers.

Ukrainian-made Vampire battle drone destroys enemy's armored vehicles and positions.

📹: 28th Mechanized Brigade pic.twitter.com/pUOgqz53By

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) January 5, 2024

And for you counter-drone enthusiasts:

Avenger air defense system shoots down Shahedes https://t.co/qvFYji1YPv pic.twitter.com/1dVFE1w8jU

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) January 5, 2024

Misinformation Warfare:

This is just amazing. Visegrad takes rumours from Telegram/NAFO jokers and posts as "unconfirmed reports". Huge channels on Telegram take this info from Visegrad to report the same. We are our own biggest enemies.

There is zero intelligence that Gerasimov suffered in the Crimea… pic.twitter.com/nUWnYrGqmI

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) January 5, 2024

This is just amazing. Visegrad takes rumours from Telegram/NAFO jokers and posts as “unconfirmed reports”. Huge channels on Telegram take this info from Visegrad to report the same. We are our own biggest enemies.

There is zero intelligence that Gerasimov suffered in the Crimea attack, or that he was in Crimea at all.

The Wall Street Journal‘s Yarislav Trofimov has a deep dive excerpt from his forthcoming book on what actually happened at the Istanbul peace talks in 2022: (emphasis mine)

What really happened at Istanbul peace talks in 2022? As indispensable U.S. aid to Ukraine remains stalled in Congress, some Republicans (and Putin) argue that Ukraine blew its best chance for peace. This excerpt from my new book paints the real story. https://t.co/I831614j39

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) January 5, 2024

The lead Ukrainian negotiator, David Arakhamia, pointed to a bottle of sanitizing gel on the table, covered by a crisp white cloth, as Russian and Ukrainian peace delegations gathered in Istanbul’s Dolmabahçe Palace.

“That’s an antiseptic,” Arakhamia told his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin’s adviser Vladimir Medinsky.

“Ah, I thought it’s vodka,” Medinsky joked.

There was plenty of tension behind the jovial appearances during that pivotal meeting on March 29, 2022. Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, had just publicly advised Ukrainian negotiators not to accept any beverages from the Russians and not to touch any surfaces, lest they be poisoned. After all, Russian forces were still at the gates of Kyiv, trying to overthrow President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government.

What actually happened on that momentous Tuesday and in the immediate aftermath has since turned into a matter of fundamental disagreement among Ukraine, Western nations and Russia. The Istanbul meeting has also emerged as a key point of discord in America’s own debate about the war, as indispensable U.S. aid to Ukraine remains stalled in Congress because of Republican opposition. Some argue that Ukraine blew a chance at the time to end the war. The real story paints a different, and far more complicated, picture.

The first meeting between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators happened on Feb. 28, 2022, in the Belarusian city of Gomel, four days after Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border. At that encounter, Medinsky recited a long list of the Kremlin’s demands. It included the replacement of Zelensky’s administration with a puppet regime, Ukrainian troops handing over all their tanks and artillery, the arrest and trial of “Nazis”—a Russian euphemism for any Ukrainian opposed to Moscow’s rule—and the restoration of Russian as Ukraine’s official language. Medinsky even demanded that city streets named after Ukrainian national heroes be returned to their old Soviet names.

“We listened to them, and we realized that these are not people sent for talks but for our capitulation,” recalled one of the Ukrainian negotiators, Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. Yet to gain time the Ukrainians agreed to keep talking.

On March 10, Kuleba flew to the Turkish resort town of Antalya to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in their first encounter since the war began. “I asked Lavrov a simple question behind closed doors in Antalya: Minister, what do you want? That is all I wanted to know,” Kuleba recalled. Lavrov didn’t reply, launching instead into the usual Russian litany of allegations that Ukraine had turned into a neo-Nazi den hellbent on undermining Russia.

In the 19 days between the meeting in Antalya and the Istanbul talks, the battlefield situation shifted dramatically in Ukraine’s favor. All around Kyiv, nimble Ukrainian forces inflicted defeat after defeat on over-extended Russian units.

Throughout the talks, the issue of Ukrainian membership in NATO was a critical part of the agenda. In the first weeks of the war, Zelensky indicated that Ukraine could forgo its dream of joining NATO in exchange for binding security guarantees from the West and Russia alike. Ukrainian negotiators also showed flexibility on Russian demands to reduce the size of Ukraine’s military and freeze the issue of who controls Crimea, a peninsula occupied by Moscow since 2014, for the foreseeable future. None of this, of course, was enough to stop the Russian onslaught on the ground and the Russian bombs and missiles that kept raining down on Ukrainian cities.

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan opened the Istanbul talks on March 29, the mandate of the Ukrainian team was to push for a Russian withdrawal to pre-invasion lines while showing openness on many key issues, with actual decisions deferred to a planned meeting between Zelensky and Putin.

Russia’s major demand, in addition to keeping Ukraine out of NATO, was to limit its ability to defend itself in the future. According to draft documents later revealed publicly by Putin, Moscow wanted Ukraine’s armed forces capped at 85,000 troops, 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces. Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul countered with a proposal for an army of 250,000 troops, roughly its prewar level, with 800 tanks and 1,900 artillery pieces.

Just as the conference started, Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, made a striking announcement from Moscow. The main goals of Russia’s “special military operation” had been generally fulfilled, he said. Hours later, Medinsky appeared at a press conference in Istanbul with even more astonishing news. The talks held that day had achieved significant progress, he announced, and Moscow had decided to take steps to de-escalate the conflict. Battered Russian troops started to withdraw from the Kyiv region and other parts of northern Ukraine.

According to Putin’s version of events, Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul had accepted most of Russia’s demands. “The agreements were practically reached,” he lamented months later. “Our troops left the center of Ukraine, Kyiv, to create conditions” for further talks to finalize that accord, he said.

Ukraine has vehemently disputed that account. Neither side made binding commitments in Istanbul, according to Kuleba. “There was no deal,” he said. “To engage in a conversation and to commit yourself to something are completely different things.” As for the Russian pullback, Ukrainian and American officials say Putin had no choice but to withdraw by late March because of Ukrainian military successes on the ground.

Col. Igor Girkin, a retired Russian intelligence officer and the former defense minister of a Russian proxy statelet in Donbas, agreed. “If leaving the seized territory has become inevitable, it’s best to do it before your troops are routed by the adversary,” he said shortly after the Istanbul announcements. “We will still need these troops—the war will be long.” Girkin has since been imprisoned in Moscow for criticizing Russian military failures.

On the evening of March 29, as the negotiators saluted each other in Istanbul and made plans to reconvene for the next round of talks, Ukrainian troops were already entering the town of Bucha near Kyiv. What the Ukrainians discovered there rendered moot any understanding reached in Istanbul.

Like other northwestern suburbs in Kyiv’s green belt across the Irpin River, Bucha was a relaxed town of single-family homes and five-story housing blocks set amid pine trees, playgrounds, and parks. It had a handful of resorts, with swimming pools for the guests, and an equestrian club. As Ukrainian forces advanced into Bucha, they stumbled upon a horrifying sight: Dozens of bodies lay rotting under the rain on Yablunska Street and in surrounding areas. Some corpses were missing limbs, likely eaten by dogs, while others had brains spilling from cracked skulls.

As the soldiers probed further, they found several men, many of them stripped naked to their waists, executed and lying on the ground in the courtyard of 144 Yablunska Street. On sidewalks, in ditches and in improvised graves, there were other bodies with their hands tied. Some bore the signs of torture: poked-out eyes, cut-off fingers.

More than 450 civilians were killed in Bucha during the month the town was under Russian occupation. Atrocities had been occurring throughout occupied Ukraine, especially in Mariupol. But in Bucha, the Russian soldiers fled so fast that they hadn’t had the time to remove the evidence and conceal the scale of the slaughter.

As the footage from Bucha spread on social media, Zelensky—like most Ukrainians—was overwhelmed with fury. “The essence of evil has come to our land—murderers, torturers, rapists and looters who call themselves an army,” he said in an address to Ukrainians. “They have killed consciously, and with pleasure.”

Even though the Ukrainian and Russian negotiators remained in touch, fine-tuning the documents drafted in Istanbul the previous week, Zelensky signaled that the killings uncovered in Bucha had changed everything. “What has happened here is genocide,” he said, stern-faced, during his visit to the town—the first time he had left Kyiv since the invasion. “It is very hard to keep talking when you see what has happened here.”

There was no contrition in Moscow after the horrors of Bucha came to light. “It’s a clear provocation,” thundered Lavrov. Not a single Ukrainian civilian had been harmed, declared Russia’s ministry of defense. Medinsky said the Ukrainians must have staged the atrocities in Bucha because its name rhymed with the English word “butcher.”

On April 9, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived in a Kyiv transformed. He was one of the first Western leaders to brave the trip since the invasion. Less than two weeks had elapsed since the Istanbul talks and, despite Zelensky’s outrage, the Russian and Ukrainian negotiating teams still pursued contacts via Zoom.

“I was a bit worried at that stage,” Johnson recalled. “I could not see for the life of me what the deal could be, and I thought that any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid.” Sitting down with Zelensky in Kyiv, the British prime minister delivered his pitch: “Nobody can be more Ukrainian than Ukrainians, it is not for me to tell you what your war objectives can be, but as far as I am concerned, Putin must fail and Ukraine must be entitled to retain full sovereignty and independence. …. We’re not directly fighting, you are. It’s the Ukrainians who are fighting and dying. But we would back Ukraine a thousand percent.”

Zelensky didn’t need much convincing. The conversation quickly shifted to the concrete ways in which the United Kingdom could assist the Ukrainian armed forces, such as the provision of military supplies. It was the first trickle in what would become a flood of increasingly sophisticated Western weapons. Meanwhile, online talks between Ukrainian and Russian teams fizzled away.

In the Kremlin, Putin was certain that Washington, rather than London, had forced Zelensky to abandon talks in the hope of exhausting Russia in a protracted war. Senior Russian officials kept angrily raising this point in meetings with their American counterparts. “Utter bulls—,” a senior Biden administration official told me. “I know for a fact the United States didn’t pull the plug on that. We were watching it carefully.”

Zelensky’s new position, which hasn’t changed since, was to demand a full withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian lands conquered since 2014, including Crimea, and the prosecution of Russian officials suspected of war crimes.

“In Istanbul, we still didn’t understand the type of war that Russia was waging, its genocidal intent,” Podolyak explained. “Once we returned from Istanbul, and the Russians left the Kyiv region, we saw the beastly crimes that they had committed there. And we understood that Russia will try to annihilate Ukraine no matter what.”

That’s enough for tonight.

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War for Ukraine Day 681: Air Raid Alerts Shortly After DawnPost + Comments (25)

Friday Evening Open Thread: Repubs in Disarray, Michigan Edition

by Anne Laurie|  January 5, 20246:48 pm| 61 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Local Races, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republicans in Disarray!

Michigan Republicans call for meeting to consider removing chairperson Karamo amid fundraising woes https://t.co/qr4Jvu2BHH

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 3, 2024

A little schadenfreude, to set us up for the weekend. When the Spousal Unit & I fled Michigan thirty years ago, we thought the GOP was going to turn our beleaguered home into a Rust Belt Mississippi. Fortunately, we underestimated the strength and smarts of Michigander Democrats!

Per the Associated Press, “Michigan Republicans call for meeting to consider removing chairperson Karamo amid fundraising woes”:

A group of Michigan Republicans plan to meet Saturday and discuss whether to remove Michigan GOP Chairperson Kristina Karamo following months of infighting among party members ahead of key Senate and presidential contests in the swing state.

It’s unclear whether enough party members will attend for the gathering to be official, and Karamo has made clear that she won’t recognize the vote either way, but the call for the meeting signals a remarkable decline in support for the chairperson among her grassroots supporters.

An election conspiracist who unsuccessfully ran for secretary of state in 2022, Karamo had been overwhelmingly elected in February to lead the state party through the next presidential election.

A lack of fundraising and transparency during Karamo’s tenure has pushed many of her former supporters to seek to oust her. Karamo revealed during an Oct. 19 meeting that the party had nearly $500,000 in debt and opponents have argued that the chairperson has done little to improve the financial situation in recent months.

Eight of the state party’s 13 congressional district chairs called on Karamo to resign last week and her own co-chair, Malinda Pego, signed onto a petition seeking a removal vote…

Elect a clown, expect a circus.

Michigan GOP Chair Kristina Karamo told me this morning the critics working to remove her are members of “the uniparty”and likened them to some of history’s most famous traitors. https://t.co/pOoV2N5TYa

— Simon D. Schuster (@Simon_Schuster) January 5, 2024

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… The party activists moving against her, Karamo told MLive on Friday, are part of an elitist cabal working to undermine the work of patriots like herself.

“Why are they only taking these dishonest, aggressive tactics towards other Republicans?” Karamo said. “Their job as the uniparty, in my opinion, is to prevent the Republican Party from being successful by sowing chaos and dissent and inefficiency … I refuse to believe these are just some good-hearted, confused people because they resort to lying and deception.”…

Oakland County Republican Warren Carpenter, an organizer of the effort to remove Karamo, told MLive this week he is “as confident if not more confident” after news emerged the party’s state committee itself had been fined after Karamo waded into a local party dispute in Hillsdale County and ignored a judge’s order. Karamo’s critics in the state committee said the body hasn’t been consulted on any of the lawsuits the state party has engaged in.

Karamo has also claimed only the chair of the party can set meeting agendas and refused to hold a vote on whether she should remain chair, calling it “unlawful.” That meeting is “illegal” and the committee members that show won’t be conducting the business of the party, she has claimed…

Asked to explain why Carpenter, a major Karamo donor in 2022, became her loudest critic, Karamo called him a “conniver” and a “habitual liar” seeking to sabotage the party.

“Benedict Arnold, Brutus, Judas. The story is a long story throughout history of these individuals who get close, so they can plot and scheme on a person, and when you won’t give in to what they want, they attack, and that’s what we’re witnessing,” she said.

Carpenter said he lost faith in Karamo due to alleged “financial malfeasance” by Karamo and her close circle of allies…

 
Something tells me that ousting Karamo, even should they manage to do that, will hardly be the end of the Party’s problems. Per the NYTimes (this is an unpaywalled Yahoo link), “Mutiny Erupts in a Michigan GOP Overtaken by Chaos”:

The mutiny took hold on Mackinac Island.

The Michigan Republican Party’s revered two-day policy and politics gathering, the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, was an utter mess.

Attendance had plummeted. Top-tier presidential candidates skipped the September event, and some speakers didn’t show. Guests were baffled by a scoring system that rated their ideology on a scale, from a true conservative to a so-called RINO, or Republican in name only.

And the state party, already deeply in debt, had taken out a $110,000 loan to pay the keynote speaker, Jim Caviezel, an actor who has built an ardent following among the far right after starring in a hit movie this summer about child sex trafficking. The loan came from a trust tied to the wife of the party’s executive director, according to party records.

For some Michigan Republicans, it was the final straw for a chaotic state party leadership that has been plagued by mounting financial problems, lackluster fundraising, secretive meetings and persistent infighting. Blame has centered on the fiery chair, Kristina Karamo, who skyrocketed to the top of the state party through a combative brand of election denialism but has failed to make good on her promises for new fundraising sources and armies of activists…

The pitched battle for control of the state party in a preeminent presidential battleground is the most extreme example of conflicts brewing in state Republican parties across the country. Once dominated largely by moneyed establishment donors and their allies, many state parties have been taken over by grassroots Republican activists energized by former President Donald Trump and his broadsides against the legitimacy of elections.

These activists, now holding positions of state and local power, have elevated others who share their views, prioritizing election denialism over experience and credentials.

The result has been fundraising problems and division.

The Republican Party of Arizona spent much of this year in debt. The Republican Party of Georgia has had similar difficulties, mostly caused by legal fees related to efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a rare GOP leader to buck Trump, had been forced to form his own political apparatus outside the state party for his reelection campaign in 2022. The leaders of the party in both states have aligned themselves with the election-denial movement.

Veterans of Republican politics say that state parties play vital roles in winning elections, acting as a clearinghouse for distributing large donations from national groups unfamiliar with local terrain and offering discounts on expensive campaign costs like mail. They help identify potential candidates and winnable races. They are a font of the kinds of activists and volunteers critical to powering statewide campaigns. And they raise money.

All of that is at risk in places like Michigan…

By November, Karamo was trying to sell the party’s former headquarters, a building blocks from the state Capitol in Lansing that had been paid for by two wealthy donors. Karamo and the state party do not own the building; it is owned by a trust controlled by former state party chairs.

Karamo had vacated the headquarters months earlier, arguing that its maintenance fees were an unnecessary cost. When she left, Karamo allowed the electricity to be shut off, which released the building’s electronic locks and left it open to the public, according to the report from Republicans opposed to the party chair.

LET. US. SAVOUR!

Friday Evening Open Thread: Repubs in Disarray, Michigan EditionPost + Comments (61)

Promises, Promises! We Can Only Hope

by WaterGirl|  January 5, 20246:00 pm| 93 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics

 

Go ahead. Make my day. https://t.co/79JChzwLqU

— Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) January 5, 2024

🌼

Can I just say that one thing I hate about social media is that too many people are so cryptic in their posts, as if we can read their mind or know what they just looked at that prompted them to write what they did.

For instance, I can take this two different ways.

The SC can move quickly when they want to, and they have done that here. (possible subtext: this is super fast, only one month away!)
OR
The SC can move quickly when they want to, and they have NOT done that here. (possible subtext: they could move super fast, but instead they set this for over a month from now when it’s too late for the primary ballot in CO.)

Note: The courts can, in fact, move quickly when they want to. SCOTUS has just set oral argument for 2/8, just over a month away. https://t.co/WUFxRcxiYO

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) January 5, 2024

Update:

Mueller She Wrote included this for context in her tweet.

BREAKING: SCOTUS has GRANTED cert in the §3 14th amendment challenge. Petitioners brief due 1/18. Respondent’s brief due 1/31. Reply due 2/5. Oral arguments 2/8.

Seeing those details, 2/8 seems pretty fast.  Not quite two weeks for a brief from Trump.  Another 13 days for the state.   5 days for Trump to reply.  Oral arguments 3 days later.

But that sort of just makes my point.  How hard is it to include a bit of detail?

🌼

Including this just for fun, because it’s true.  Though someone did point out in a reply that (fake) jack Smith left out the category of the lawyers who work for Trump for free.

Promises, Promises! We Can Only Hope 1

Open thread.

Promises, Promises! We Can Only HopePost + Comments (93)

LIVE: Biden Speech at Valley Forge

by TaMara|  January 5, 20243:00 pm| 95 Comments

This post is in: Biden Administration in Action, Biden For President, Elections 2024, Open Threads, Politics, President Biden

So the speech was moved from Jan 6 to today.

President Biden moved his speech on democracy, marking the anniversary of Jan. 6, up a day due to the incoming winter storm in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions this weekend. The president was set to travel to the Philadelphia area on Saturday to mark the third anniversary of the riots at the U.S. Capitol.

Here is the live link.  It’s the NBC embed, if they put up one from the White House feed (or Joe Biden campaign account) I’ll add that one.

As promised, here’s the official link from the Joe Biden campaign:

I’ve scheduled this to post a few minutes before his speech is to begin. Who knows if the scheduling will work (!) or if he’ll be on time. I’ll try to keep an eye on all of it while I’m painting today (laundry room cabinets to change things up). (Good intentions gone poof! – I instead decided to make two loaves of Rye Bread)

Otherwise, open thread

LIVE: Biden Speech at Valley ForgePost + Comments (95)

“God Made Me Upchuck”

by Betty Cracker|  January 5, 20242:15 pm| 167 Comments

This post is in: 2024 Primaries, Elections 2024, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity

Y’all, Trump dropped the smelliest turd of an ad — the worst political ad I’ve ever seen in my life — on his Twitter knock-off site today. It’s called “God Made Trump.” It begins with scratchy, somber piano music and a visual of an old-timey record player. Then the ad zooms in on the planet while a narrator intones Trump’s date of birth and a photo of toddler Trump looms on the screen while voiceover declares that God sent Trump as a “caretaker” to protect his “planned paradise.”

There’s a montage of Trump’s greatest hits as president, including that time he placed a tiny wingtip over the North Korean border and when he rudely shoved another world leader aside at an international summit as the narrator sings his praises and implies that Trump personally delivered at least one of Ivanka’s babies. (No, really. I have a vivid imagination, but I could not make that up!) The ad claims Trump worked 110 hours per week as president and that he attends church every Sunday.

It’s a rip-off of DeSantis’s “God Made a Fighter” ad, which was a rip-off of old-timey radio man Paul Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer” bit. But it’s so much more over-the-top than even DeSantis’s puke-worthy paean to his own greatness. Trump will not be out-narcissisted! Here’s a link in case you’re feeling masochistic, but I do not recommend clicking through. You might actually puke.

Open thread.

“God Made Me Upchuck”Post + Comments (167)

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