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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

The National Guard is not Batman.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

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

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

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

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Stand up, dammit!

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

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Open Thread:  Hey Lurkers!  (Holiday Post)

Open Threads

You are here: Home / Archives for Open Threads

NYC & Maui Meetups – Proof of Life

by WaterGirl|  October 14, 20232:54 pm| 125 Comments

This post is in: Balloon Juice, Meetups, Open Threads

So there were a couple of mini-meetups in September and October.

September 4 in NYC

Here’s NotMax and Layer8Problem  in the harbor.

Rumors that they commandeered the ship above for an afternoon sail were highly exaggerated.

October 8 in Maui

Here we have NotMax, Hkedi [Kang T.Q.] and Sister Golden Bear.  (left to right)

No idea who the handsome fellow in the black hat is!

Looks like a good time was had by all!

Open thread.

 

NYC & Maui Meetups – Proof of LifePost + Comments (125)

Saturday Morning Open Thread: *Riveted*, I Am…

by Anne Laurie|  October 14, 20237:34 am| 239 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Politics, Republicans in Disarray!, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All

Saturday Morning Open Thread 22

(John Deering via GoComics.com)

Shorter House: our work is done here. https://t.co/uAirCOHIt4

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 13, 2023

Buck tells reporters they announced breaking for the weekend and floor vote Tuesday https://t.co/SYQYIDkHCO

— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) October 13, 2023

if you're in line to run for speaker, STAY IN LINE https://t.co/EcwBwI9kOF

— Liz Charboneau (@lizchar) October 13, 2023

Josh Marshall, at TPM, on “The State of the Speaker Debacleship Going into the Weekend”:

show full post on front page

… Today, with Scalise out, Jordan scrambled to pull together 217 votes. He failed. At mid-day Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, who I’d literally never heard of before, decided that he might as well run. So in the afternoon the GOP caucus held another vote and it was Jordan 124 to Scott’s 81. (Needless to say, Scott was functioning as a stand-in for opposition to Jordan.) Jordan then asked for another vote with just him where the question was not whether members supported him but whether they would vote him on the floor of the House since he was the GOP nominee. He got 152 votes – 55 votes short. The House eventually decided they’d put in a hard day’s work and recessed until Monday.

The upshot of the last ten days of nonsense appears to be that McCarthy, Scalise and Jordan each have a significant group of members now committed to never, ever voting for them for Speaker under any circumstances. As we discussed yesterday, they’ve now collectively demolished the principle that a caucus vote is binding. After all that’s what a caucus is. But that’s out the window.

I am not saying it’s likely. But after today I’m for the first time thinking that this may end in some kind of cross-party agreement with the Democrats to elect a new Speaker. It’s difficult to convey the sheer weight of factors arrayed against such an outcome. But the first time it seems like there may literally be no way to elect a Speaker with Republican votes alone. And that leaves only one alternative.

That would leave the question of what Republicans could possibly offer and what Democrats could plausibly accept to effect such a compromise. The only thing that seems plausible to me is some form of enhanced or supersized discharge petition. How this could be given force or made meaningful in the context of parliamentary rules I don’t know. But a key, perhaps the key power of the Speakership is what gets a vote and what doesn’t. There’s overwhelming support in the House for Ukraine aide. But a relatively small number of hardliners are preventing such a vote from even happening. That is despite the fact that between 2/3rds and 3/4s of the House would vote for it. The various debt ceiling and government shutdown standoffs can only happen because the GOP Speaker can’t risk accepting a compromise that passes with Democratic votes. Of course, McCarthy ended up doing that twice, at the very, very, very last moment. And that’s why he’s gone.

In other words, what I’m talking about is a way that the minority could force votes in these cases when a majority or in many cases an overwhelming majority supports a bill. How you actually make such a concession operative in parliamentary rule-making I really don’t know. But in principle something like that seems like a concession that would be worth Democrats lending their votes to elect a Republican Speaker…

Sucks to win popular vote but be denied power by a tiny group of freaks who mostly represent land, right? https://t.co/NgGqr60Ud1

— L O L G O P (@LOLGOP) October 13, 2023

A competent reporter would have grasped the magnitude of what Pelosi meant & respected the hell out of her & her caucus. https://t.co/6Hb33ha03S

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 13, 2023

I hope everyone gets now that the turmoil in the House is all about Trump trying to install a Speaker of the House who would definitely help him try to steal the 2024 election.

— L O L G O P (@LOLGOP) October 13, 2023

Hakeem Jeffries shreds Jim Jordan "House Republicans have just elected a speaker nominee who in 16 years in congress hasn't passed a single bill, because his focus has not been on the American people, his focus has been on peddling lies and conspiracy theories and division." pic.twitter.com/SgmTqW76ER

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) October 13, 2023

Fun fact: @hakeemjeffries is actually the leading candidate for Speaker of the House and has been this entire time with 212 certain votes

Only needs 5 more https://t.co/HCotV3avPR

— Lindy Li (@lindyli) October 13, 2023

Saturday Morning Open Thread: *Riveted*, I Am…Post + Comments (239)

We Could Use Some Fun

by WaterGirl|  October 13, 20239:01 pm| 108 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

Wag sent me a link to this about a week ago, and unless I’m mistaken, this is right up the Balloon Juice alley.  Nothing else seems to be happening in the back room, and this feels like Friday night material.  I hope you’re not all in bed already!

I don’t know my way around Reddit, but this appears to be from colin_morris.  Why is the person not a commenter here?  So awesome!  (click the image to embiggen)

We Could Use Some Fun 2

Compound pejoratives on Reddit – from buttface to wankpuffin

Jun 28, 2022

Dirty words are, let’s face it, a lot of fun. If you want to express your dislike for someone and a standard insult like “jerk” or “moron” won’t cut it, you can get creative. There are a few reliable recipes for forming derogatory noun-noun compounds in English. For example:

Start with a word for a disgusting or worthless substance
Add a word for an agglomeration or container
Hence, dirtwad, scumbag, pissbucket, snotwagon…

(In case it’s not yet clear, this post will contain a lot of bad words. Most are merely silly or crude, but some are more seriously offensive, including slurs.)

Alternatively, -head, -face, and -brain(s) are incredibly versatile suffixes, which can be preceded by just about any taboo word.

The truly creative can go outside the box with oddball constructions like fucktrumpet, or wankpuffin, which perhaps succeed more by their euphony than their ability to invoke any coherent image.

If only we had some concrete data on how these pieces fit together…

Introducing the Reddit compound pejorative dataset

I collected lists of around 70 prefixes and 70 suffixes (collectively, “affixes”) that can be flexibly combined to form insulting compounds, based on a scan of Wiktionary’s English derogatory terms category. The terms covered a wide range of domains, including:

scatology (fart-, poop-)
political epithets (lib-, Trump-)
food (-waffle, -burger)
body parts (butt-, -face, -head, -brains)
gendered epithets (bitch-, -boy)
animals (dog-, -monkey)
Most terms were limited to appearing in one position. For example, while -face readily forms pejorative compounds as a suffix, it fails to produce felicitous compounds as a prefix (facewad? faceclown? facefart?).

Taking the product of these lists gives around 4,800 possible A+B combinations. Most are of a pejorative character, though some false positives slipped in (e.g. dogpile, spitballs). I scraped all Reddit comments from 2006 to the end of 2020, and counted the number of comments containing each.

As a corpus, Reddit has the virtue of being uninhibited in its profanity, and on the cutting edge of new coinages. For example, Google Books Ngram Viewer, which indexes the majority of all books published in English up to 2019, gives no results for fuckwaffle, whereas the term has been used in 1,096 Reddit comments.

The full “matrix” of combinations is surprisingly dense. Of the ~4,800 possible compounds, more than half occurred in at least one comment. The most frequent compound, dumbass, appears in 3.6 million comments, but there’s also a long tail of many rare terms, including 444 hapax legomena (terms which appear only once in the dataset), such as pukebird, fartrag, sleazenozzle, and bastardbucket.

In fact, the dataset approximately follows Zipf’s law, meaning that a log-log plot of term rank vs. frequency is close to a straight line:

The Matrix of Pejoration

The full 66 x 73 matrix of all prefixes and suffixes is too big to fit readably in a single plot, so I’ve shown a 20 x 20 subset below, which includes many of the most frequent affixes. Note that frequency is mapped to colour using a logarithmic scale, because it varies over several orders of magnitude.

Check out the whole thing.

 

We Could Use Some FunPost + Comments (108)

War for Ukraine Day 597: President Zelenskyy Takes Dutch PM Rutke To Visit Odesa

by Adam L Silverman|  October 13, 20236:05 pm| 44 Comments

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

Art by NEIVANMADE of a Ukrainian painted black and outlined in blood red kneeling in grief with hands covering the face surrounded by the bodies of Ukrainians killed by Russians on a grey background. "Russia Is Committing Genocide Right Now" is across the top center of the image.

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

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

show full post on front page

To endure the winter and deliver a powerful rebuff to Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities is the focus of all efforts now – President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address

13 October 2023 – 19:30

I wish you good health, dear Ukrainians!

Today is a working day in our city, Odesa.

The visit of Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, and his team. Our negotiations. There is a decision regarding missiles for the ‘Patriots’ – the Netherlands is providing additional missiles. Today, we also discussed with Mark other joint steps for Ukraine’s defense.

Particular attention to the defense of Odesa, our entire South – from the Danube ports to the ports of Greater Odesa. We discussed the protection of our export corridors in the Black Sea. The world recognizes Ukraine’s global role as a guarantor of food security. It firmly supports the need to preserve and enhance our significance in this issue.

The social stability of many countries directly depends on Ukraine’s strength.

Today, we were in the port of Odesa. We received briefings from military and government officials about our unity with the world market and the protection of the Ukrainian Black Sea waters. I held a meeting regarding the situation in Odesa region with law enforcement leaders, regional authorities, and military leadership. The key focus is, of course, preparation for winter, safeguarding the energy sector, and rebuilding what was destroyed by Russian attacks. I am grateful to everyone who is working to ensure the safety of our people. The work of everyone in the government system and our diplomats is currently aimed at enduring the winter and delivering a powerful rebuff to Russian attacks on the city of Odesa, Odesa region, the cities of the region, and the entire Ukraine. More protection will be provided to our state.

Today, I had the honor of visiting our warriors who are recovering from injuries. Together with Mark, we spent time with them and talked to them. I presented state awards to the military and the doctors who are helping them.

I met with the cadets of the Military Academy in Odesa. A great conversation. Thank you, guys, for your attention and your questions. Boys and girls – you’re doing great.

Today, in Odesa, I addressed the participants of the meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force – a format of regional cooperation in northern Europe. The United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Norway. The meeting took place on the Swedish island of Gotland, which is a significant signal, a very symbolic place for leaders to discuss the security of Europe and the long-term reliable defense of our countries and people. Looking at the map, one can immediately understand why Russian state propagandists called for the capture of this island. Gotland is control over the entire region, and Russia is also trying to destabilize this region. When I addressed the Swedish Parliament in 2022, at the beginning of the full-scale war, I spoke precisely about how important it is to be strong for everyone in Europe, in all parts of the continent, in every such strategic point like Gotland, which determines common security. By the way, I’m grateful for the joint statement of the leaders of the Joint Expeditionary Force today. It’s a strong statement. Support of Ukraine, especially in our path to NATO and clear condemnation of Russian aggression. And the readiness to assist us as needed to win the war.

Thank you!

And a few more things.

Today, we signed a Protocol with Moldova regarding joint border control at the Kuchurhan – Novosavitskaya railway crossing point. This is another route for our exports, an additional transport corridor that will undoubtedly strengthen our entire region. Thank you, Moldova!

I also want to thank our warriors today – those who defend our skies. Especially in the southern part of the country. Our firing groups. The 13th Separate Anti-Aircraft Machine Gun Battalion, the 5th National Guard Brigade, and the 14th Radio Technical Brigade. Thank you, warriors!

Glory to all who is fighting for Ukraine! Thank you to everyone who is helping us! Thank you, Mark, for your visit and today’s negotiations, for all your support!

And thank you, Odesa! We will definitely rebuild everything that Russia has destroyed.

Glory to Ukraine!

President Zelenskyy also addressed the Joint Expeditionary Force Conference. Video below followed by the English transcript.

We need reliable geopolitical stability in Europe and in the whole Euro-Atlantic space – address of the President of Ukraine to the leaders of the countries of the Joint Expeditionary Force

13 October 2023 – 13:50

Dear Ulf, Mr. Prime Minister,

I can see Rishi, I see Mette, I’m sorry I can’t see everybody but I’m happy and I know that all of you and your nations with us. Thank you so much for all this time that you supported and support us.

Dear colleagues! I am glad to greet all of you! And I am glad that this format of cooperation – Joint Expeditionary Force – is effective and becoming stronger.

Now is the time for collective efforts.

It does not mean that capabilities of one nation are too weak. It means that the task we face is too big. We need reliable geopolitical stability in Europe and, more broadly, in the whole Euro-Atlantic space.

So, we need new collective forms of cooperation and strengthening of existing ones.

Because we see what modern aggressions and terrorist attacks are. If an enemy of freedom has significant resources and boundless cynicism – like Russia, like Hamas, like other terrorists – then free nations need a really full-scale defense… Fast, as flexible as possible, not limited by outdated procedures and one that can be maintained – as long as is needed.

In our Euro-Atlantic space we have NATO. Mainly. But not all democratic nations are engaged into this form of defense.

That is why Ukraine, being on the road to NATO, is developing a system of security guarantees. And I thank those of you who joined us in this process. Geopolitical stability is the basic element for all other forms of stability. Can a nation alone guarantee geopolitical stability for itself? Definitely not. Can the main Alliance existing on our continent, NATO, do this? Yes, but only if its members know how to be allies.

Regional formats of cooperation give this very practice – knowledge of being allies. In one or another area. At one or another historical distance.

Knowledge of being allies is not gained easily. It does not come automatically.

It is not a consequence of a formal decision to join the Alliance. It is day-to-day cooperation.

These are also our coalitions – defense coalitions that help us to stand against Russia.

The capabilities of large alliances grow on the basis of meaningful local cooperation.

Currently we are working on creating new formats of cooperation and strengthening the existing ones in our region – the Black Sea region.

I visited Bucharest, and at the meeting with President Iohannis we agreed that the relations between our states, Ukraine and Romania, deserve the level of strategic partnership.

We are also working effectively in the Ukraine-Moldova-Romania triangle.

In particular, in logistical cooperation – for the export of food produced in Ukraine, which is critically important for the food security of the world. This also has potential for the energy industry of our countries – for energy independence from Russia. We have a common understanding of security challenges as well.

Ukraine has extremely important cooperation with Bulgaria and Türkiye.

We all have to remember that joint security and development of the economy, infrastructure in the Black Sea region are some of the keys to the geopolitical stability of entire Europe.

New security perspectives will also emerge due to changes in the South Caucasus region neighbouring the Black Sea. This will add potential to our joint security here, in our part of Europe. Especially when thanks to our defense from Russian aggression, new prospects will open for Georgia – to restore its territorial integrity.

All of us are now at a historical turning point. We have only two options.

Either terrorist Russia will succeed in breaking freedom. And then the zone of geopolitical instability, which exists in the east of Europe, will spread throughout the continent. Or thanks to many levels and formats of cooperation, in particular regional ones, thanks to our common protection of freedom – Russia will lose in this confrontation. After it has lost, and as a result, a historic chance for geopolitical stability along the entire line from Scandinavia through Minsk and Kyiv to the South Caucasus will be realized.

Did previous generations have such a chance? Honestly, they didn’t have. Because Russia has always kept the potential for destabilization. But now – we have it. And we have to use it. I am sure we will.

Dear leaders!

Now, before winter comes, we should all focus firstly on hybrid terrorist threats from Russia. We saw last year what the Kremlin was betting on, namely strikes on the energy infrastructure to destroy the basis of modern life. We predict that this winter Russia will try to repeat its terror tactics, only on a larger scale.

It is important now to be ready for any terrorist attacks, for any Russian actions. We must stand this battle. Air defense, namely the defence of our cities, our energy infrastructure and export corridors in the Black Sea, is the key to winning the winter battle for Ukraine. And I thank those of you who have helped all of us to protect our skies against Russian missiles, drones and against Russian jets. The Kremlin must begin to get used to its losses, and the loss of the second winter, the loss of its energy terror will definitely give strength to all of us – it will be easier to lead Russia with losses in the future.

But for this we still need to work together – much more! – at the global level, at the regional levels, and in bilateral, of course, format. So that after this winter, we will be able to record – on the basis of our cooperation, of our common efforts, our joint victory is gradually growing and, thanks to it, the establishment of geopolitical stability in the entire Great East of Europe is approaching – real, reliable one.

And it will be so.

Thank you for your support, invitation, thanks for everything!

Слава Україні!

Dutch PM Rutke visited Ukraine today and President Zelenskyy took him to visit Odesa:

Russia will try to crush Ukraine’s infrastructure this winter. The Netherlands is stepping up with additional Patriot missiles to bolster Ukraine’s defense. Dutch PM Mark Rutte is visiting Odesa seaport, hit in a recent missile attack 🇳🇱 🇺🇦💪🏻 pic.twitter.com/bYUDDtHLBZ

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) October 13, 2023

The Netherlands is also sending more Patriot batteries:

🇺🇦 is grateful to 🇳🇱
More Patriot missiles will help our defenders to protect people and energy infrastructure. https://t.co/MYipWqeJUL

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) October 13, 2023

Once there was a classroom full of students in Kherson. russia destroyed it.

📸: Oleksandr Spivakovskiy pic.twitter.com/9cBoqAJEcE

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) October 13, 2023

As I noted yesterday, Avdiivka appears to be where the Russians have decided to throw a lot of resources at the Ukrainians. And by resources I mean a lot of bodies that are getting ground up.

Some observations:
1) I don't think this is a diversion or fixing action
2) I think Russia also wants to make gains before the mud season
3) This seems to be a multi-battalion operation. This indicates Russia thinks it has enough forces to prevent a further Ukrainian breakthrough https://t.co/QO8sL4l8U4

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) October 12, 2023

Here’s the rest of the thread Rob Lee is quote tweeting:

Footage from Ukraine’s 53rd Mechanized Brigade of ATGM (some look like Javelins) and FPV strikes on Russian armor in the Avdiivka area from yesterday. 3/https://t.co/sRNoUQQveghttps://t.co/zo76ubssbohttps://t.co/iA1064R3kz pic.twitter.com/HETWSqvmo8

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) October 11, 2023

More footage from Ukraine’s 53rd Mechanized Brigade from yesterday. 5/https://t.co/sRNoUQQveghttps://t.co/FKsYLCjW2u pic.twitter.com/a6YYrvhMlg

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) October 11, 2023

More footage from Ukraine’s 53rd Mechanized Brigade. 7/https://t.co/erQjaLAnp6https://t.co/uqdDeMquml pic.twitter.com/c1Ufvby8w1

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) October 11, 2023

Video of Russian Mi-28 attack helicopters launching ATGMs on the Avdiivka front with a Mi-8. One Russian source claims they're Mi-28NM launching LMUR, though it doesn't look like they have the rotor mast mounted radar. 9/https://t.co/YF8ruvrRrxhttps://t.co/YrNtQg6IQL pic.twitter.com/bVLkljwoJ3

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) October 12, 2023

Another video from Ukraine's 53rd Mechanized Brigade showing a Russian tank hitting a mine. 11/https://t.co/N7upEw7J9A pic.twitter.com/dDPDVytpcV

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) October 12, 2023

More footage from the Avdiivka front, including from 2 days ago. The first from Ukraine’s 129th Territorial Defense Brigade shows the aftermath of the same T-80BVM tank loss from earlier in my thread. 13/https://t.co/w6lvx0ZW6rhttps://t.co/zo76ubt00Whttps://t.co/Hy3cbVdwWj pic.twitter.com/ZEvyoKKxRs

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) October 12, 2023

Avdiivka.
A destroyed Russian vehicle burns out. pic.twitter.com/OkHPyJAz1M

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) October 13, 2023

Two more Russian BMPs destroyed on the Avdiivka front. https://t.co/4Bn5bgLDDa pic.twitter.com/oXF06bYdHt

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 13, 2023

From Kyiv in 3 days to a "deficit in body bags in Donetsk": Russian volunteer urgently needs help with purchasing corpse bags for soldiers currently assaulting in Avdiivka. They also need food, but this must only come in closed packages, because "you don't know if someone's going… pic.twitter.com/w6x00g69y5

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) October 13, 2023

From Kyiv in 3 days to a “deficit in body bags in Donetsk”: Russian volunteer urgently needs help with purchasing corpse bags for soldiers currently assaulting in Avdiivka. They also need food, but this must only come in closed packages, because “you don’t know if someone’s going to add something to it”.

Also yesterday. Russian columns in the battle of Avdiivka under heavy Ukrainian artillery shelling. pic.twitter.com/DqEM2N4xf5

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) October 13, 2023

What appears to be a fairly reasonable explanation of the Avdiivka situation from the Russian source. Essentially, the northern wing of the encirclement achieved some goals quickly, but in the south, they bogged down, and Ukrainians reacted accordingly. The quick attempt to… pic.twitter.com/TVW6ltdgqu

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) October 13, 2023

What appears to be a fairly reasonable explanation of the Avdiivka situation from the Russian source. Essentially, the northern wing of the encirclement achieved some goals quickly, but in the south, they bogged down, and Ukrainians reacted accordingly. The quick attempt to encircle Avdiivka failed and sides switched to the more familiar “battles for forester’s huts”.

https://t.me/ramzayiegokomanda/5158

Just north of Avdiivka:

A Russian assault repelled at Krasnohorivka (north of Avdiivka)
(vid by DeepState): https://t.co/top0GyaHJC pic.twitter.com/Qv0qgbXAny

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) October 13, 2023

Avdiivka in 3 days: Girkin's friend and a fascist Yuriy Yevich is appealing to his readers with medical skills to take leave and come to Donetsk/Horlivka due to a critical lack of medics in local hospitals.https://t.co/xhyFnWUoMe pic.twitter.com/IFgf2Z668m

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) October 13, 2023

Between Horlivka & Yasynuvata:

/2. The gun is MT-12, not Msta. Plus two MT-LB were destroyed at the location https://t.co/i6MW5ght8O

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 13, 2023

Here’s the full text of the first tweet in the thread:

New details about the strike on bridge between Horlivka and Yasynuvata. The new video shows destroyed Russian T-80 and 2A65 “Msta-B” 152.4mm howitzer, in Addition to the previously known 3-STS Akhmat. So the strike was made when a Russian military column moved through this area.
https://t.me/russianocontext/866

Kopani, Zaporizhzhia Oblast:

Assault on Russian positions near Kopani, Zaporizhzhia front
By the 2nd Assault Battalion of the 128th Brigade of Ukraine https://t.co/i1SxnLrRJp pic.twitter.com/8iU29ulENP

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 13, 2023

Russian occupied Sevastapol, Crimea:

Sea babies reportedly took on two Russian warships 'Buyan' and 'Pavel Derzhavin' in Sevastopol Bay. That's what you get when you spend all your money on superyachts for your oligarchs. pic.twitter.com/v1hOEQO6Hs

— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) October 13, 2023

For you drone enthusiasts:

Mastery in every detail.
FPV drone destroy an enemy tank.

📹: @SOF_UKR pic.twitter.com/kS1UHtZ4wk

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) October 13, 2023

/2. If you look close enough you can see an approaching FPV drone before the explosion pic.twitter.com/8rKAf2wQK0

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 13, 2023

We have an F-16 update!

Ukrainian pilots are expected to begin training to fly the F-16 fighter jet at an Air National Guard base in Tuscon, Arizona, next week, according to four U.S. officials. The pilots will first learn the basics of operating the F-16 in simulators – Politicohttps://t.co/lijLaM8xN0 pic.twitter.com/Up2akZ5tsV

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 13, 2023

From Politico:

Ukrainian pilots are expected to begin training to fly the F-16 fighter jet at an Air National Guard base in Tuscon, Ariz., next week, according to four U.S. officials.

A small number of pilots, who arrived in the United States last month to participate in an English language course at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, have passed their first test for English proficiency and are headed to Morris Air National Guard Base in Arizona, according to one of the officials, who like the others were granted anonymity to speak ahead of an announcement. There, they will train with the 162nd Wing, the main F-16 training hub for the Air Force, two of the officials said.

The pilots will first learn the basics of operating the F-16 in the classroom and in simulators before moving on to flying the actual jets, as is typical for any Air Force pilot training program. However, the course may be accelerated due to the urgent need to get them back to the battlefield, the first official said.

The group of Ukrainian pilots has been participating in an English language program at the Defense Language Institute English Language Center at Lackland, said Air Force spokesperson Rose Riley.

“Testing will determine their next courses and when the pilots would be able to commence F-16 training. Training location options are still being considered at this time,” Riley said.

The news comes as the U.S. announced on Wednesday that it will head up a coalition of countries training Ukrainian pilots and crew to operate and maintain the F-16s, alongside the Netherlands and Denmark. So far, 11 countries have signed up to help with the training, while the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium will donate aircraft.

During a press conference in Brussels earlier this week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the F-16s would arrive on the battlefield next spring at the earliest.

More at the link!

That’s enough for today.

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Open thread!

War for Ukraine Day 597: President Zelenskyy Takes Dutch PM Rutke To Visit OdesaPost + Comments (44)

Go Joe and Other Musings

by WaterGirl|  October 13, 20234:31 pm| 142 Comments

This post is in: Biden Administration in Action, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Open Threads, Politics, War in Ukraine

So proud of Joe Biden.

Biden: It’s also a priority for me to urgently address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza… We can’t lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas and the appalling attacks pic.twitter.com/oHybsZBvC7

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 13, 2023

Thank you, Joe!

⭐️

Is Ukraine becoming a literal proxy war between authoritarian countries and those who believe in democracy?  Instead of just a figurative one.

Ukraine and the West are now fighting not just Russia and Iran in Ukraine, but North Korea too.

Quite a new axis – Russia, Iran, North Korea, Hamas, Hezbollah…….https://t.co/0fzbMMVpyd

— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) October 13, 2023

Anyone who thinks we don’t have to fight this fight in Ukraine, and win, is not grounded in reality.

⭐️

What’s the latest on the Speaker fight?

https://t.co/ebHsSiLSwJ pic.twitter.com/rYFZ7o5Mef

— Gary McCoy (@garymccoysf) October 12, 2023

I am with Josh Marshall, asking who the hell is Austin Scott?

I think the real breaking news is that there’s a rep from Georgia named Austin Scott.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 13, 2023

⭐️

Open thread.

Go Joe and Other MusingsPost + Comments (142)

Alexandra Petri Is a National Treasure (Open Thread)

by WaterGirl|  October 13, 20233:35 pm| 111 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

This really might be Alexandra Petri’s best column ever.  I think it’s perfect, and I’m a hard grader.

(If you are experiencing Déjà vu, you’re not crazy.  I put this up last week, but it was only up for 5 or 10 minutes before another post went up, so only about 10 people saw it.  This post from Petri deserves more than that!)

Help Wanted: Speaker needed in the House of Representatives

Help wanted!

We are in urgent need of a new speaker for the House of Representatives! Our most recent speaker, Kevin, had to leave unexpectedly, and we are shorthanded with a lot of important business coming up!

Who we are:

The U.S. House of Representatives! We have been called “the second-most august legislative body in the United States” and a lot of other things that are not printable in a family newspaper. Not ringing a bell? We were in a “School House Rock.” Or if you heard anyone complaining about partisan gridlock grinding something to a halt, that was probably us.

In our House, unlike an increasing number of statehouses around the country, gerrymandering has not resulted in a Republican majority that is trying to lock everyone with a womb in a vault underground where they cannot vote and their screams cannot be heard. No, here it has just resulted in a steadily increasing inability to keep the country functional! This is the place where Lauren Boebert goes for work! So do Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor Greene and more than 10 Mikes!

Speaker is the most important position we have to offer. This job has launched the careers of Newt Gingrich (failed presidential candidate), John Boehner (cannabis lobbyist), Paul Ryan (something at a … think tank, maybe?). Every man who has recently held this position has run away from it screaming, “No! Don’t send me back there! I don’t want to go back!” Though if you ask him what he saw, he will not answer, so there’s a possibility it’s haunted! Just in time for spooky season!

Do I need to be a member to apply? No! You don’t technically need to be a member of the House of Representatives to be speaker, but it helps if you are a member because that is one fewer vote you will need to wrangle.

What does the job entail? You have one job: Make all the laws for the entire country. This includes passing a budget so the government can keep running! If this sounds too overwhelming, just impeach the president.

Is there a dress code? Oh God, don’t ask us that right now.

What are the day-to-day responsibilities? You must count votes! While you’re doing this, keep in mind that there is a club of anywhere from eight to 45 people who don’t want you to get anything done, and some of them might hate your guts! Also, fundraising.

Requirements:

Must be able to count! Other useful skills include herding cats and walking and chewing gum at the same time, though these might be metaphors. You will get to preside from the chair, and recognize or not recognize people, and give them the floor (these might also be metaphors).

I see here that this job was done by a woman for eight years (nonconsecutively); how hard can it possibly be? Harder than you’d think!

Job perks include:

Great seat at State of the Union address, if you’re a fan of Joe Biden. Note: You cannot sell or trade the seat!

You get a little hammer!

Work with a man named Chip!

Second in line to the presidency of the United States!

Popcorn (We can get popcorn if this is important to you.)

Ideal candidate skills and traits:

Have a clear agenda but also be willing to reach across the aisle; be actively interested in making people’s lives better, either by repealing laws that don’t make sense or passing laws that do; be willing to listen and compromise, with the understanding that people live in this country and like it here and it would bring them peace of mind if the government did not arbitrarily stop working every four to six weeks.

But we’re probably just going to pick someone Matt Gaetz wants.

Open thread.

Alexandra Petri Is a National Treasure (Open Thread)Post + Comments (111)

Odds & Ends (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker|  October 13, 20239:58 am| 175 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, War

I don’t know what the House GOP morons will do next. Their current flailing is damaging to the country and must end. But how? Now, in the one chamber they control, Repubs are suffer the consequences of the radical minoritarian rule they’ve imposed on the rest of the country.

Thanks to them, we can’t have nice things, like sensible gun control, bodily autonomy, representation and a more equitable society. Now they can’t have nice things either, like an unindicted presidential primary frontrunner or a functioning majority conference in the U.S. House of Representatives. They stopped respecting our votes a long time ago, and now they don’t respect each other’s either.

***

This is interesting (WaPo gift link):

President Biden’s reelection effort will launch a pilot test of its 2024 organizing strategy in Wisconsin and Arizona next month, hiring about two dozen staffers and opening a Milwaukee office with a new focus on digital and in-person outreach that aims to directly leverage the personal relationships of volunteers.

The moves come as the Democratic National Committee has redirected its organizing efforts to a new smartphone app that encourages supporters to communicate with people in their own friend, family and community circles and then report those contacts back to the party’s voter file.

This “relational organizing” has become a growing part of Democratic campaigns for several cycles, outperforming traditional door-knocking and call sheet lists that volunteers have long used to contact strangers during campaigns. But the scale of what the Biden campaign, in concert with the national party, is planning for next year has not been attempted before.

Swing state voters will be the focus of the strategy next year, according to the article. The campaign is taking a belt-and-suspenders approach and will launch traditional door-knocking and phone canvassing too. I hope it works!

show full post on front page

***

As I mentioned Sunday, my sister, niece and I attended a football game at the University of Florida last Saturday. The game started at 4 PM, but we got there early to tailgate. I was only vaguely aware of what was happening in Israel before we left and didn’t pay any attention to the news that day.

The game ended after the sun set. While we were sitting in the post-game traffic jam in the neighborhood just north of the stadium, near where I lived when I was a student there, I noticed a lot of Orthodox guys on the street, not walking among the throngs of people leaving the game but just hanging around.

It didn’t seem odd to me at the time. UF Hillel is nearby, and it was homecoming weekend, so I thought maybe they were having an event. UF has one of the largest populations of Jewish students in the country.

A few days ago, I read an article about an incident Monday night at an on-campus vigil to remember the victims in Israel. Someone fainted, and when a bystander shouted “call 911,” it sparked a panic. Several people were hurt, though thankfully all injuries were minor.

When I read about that, I thought about the guys I saw on the street on the day of the massacre, and it occurred to me that they might have been outside because they were worried about potential violence here and wanted to protect their community. They aren’t overly paranoid to worry. According to the ADL, antisemitic incidents have more than doubled in Florida since 2020.

There have been some high profile Nazi marches in the state, and instead of denouncing them like a normal politician, the governor and his staffers react defensively, as if it’s a false-flag operation to make him look bad. (Like his erstwhile mentor Trump, DeSantis makes everything about DeSantis.) Then there’s the 2024 DeSantis campaign staffer who was fired after tweeting a grotesque meme featuring Nazi symbolism.

Anyway, the whole thing makes me sad. They shouldn’t have to worry about such things here.

Open thread.

Odds & Ends (Open Thread)Post + Comments (175)

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