Balloon Juice - Open Threads Archives

Family Is Family: OzarkHillbilly

by WaterGirl| July 16, 202311:56 am| 114 Comments

This is OzarkHillbilly’s brother, Dave, and his wife Renee.

We’ll let our beloved Ozark share the details below, but OzarkHillbilly is family to us on Balloon Juice, so we’d like to see what we can do to help his family. If we could raise $5 or $7 or $10k to help get them over the hump, that would be a huge gift as they face all of this, but anything we can do, even short of that, will be greatly appreciated.

This photo breaks my heart, because they are so happy and because the love between them is so clear. What a terrible loss.

On June 25 my brother David took his own life. He left behind his wife Renee, his sons Joseph and Andrew, his daughter Bethany, step-daughters Erin and Chelsea, and their children, Henry, Olivia, and Amelia (not to mention 2 brothers and 2 sisters).

All of whom thought the world of Dave.

Dave was hardworking, funny, caring, giving, forgiving, and deeply in love with Renee. It quickly became obvious that he was staring down the barrels of a financial shotgun as their house was about to go into foreclosure.

For right now, we have managed to catch up on the payments and kept the lights on inside it but another mortgage payment is due soon and there is a lot of work to be done before it can be sold and that will most likely be at a “must sell” price.

In the meanwhile it will be months before his affairs (pension, 401K, SS survivor’s benefits, life insurance, etc) are straightened out, which without a death certificate is impossible to do and we are being told that might take another 8 weeks.

We’re all just working stiffs and while some of us still have savings we can draw down on, they are limited. Renee can use some help getting over this hump.

~ OzarkHillbilly

Here’s the link to the GoFundMe, if you’re so inclined.

As always on Balloon Juice, no one should ever feel that they have to contribute to any fundraising we do on Bj.

Update: We raised over $13,000, which should be about $10,500 after taxes. Balloon Juice peeps are awesome!

Family Is Family: OzarkHillbillyPost + Comments (114)

Moneyballsacks (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker| July 16, 20238:54 am| 283 Comments

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

The Q2 campaign fundraising report deadline was yesterday, and Politico posted some tea-leaf reading here. A few highlights:

Politico described the overall fundraising report as “a little underwhelming.”
Small-dollar donors are scarce for GOP candidates, which Politico interprets as a troubling sign for Repubs in general and also a signal that Joe Biden is a “mediocre fundraising driver for conservatives.”
Oligarch candidates Burgum and Ramaswamy gave their own campaigns lots of money.
About 85% of donations to the DeSantis campaign came from oligarchs writing big fat checks rather than small-dollar donations.
Mike Pence’s fundraising results are anemic — he might not make the cut for the first debate due to lack of individual donors. But at least he’s doing better than Asa Hutchinson.
Nikki Haley has been in the race twice as long as fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott, but he raised more money.

The New York Times also reported that the DeSantis operation shed some staff, but according to anonymous staffers, the layoffs involved fewer than 10 people, and possibly the campaign is just shuffling them over to the DeSantis Super PAC.

The real problem is that DeSantis hasn’t figured out how to turn on the bigot spigot like Trump did, probably because Trump still has his pail under that tap. Some excerpts from the NYT coverage:

An aide, Andrew Romeo, described the campaign’s circumstances in an upbeat tone.

“Americans are rallying behind Ron DeSantis and his plan to reverse Joe Biden’s failures and restore sanity to our nation, and his momentum will only continue as voters see more of him in person, especially in Iowa,” he said in a statement. “Defeating Joe Biden and the $72 million behind him will require a nimble and candidate-driven campaign, and we are building a movement to go the distance.”

“Candidate-driven” meaning, driven by the sparkling personality and inspirational message of…Ron DeSantis? Okay then!

Mr. DeSantis’s struggles appear to be not just about the numbers, but also with the campaign’s message. Late last week, two top DeSantis advisers, Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain, were announced to be leaving to join an outside group supporting Mr. DeSantis.

The message is a noun, a verb and “woke.” That’s it. My feeling is it’s not the kind of message that lends itself to subtle tweaks.

Still, Mr. DeSantis’s allies note that he is further ahead in polls in Iowa than Mr. Bush was in the fall of 2015 and that he has a more natural constituency in Iowa than other challengers.

Oof. If outperforming Jeb Bush circa 2015 is your success metric, you are in big trouble! Also, didn’t that “natural constituency” in Iowa deliver a win for Ted Cruz in 2016? Also not a president!

Open thread!

Moneyballsacks (Open Thread)Post + Comments (283)

War for Ukraine Day 507: A Quick Saturday Night Update

by Adam L Silverman| July 15, 20239:01 pm| 44 Comments

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

A few of you were having a discussion about generalship/leadership in the comments last night. I’m always partial to what Field Marshall Sir William Slim had to say about the topic:

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

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We cannot leave any city and village under Russian occupation, where violence and humiliation of people reign – address of President of Ukraine

15 July 2023 – 16:39

Dear Ukrainians, I wish you good health!

Today, the President and First Lady of the Republic of Korea are visiting our country. A very important visit, a very important direction of our international work. And this is the first visit of the President of the Republic of Korea to Ukraine for the entire period of relations between our states.

Now, when the speed of ending the war directly depends on global support for Ukraine, we are doing everything possible to ensure that such support is as intensive and meaningful as possible.

In 15 days of July, we’ve already held negotiations, meetings, events with the leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Türkiye, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Also Slovakia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Sweden, Portugal, Spain and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the Republic of South Africa, Guinea-Bissau. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, President of the European Council Michel, President of the European Commission von der Leyen, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

The address to the student community in Argentina, talks with the largest and most promising American investors and company executives.

Today, very meaningfully, Mr. President of the Republic of Korea. And we will maintain the highest tempo of international work at all levels to restore peace for all our land and all our people.

One of the most terrible things that war brings is separation… We cannot leave any of our people, any towns and villages under Russian occupation. Wherever the Russian occupation continues, violence and humiliation of people reign. I am grateful to all our partners – every leader, every politician, public figure, every country who really supports us in the fact that only the complete liberation of our entire Ukrainian territory will allow the full force of the international rules-based order to be restored.

And of course, my thank you to all our warriors. Those weeks on the front lines were very important. Marines of the 35th and 36th separate brigades. Gunners of the 55th separate brigade Zaporizka Sich. The Magura 47th separate mechanized brigade. Paratroopers of the 79th brigade. The third separate assault brigade. The fifth separate assault brigade. The 80th separate brigade of the airborne assault troops. The 57th separate motorized infantry brigade.

I thank all of you! All of you guys, you are great! All those who bravely, firmly, and strongly fight for the sake of Ukraine!

Ukraine will prevail for sure!

Glory to you, warriors!

Glory to all who fight and work for Ukraine!

Glory to Ukraine!

Today, President of the Republic of Korea Yoon Suk Yeol @President_KR and First Lady Kim Keon Hee are in Ukraine.

During this visit, the first in the history of our relations, we are discussing everything that is important for the normal and safe life of people, for the… pic.twitter.com/0zYvzQnDsW

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 15, 2023

Today, President of the Republic of Korea Yoon Suk Yeol @President_KR
and First Lady Kim Keon Hee are in Ukraine.

During this visit, the first in the history of our relations, we are discussing everything that is important for the normal and safe life of people, for the rules-based international order.

The return of deported adults and children, the implementation of the #PeaceFormula and the preparation of the Global Peace Summit, food and energy security and economic cooperation… I am sure together we will give more strength to our nations and the global positions of Ukraine and the Republic of Korea. 🇺🇦 🇰🇷

South Korea's president in Kyiv today to meet with Zelensky after visiting Bucha and Irpin is a positive development. South Korea, a NATO ally and rising weapons exporter, has arms that Ukraine could use on the battlefield but it's so far been reluctant to deliver them. https://t.co/088ibADwHk

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) July 15, 2023

Ukrainian women are actively engaged in the pending warfare. According to official data, as many as 42000 women serve in the Ukrainian army, with 5000 of them being deployed directly in the frontlines

📸: Slava Ranytski pic.twitter.com/caWCDQq5Qy

— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) July 15, 2023

There are things that all wars have in common: the incredible human pain, and the shared desire of its victims for the inevitable and just punishment of the evil that caused this pain.

📷 Maksym Mazur @withmazur pic.twitter.com/gpjerW4Kd2

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 15, 2023

Bakhmut:

The 162-year-old St. Nicholas church in Russian-occupied Bakhmut has been at least partially destroyed. The last photo here, shared on local Telegram, shows it July 11. First photos from 2018, when I returned to report on the schism between the Ukrainian & Russian churches. pic.twitter.com/cj4d2gEXmU

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) July 15, 2023

Hunting for Russian T-80BV, Bakhmut direction. By the 3rd and 26th brigade of Ukraine.https://t.co/kG6610VUqZ pic.twitter.com/Mxl7HqApCB

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 15, 2023

BAKHMUT AXIS /1515 UTC 15 JUL/ UKR forces advanced the line of contact to conform to the rail right of way east of the village of Klischiivka. The Russian MOD announced that General Vladimir Seliverstov, commander the Tula 106th Airborne Division (VDV) at Bakhmut has been… pic.twitter.com/GAkWEKy5FP

— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) July 15, 2023

BAKHMUT AXIS /1515 UTC 15 JUL/ UKR forces advanced the line of contact to conform to the rail right of way east of the village of Klischiivka. The Russian MOD announced that General Vladimir Seliverstov, commander the Tula 106th Airborne Division (VDV) at Bakhmut has been relieved of command.

Kherson:

KHERSON CITY /2340 UTC 15 JUL/ UKR SOF remain on the S bank of the Dnipro in the vicinity of the M-14 HWY (Anatovsky) bridge at Kherson. UKR forces conducted fire missions against a Russian vehicle concentration west of Oleshky, destroying trucks and IFVs. pic.twitter.com/qTpCpaSdJi

— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) July 15, 2023

Neskuchne and Novadarivka via The Times (of London): (emphasis mine)

A month after its launch, the Ukrainian counteroffensive can be told in two stories, according to what has been left behind on two stretches of the battlefield five miles apart.

On a lonely country road south of the village of Neskuchne the decomposing body of a Russian soldier lay in the sun, part of his skull missing. Exactly how he died is lost to history, but his comrades had no time to recover his body as they fled the Ukrainian attack.

They are now several miles away. A nearby Ukrainian drone unit said this fact alone put the lie to the idea being told in foreign capitals and even in Kyiv that the offensive is too slow, or even failing. “Remember how these people said Kyiv would fall to the Russians in three days?” Oleksandr, 40, its commander, said. “Well, this is the same.”

Dmitro Buh, 25, the most bullish of his men, predicted the Ukrainians would reach the Black Sea in a month — something with which few analysts of the war would agree.

“This stuff about the Russians having impenetrable defensive positions?” he said. “We’ve already gone through them. They’re running away.”

Not far to the west, though, is a similar village surrounded by fields and copses, called Novodarivka, and in the fields is one of those well dug-in Russian defensive positions, little more than a trench but deep, reinforced and well covered.

“We were held up for two weeks by this one outpost,” said an infantry officer from one of the two brigades, the 23rd and the 110th, which were called on to attack this sector.

Ukrainians do not speak well of their enemy under any circumstances, but there was a touch of awe in the officer’s voice as he recounted how the Russians sucked up everything thrown at them, even after they were surrounded. “They must have lost 100 men,” he said. “We poured in shells, heavy artillery, everything. They still kept going.”

Last year, as the invading army fell back first from Kyiv in the spring and then were routed in Kharkiv and Kherson in the autumn, it was Russia’s abandoned armour that Ukrainian soldiers gleefully showed off to journalists.

They have been less keen to allow journalists to see where their initial charge a month ago met an equivalent fate, if not so extensive, at the start of the counteroffensive that is supposed to be the turning point of the war. But just short of the Russian outpost was a graveyard of Ukrainian armoured vehicles, including an upturned MaxxPro (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle), given by the US.

It was not, it turned out, entirely ambush protected. The Ukrainian armour met a line of tanks and artillery, and was quickly brought to a halt.

Nearby a Ukrainian soldier called Bohdan described how the assault had turned into an old-fashioned tank battle. “We came upon the Russian tanks, face to face,” he said. “We fired at them. They fired at us.”

Tank warfare in the popular imagination recalls Hitler’s blitzkrieg or President Bush’s “Thunder Run” in Iraq, with tank battalions speeding through lightly defended lines under air cover. Establishing bridgeheads for the infantry, the tanks moved on swiftly to Paris or Baghdad.

Without air cover, that option is not open to Ukraine, which is why the slowness of the counteroffensive is being misunderstood, its military advisers say. There is also the scale of Russia’s defences, much improved since Kharkiv, protecting miles of minefields, tank traps and fortified, artillery-protected defensive positions to the rear.

It is easy to see why the Ukrainians want cluster weapons, now to be provided by the Biden administration. At present, the Ukrainian tanks and armoured vehicles must move slowly and probe the whole length of the front for weaknesses, mile by mile. That makes it all the more akin to the pre-tank era of the First World War’s western front.

The armour forms breaching groups to bombard Russian front lines and force them to retreat, with the infantry then following up to occupy those lines.

Much more at the link.

It is important to remember that when people start discussing how slow this is going, that it isn’t going well, what have you, they are doing it without acknowledging that because of policy decisions in DC, as well as in Berlin, Paris, and London the Ukrainians are being forced to attempt this counteroffensive without air superiority. The US, let alone any of our usual partners and allies in and out of NATO, would never even consider doing so as an option.

Ukrainian assault groups with the 30th and 28th Mechanized.
Very illustrative. pic.twitter.com/dLR9pE3nbc

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) July 15, 2023

Shoigu and Gerasimov are still not out of the woods:

It looks like purges in the ranks of the Russian army continue.
Russian sources say that Major General Vladimir Selivestrov, who commanded the 106th Airborne Division, which is now located in the Bakhmut direction, was fired. As claimed, due to "unaccommodating character".
P.S:… pic.twitter.com/ARivWu1TNN

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) July 15, 2023

It looks like purges in the ranks of the Russian army continue.
Russian sources say that Major General Vladimir Selivestrov, who commanded the 106th Airborne Division, which is now located in the Bakhmut direction, was fired. As claimed, due to “unaccommodating character”.
P.S: A little earlier, Major General Ivan Popov, commander of the 58th Army of the RF Armed Forces, was also removed from his post.

MUTINY IN THE AIR: After the firing of the commanders of the 106th & 7th Airborne Divisions, RU paratroopers say they'll mutiny and leave their positions if any move is made to fire the boss of the VDV forces, Colonel-General Mikhail Teplinsky. The dysfunction spreads…. https://t.co/Q8OsqdrBqt pic.twitter.com/UPKvoKsTMB

— Chuck Pfarrer | Indications & Warnings | (@ChuckPfarrer) July 15, 2023

The Russian VDV troops threaten Shoigu and Gerasimov‼️
“Servicemen of the 7th Airborne Division recorded an audio message to the Ministry of Defense. In particular, they spoke in defense of their commander of the Airborne Forces, Colonel-General Mikhail Teplinsky. The catalyst for this appeal was the removal of the commander of the 106th Airborne Division of the Airborne Forces, General Seliverstov . In addition, in early July, General Kornev was removed from command of the 7th Airborne Assault Division. “We, the paratroopers, warn that we will not tolerate such actions in relation to General Teplinsky. And in the event of the slightest threat to his life and freedom, we will stand as a wall to protect the honor and dignity of our commander. We are very determined. Up to the point that we will withdraw from our positions and go to the rescue of our Bata. You, those who sit in the offices! The landing party does not abandon its own! Do not make fatal mistakes”

A remarkable letter, indicating that there is more to public debate in Russia than what meets the eye. But the letter does have a slightly bizarre reference to the effect that Russia would be taken over by the "people of the South" post nuclear exchange. Won't psychoanalyse this. https://t.co/ZZgvI0kC9r

— Sergey Radchenko (@DrRadchenko) July 14, 2023

Anyway, I promised I wouldn't psychoanalyse this. On the whole, a breath of fresh air after Karaganov's recent posturing.

— Sergey Radchenko (@DrRadchenko) July 14, 2023

Here’s a machine translation of the open letter:

ABOUT THE ACCESSES TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF NUCLEAR WAR
07/13/2023 – 21:58

Evgeny Savostyanov and other members of the IOSF

Statement by Council members on foreign and defense policy

At the request of a number of members of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, we publish the statement they sent. It is not the position of the Council, but reflects the views of the signatories.

Recently, speeches and statements have appeared, including by a number of members of the IOSF, in which, albeit with numerous reservations, the idea of Russia delivering a preventive nuclear strike with a negative version of the development of military operations in Ukraine and in the territories adjacent to it extends. Moreover, the authors are not limited to the flight of fantasy about the use of tactical nuclear weapons throughout Ukraine, but also offer to beat the main NATO countries.

We well know the results of long-standing and modern studies of possible damage resulting from such a war. Hope that a limited nuclear conflict can be controlled and prevented from escalating into the global nuclear war — the height of irresponsibility. This means that at stake — the destruction of dozens and, perhaps, even hundreds of millions of people in Russia, Europe, China, the USA, in other countries. This is — a direct threat to humanity in general.

For our country, destroyed during such a catastrophe, for our people disorganized by such a war, this would also mean the prospect of losing sovereignty under the pressure of the surviving peoples of the South.

It is unacceptable pseudo-theoretical reasoning and emotional statements in the style of the so-called. « tok show » to form such sentiments in society that can push for catastrophic decisions.

These are no longer theoretical concepts. This — is not only a direct threat to all of humanity, but also a very specific proposal to kill everyone who is dear to us and whom we love.

We, the members of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, consider such proposals to be absolutely unacceptable and unconditionally condemn them.

No one should ever blackmail humanity with the threat of using nuclear weapons and, moreover, give a command to their combat use.

We invite all members of the IOSF to join this Statement.

Members of the IOP:

Adamishin Anatoly Leonidovich

Arbatov Alexey Georgievich

Arbatova Nadezhda Konstantinovna

Belkin Alexander Anatolyevich

Bovt Georgy Georgovich

Borovik-Hilchevskaya Veronika Yuryevna

Vysotsky Alexander Mikhailovich

Goltz Alexander Matveevich

Gurevich Vladimir Semenovich

Dvorkin Vladimir Zinovievich

Dubinin Sergey Konstantinovich

Dymarsky Vitaliy Naumovich

Zakharov Alexander Vladimirovich

Zolotarev Pavel Semenovich

Kaspe Svyatoslav Igorevich

Koshlyakov Lev Sergeevich

Lomakin-Rumyantsev Ilya Vladimirovich

Lukin Vladimir Petrovich

Mndoyants Sergey Ashotovich

Musician Alexander Ilyich

Murašov Arkady Nikolaevich

Oznobishchev Sergey Konstantinovich

Rubanov Vladimir Arsenievich

Rurikov Dmitry Borisovich

Savostyanov Evgeny Vadimovich

Entin Vladimir Lvovich

Jurgens Igor Yuryevich

Tsyplyaev Sergey Alekseevich

If you’re interested:

✈️🚨UA Fighter Pilots have asked for help in donations.Their tasks are difficult & extremely important 4 Ukr to win. Please help @_juicefighter_ & I get the funds so there is no stop in their missions due to lack of funds. NGO @wingmen_for_UA collects funds for these heroes 1/2🧵 pic.twitter.com/zCLjdNCrRl

— T🌻 (@Maxjessepiper) July 14, 2023

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

There are no new Patron tweets or videos, so here’s some adjacent material.

If you were wondering why they weren’t updating, someone started going after the videos they were posting:

Dear friends.

There are many complaints about "copyright infringement" (DMCA) on this account.

And I managed to unlock it.
Are these the new twitter rules?

— UkrARMY cats & dogs (@UAarmy_animals) July 9, 2023

Wild animals play with the Ukrainian military pic.twitter.com/KWnPIMljYq

— Devana 🇺🇦 (@DevanaUkraine) July 14, 2023

Warriors of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and our smaller friends..

What kind of person you are can be judged by how you know how to handle animals.

🇺🇦🫡🪖🐶🐈🐰🦅🦔 pic.twitter.com/k3wfaJlkLM

— Igor Kyivskyi (@Igor_from_Kyiv_) July 15, 2023

Dog Help Ukraine is a home for 170 dogs, 70 cats, 150 goats, and 7 horses 🐴
Many of the residents were evacuated after the Kakhovka HPP’s explosion from the affected area. The shelter reached out to us asking for antibiotics and other necessary supplies for animals’ treatment💙 pic.twitter.com/Zznbohdrlc

— UAnimals.ENG 🇺🇦 (@UAnimalsENG) July 14, 2023

Dogs in training need tasty dog food as well! 25 good boys and girls are learning to find explosives 🫡
We sent 300 kg of pet food and wish them bon appétit. They deserve all the treats in the world for their important service in Ukraine.

— UAnimals.ENG 🇺🇦 (@UAnimalsENG) July 15, 2023

UPDATE from the Hachiko team at Patron Pet Center in Kyiv 🐱🐶 We (thanks to you!) helped with building of enclosures & caring for pets evacuated from Kherson frontline after the flood disaster 💦 @Y_Stefanyuk visits the kittens & shares about the incredible work Patron is doing! pic.twitter.com/511mGCzonJ

— Nate Mook (@natemook) July 13, 2023

https://twitter.com/AnimalKharkiv12/status/1679524723447717899

You all know what to do!

That’s enough for tonight!

Open thread!

War for Ukraine Day 507: A Quick Saturday Night UpdatePost + Comments (44)

Weekend Reading Strange Tales: ‘Ginni and Clarence: A Love Story’

by Anne Laurie| July 15, 20234:57 pm| 90 Comments

This post is in: Activist Judges!, Excellent Links

Save the date: Senate Democrats will vote on July 20 on legislation to set up a code of conduct for the Supreme Court, tighten financial disclosure rules, and beef up recusal requirements for justices.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 11, 2023

How a fiercely loyal couple saved one another, raged against their enemies, and brought the American experiment to the brink. https://t.co/u5DzuDUZSU

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) June 21, 2023

There was lot of social-media negativity about this story when it first appeared last month, but it’s hardly the author’s fault that the Thomases are the most toxic high-ranking political folie à deux since Ronnie and Nancy (or perhaps Charles Manson and Squeaky Fromme).

A new spate of well-sourced stories about the open corruption around Justice Thomas and his top aides (Payments via Venmo!) give me the impression that he, and his beloved wife, are being set up by his ‘friends’ as a scapecoat to protect the younger, less obviously tainted SC(R)OTUS members…

TL, DR (but you should read, cuz it’s amazing!): Clarence and Ginni are lab-created products of the 1970s backlash against civil rights and feminism — You can force us to let Those People into our spaces, said the William F. Buckley-ites, but you can’t make us *accept* them. Putting the ‘action’ in ‘reactionary’:

… There is a certain rapport that cannot be manufactured. “They go on morning runs,” reports a 1991 piece in the Washington Post. “They take after-dinner walks. Neighbors say you can see them in the evening talking, walking up the hill. Hand in hand.” Thirty years later, Virginia Thomas, pining for the overthrow of the federal government in texts to the president’s chief of staff, refers, heartwarmingly, to Clarence Thomas as “my best friend.” (“That’s what I call him, and he is my best friend,” she later told the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.) In the cramped corridors of a roving RV, they summer together. They take, together, lavish trips funded by an activist billionaire and fail, together, to report the gift. Bonnie and Clyde were performing intimacy; every line crossed was its own profession of love. Refusing to recuse oneself and then objecting, alone among nine justices, to the revelation of potentially incriminating documents regarding a coup in which a spouse is implicated is many things, and one of those things is romantic…

… Here is a story about the way legitimate racial grievance and determined white ignorance can reinforce one another, tending toward an extremism capable, in this case, of discrediting an entire branch of government. No one can unlock the mysteries of the human heart, but the external record is clear: Clarence and Ginni Thomas have, for decades, sustained the happiest marriage in the American Republic, gleeful in the face of condemnation, thrilling to the revelry of wanton corruption, untroubled by the burdens of biological children or adherence to legal statute. Here is how they do it…

“There is nothing you can do to get past Black skin,” Thomas once told Juan Williams. “I don’t care how educated you are, how good you are at what you do — you’ll never have the same contacts or opportunities, you’ll never be seen as equal to whites.” His is a fundamentally fatalistic vision of white liberals, whose every attempt to “help” is pure vanity, a more dangerous, because more dishonest, extension of the white supremacy they profess to deplore. His views on school busing are instructive: “I wouldn’t have gone into South Boston. It would have been taking my life in my hands for me to do so. Why, then, were innocent children being made to do what a grown man feared?” This is not a question earnestly posed, because Thomas has in countless speeches articulated the motives of white liberals disrupting Black life: They act to assuage white guilt, to improve the aesthetics of the ruling class, to stoke the delicate self-conception of those who would never willingly cede power, all of it in service to a supremacist status quo. He prefers, he has said, the directness of southern racism to the subtlety of northern condescension…

At age 12 Ginni boarded a chartered plane for Washington, D.C., having been selected as a page for the GOP Women’s Conference, where she would sport a sash and a top hat; partisan costuming would continue to be a theme throughout her life. Her childhood was social where Clarence’s had been isolated, a succession of parades and rallies and fundraisers, the sense that the world could, though determined voluntarism, be changed. Ginni’s mother supported Phyllis Schlafly’s crusade against the Equal Rights Amendment, and hosted at her home, there on the sandproof carpet, like-minded nationally known speakers, such as Frederick Schwarz of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. Marge Lamp, or as she put it in her campaign literature, “Mrs. Donald G. Lamp,” ran for state legislature under the theme of “common sense” and told the paper she’d commute to Lincoln and be back home at night, such that her husband would not miss many meals. She was, according to friend and former congressman Hal Daub, a positive, active, affable, civic-minded presence in Omaha, one-half of a marriage of equals. Her best campaigners, she said, were her children. She lost, but she had passed on something in the attempt…

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“That was my first real campaign,” Ginni told a reporter in 1974. She was a high-school student canvassing for Republicans in the age of Watergate, which, she assured the reporter, “was just Nixon and his people, not the Republican Party.” Why campaign when you’re too young to vote? “Because the party needs us,” she said, sloshing through the rain to deliver more talking points. Ginni was a compulsive joiner. As a “warrior woman,” she donned a shield and cheered on the football team. Daub, a centrist Republican, would later employ her in D.C. She stood out in his office as social, eager, and unusually knowledgeable — “a wonk.”

In the spring of 1986, Clarence was a 37-year-old divorced single father and one of D.C.’s most eligible bachelors according to Jet magazine, which we can be fairly certain Ginni did not read. He was the head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a rise from poverty that a traditional conservative would describe as a rags-to-riches individualist American triumph, but this is neither Clarence Thomas’s experience nor the story he chooses to tell.

There had been, after the brief and defining comfort of his Black Catholic elementary school, a tour of white institutions where Clarence was made to endure a succession of racist humiliations. He was one of only two Black children in his high-school seminary, which is to say constantly surrounded by white adolescent boys. “Smile so we can see you, Clarence,” he recalls one saying in the dark. He dropped out of his college seminary after he heard a classmate celebrating the death of Martin Luther King Jr. As an undergraduate at Holy Cross, he listened to records of Malcolm X speeches, helped found a Black Student Union, and nearly dropped out in protest of racially motivated mistreatment. He was never so invested in student life at Yale Law, where the distance between himself and his classmates appeared the difference between Pin Point and Greenwich. “I felt the difference in my bones,” he writes. “I was among the elite, and I knew that no amount of striving would make me one of them.” What other Yale Law student, gearing up for a summer home, was “sick with worry” about the “frightening prospect” of driving through the South in an unreliable old car past a Klan-sponsored billboard? Who else had to endure the strange looks of white mechanics inspecting the failing car, a “bad night’s sleep” in a strange motel when no one could fix it, and rescue, finally, from his brother?

As the head of the EEOC, burdened with debt, Thomas was a man conspicuously lacking generational wealth. He was still broke. American Express cut him off for failure to pay his bills. He could not access a credit card, and so when he did official business, incredibly, his secretary had to book him only in hotels that took cash. His apartment was full of cockroaches. He was overcome with loneliness, “lower than a snake’s belly,” and, according to his friend Armstrong Williams, liable to “bore women to death” on dates.

It was not on a date that he met 29-year-old Virginia Lamp but at an intimate roundtable on affirmative action, or, as Ginni recently put it, on the subject of “how long America needs race-preference policies to get over slavery.” Midge Decter (or “Mrs. Norman Podhoretz”) introduced Thomas to Ginni, who was then a labor lobbyist for the Chamber of Commerce. The two of them shared a cab back to the airport…

Ginni did not doubt her husband when a young woman accused him of describing rape scenes at work. In fact, reports Clarence, she “loved me more than ever.” Weren’t these accusations just more evidence that she had landed the ideal man, an object of crazy-making desire? “In my heart,” she said later, “I always believed she was probably someone in love with my husband and never got what she wanted.”

By all accounts, at this point, Clarence Thomas simply fell apart. “I lay across the bed and curled up in a fetal position,” he writes. “He was,” Ginni said later, “debilitated beyond anything I’d ever seen in my life.” “I have never had an experience like that,” former senator John Danforth later said. “Ever. Still haven’t. Because he was a broken man. He was just broken.” It was “spiritual warfare,” Virginia said, “good versus evil.”

It is hard to see how Clarence Thomas would have extricated himself from the fetal position without Ginni, who closed the blinds and put on Christian music and invited couples over to pray and called a neighbor to come over and give Clarence a haircut, which she did. He got up at one in the morning the night before the hearing and looked over his papers, suggestions on how to respond, and was, according to Ginni, “really confused.” She cleared the table for him. She turned on his computer. He wrote his speech on a notepad. She typed it up…

She watched the proceedings in rage, “the wrath of anger coming out of my eyes.” Why wasn’t the conversation about his heroism? Where was the celebration for obstacles he had overcome? “My name has been harmed,” he said. “My integrity has been harmed. My character has been harmed. My family has been harmed. My friends have been harmed. There is nothing this committee, this body, or this country can do to give me my good name back. Nothing.”…

… Thomas’s loyalty, repeatedly expressed, is not to the grandfather who denied him affection, or the country that abandoned him to poverty, but to the woman he “needed … more than anyone,” the woman who did not doubt him when doubt was merited, the woman who handed him a towel as he emerged exhausted from the bath, or perhaps the shower, a Supreme Court justice. She was “as dear and close a human being as I could have ever imagined having in my life.” They had been through a “fiery trial” and emerged “one being — an amalgam.”

It wasn’t normal for the wife of a Supreme Court justice to give a full, intensely personal, and aggrieved account of the confirmation process and her husband’s attendant breakdown to People magazine, complete with posed pictures of them in their apartment — here casually reading a Bible together on the couch, here drinking coffee in the kitchen, here holding hands amid a bunch of binders on the floor — but from the very beginning Ginni and Clarence Thomas would appear to have no particular interest in decorum. In 1994, Clarence Thomas, successor of Thurgood Marshall on a Court steeped in “formality, courtesy, and dignity,” according to its Historical Society, presided over and hosted Rush Limbaugh’s third wedding, to a former aerobics instructor he met on CompuServe, at the Thomases’ home in Fairfax Station. Thomas had told the nation he couldn’t get his reputation back; he evidently did not care to try…

Thomas quotes W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, he echoes arguments one might encounter in Black Power, he draws frequently on his own painful childhood, and yet he comes, almost all of the time, to conclusions amenable to Harlan Crow. In an opinion on affirmative action and elsewhere, Thomas quotes Douglass: “The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us … I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.” It would be madness to suggest that Clarence was wrong to see hypocrisy, condescension, and white supremacy running through the progressive project, and while these may not have been the concerns of his friends in Washington, he found in Republicans people with the same basic program: to take, when confronted with a neighbor’s deprivation, no political action at all…

There was something in Ginni and Clarence that reinforced and refined a shared extremism, something beyond their shared intolerance for ambiguity. There was an interlocking set of beliefs, a fatalism born of the lived experience of racism and the entire heavily manned edifice of white ignorance. If white liberals only made anything worse, if they would sacrifice the safety of children sent into South Boston in service of their own pathetic vanity, they might as well live inside their own self-affirming stories. They were most dangerous, after all, when they tried to help. They were most supportive, those angels lining the hallway, when you left their myths intact.…

There is considerable ambiguity about what various participants in the invasion of the Capitol on January 6 were doing. There is no ambiguity about what Ginni Thomas was doing. She was trying to overthrow the government. Biden had been elected on November 3. On November 5, Ginni seemed to think everything had been taken care of. The “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators,” she wrote in a text to the president’s chief of staff, “are being arrested & detained … & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.” On November 9, she sent dozens of Arizona lawmakers emails asking them to choose their own electors (that choice being “yours and yours alone”) rather than let Biden take the state he had won. “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!,” she wrote to Meadows the next day. “You are the leader, with him.” November 19: “The intense pressures you and our President are now experiencing are more intense than Anything Experienced (but I only felt a fraction of it in 1991).”…

On January 6, she posted a George Orwell quote to social media. The quote was fake. She was a Facebook-addled 63-year-old woman posting at 3:33 a.m., 3:46 (“I get up early with my dogs,” she told the committee), whose sources of information included Glenn Beck and other more obscure because more insane right-wing conspiracy theorists. She was a woman who identified happiness itself as an act of antagonism against “haters,” a self-proclaimed bridge burner disgusted with both Mike Pence and “elites,” a category that evidently did not include the wife of the longest-serving Supreme Court justice or the president’s chief of staff to whom she happened to be talking. She was a hype-woman being hyped up by her friends (“There are no rules in war,” Connie Hair, then Louie Gohmert’s chief of staff, reportedly texted her) and in turn hyping others. She was picking up “vibes,” she told the January 6 committee, vibes being sufficient basis on which to overturn an election…

There is no obvious strategic benefit toward making a spectacle of one’s lack of respect for judicial procedure. This is not useful to the Federalist Society, or to Harlan Crow, or to the many institutions Harlan Crow supports. It is an expression of love to Ginni, or an expression of disdain for the rest of us, or both.

“What’s the best part of being a justice?” she asked him in their interview.

“First of all,” he said, “it would be impossible without you … Um, it’s sort of like” — and here he is searching for the words, his eyes darting back and forth — “it’s sort of like, How do you run with one leg?”…

He thought going to Yale was going to make him equivalent to white ppl.
What he doesn’t realize is that white ppl will ALWAYS question your existence in any professional setting. We’re where we are bc he hates he’s not white.

— Ryan (@Ryanspeaks140) July 2, 2023

Weekend Reading Strange Tales: <em> ‘Ginni and Clarence: A Love Story’</em>Post + Comments (90)

The Diplomat (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker| July 15, 20231:29 pm| 152 Comments

This post is in: Elections 2024, LGBTQ Rights Are Human Rights, Open Threads, Politics

My favorite Biden diplomatic appointment is U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman. A gay human rights lawyer who brought his husband and children to his post in Budapest, Pressman’s appointment is, as described by Politico, “an implicit rebuke of Orbán’s strongman, culture wars agenda.” Pressman is famous for trolling the Hungarian government’s anti-LGBTQ agenda on social media sites.

The newspapers cover him regularly — “Clown diplomacy,” one declared. State-owned and Orbán-friendly TV channels are similarly obsessed, portraying the American ambassador as a secretive colonial overlord sent to meddle in Hungary’s internal affairs.

And in a country that recently banned the portrayal of LGBTQ+ content to minors, Pressman has put his personal life on display, posting photos of his partner and their two kids as they arrived to present his diplomatic credentials.

“I think it speaks for itself,” Pressman said. “Sometimes the power of example,” he added, “is the most powerful way we can communicate about shared values and concerns.”

This week, Pressman is throwing a massive party at the U.S. Embassy in Budapest to mark the end of Budapest Pride:

“Candidly, we’ve been pretty overwhelmed by the interest in participation from Hungarian LGBT families and their allies—and I expect about 1,000 people there, making it what we’re told will be the largest event of its kind in history in Hungary,” Pressman told The Daily Beast. “And I think now’s a really important moment for the United States and the international community writ large to stand with this community that is increasingly being used in a divisive and political way that is in tension with the commitments this government has made to upholding international human rights…”

Despite the personal attacks, he’s not taking criticisms of his actions personally. “This is really not about me, and it’s never been about me,” he said. “It’s about the United States’ longstanding commitment and President Biden’s personal commitment to stand up proudly and strongly for the fundamental human rights of all people everywhere, including LGBT people—including LGBT people in Hungary.”

Pressman invited Orbán government officials but doesn’t really expect them to show. Maybe in Biden’s second term, he could appoint Pressman as ambassador to Florida.

Open thread!

The Diplomat (Open Thread)Post + Comments (152)

Late Night Open Thread: How You Can Tell R(atf*cker)FK Jr Is Still Out There

by Anne Laurie| July 15, 20232:30 am| 62 Comments

This post is in: 2024 Primaries, Excellent Links, Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads

Things got ugly at RFK Jr.’s fart dinner: https://t.co/RaNuqGVHBk

— Defector (@DefectorMedia) July 13, 2023

Yes, this is coooo-arse, as my Granma used to say (sometimes about earlier Kennedys)… but it’s the weekend, and it’s also entertaining. Ray Ratto, at Defector: “Things Got Ugly At RFK Jr.’s Fart Dinner”:

In this scenario you are anti-vaxxer and political ham sandwich Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and we apologize in advance for what that implies. But in this scenario you believe that for all your evident faults and shortcomings you can still redeem yourself by considering a life of public service. One problem with this is that the kind of public that wants to spend time around you is the kind of public that makes regular folks root for more bear maulings.

Kennedy, who is trying to be the next Democratic candidate for President on a platform of being a total plank, attended a dinner for various medioid flotsam and jetsam in New York, which is already a cry for help with appetizers. What promised to be a night of unrestricted tedium through bloviation turned, well, it turned New York quasi-elite hillbilly is what it did.

According to Page Six, the New York Post‘s daily coloring book of madness, two local past-the-sell-by-date sludge deposits, Doug Dechert and Anthony Haden-Guest, turned the evening into the kind of recurring nightmare that may convince Kennedy that he’d have a better chance of winning the nomination by seeking the endorsement of the spotted lanternflies.

Put another way, Page Sixer Mara Siegler was justified in her use of the heretofore underemployed phrase, “polemic farting.”

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Late Night Open Thread: How You Can Tell R(atf*cker)FK Jr Is Still Out TherePost + Comments (62)

War for Ukraine Day 506: (Some of) You Have Questions, I (May Have) Answers

by Adam L Silverman| July 14, 20238:32 pm| 95 Comments

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

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

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

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Every thousand meters of advancement, every success of each of our combat brigades deserves gratitude – address by the President of Ukraine

14 July 2023 – 19:53

I wish you health, fellow Ukrainians!

Today’s key points.

I held a very detailed meeting of the Staff, focused primarily on the frontline. The situation in all key areas of action – both defense against Russian assaults and our active steps forward. Plus everything that is important for this. Shells, weapons, equipment. The rational use of shells, supplies from partners and our own Ukrainian production. Logistics.

As always at the Staff, there were reports from our commanders: The Commander-in-Chief, the commanders of operational directions… Zaluzhny, Syrsky, Tarnavsky… Commanders from specific areas of the frontline. And also Minister of Internal Affairs Klymenko. Head of the Border Guard Service Deyneko. There was an important report by Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate Budanov on the situation in Belarus – we are closely monitoring what is happening there in terms of security. As of today, there are no large-scale threats. Our full focus is on the frontline.

We must all understand very clearly – as clearly as possible – that the Russian forces on our southern and eastern lands are investing everything they can to stop our warriors. And every thousand meters of advance, every success of each of our combat brigades deserves gratitude. Everyone who goes on the offensive, everyone who repels enemy attacks, are doing a great job, and I am grateful to each of our warriors!

This week we have not yet finished the planned international work. There will be important negotiations for Ukraine. And we are already preparing for the coming weeks. We will not reduce our international activity for a single day, in particular with regard to the Peace Formula, security guarantees for Ukraine on its way to NATO, and agreements with partners on weapons for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. We are also preparing new NSDC decisions on sanctions.

I continue meetings on the transformation of Ukraine. Today it concerned military education. All the experience of our warriors, all the competencies acquired by Ukrainians in the war, our new defense experience shared with our partners – all this must be integrated into the updated Ukrainian military education.

It is clear that this industry at the state level deserves a significant upgrade. And it is very important that those who are actually defending our country and are already training our country’s defenders be involved in the discussion of such an upgrade.

And one more thing.

Today, I took part in a conversation in America – at a conference with the heads of the largest and most promising global companies and major philanthropists. Investments, jobs in Ukraine, support for our country and people… Ukrainians have now realized the enormous potential of our country. All of it is aimed at our defense. But when we end the war, Ukrainian potential must be invested in Ukrainian development. The world is waiting with great interest to see what this development will be like, what the victorious Ukraine will bring to the world. And this is a question for everyone in Ukraine who works for the state, who plans to work for the state… everyone should ask themselves this question now. And find answers.

Ukraine has become a global force. And it should become a force for global development. I am confident that it will.

Glory to all those who are fighting for Ukraine! I thank everyone who defends our country!

Glory to Ukraine!

Best wishes to our French friends on this French National Day!
Freedom. Equality. Brotherhood.
🇺🇦🤝🇨🇵 pic.twitter.com/osQcxoweuC

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 14, 2023

My best wishes to our French friends and to my dear colleague @SebLecornu on this special day! Joyeux Quatorze Juillet!
May this day be full of joy and celebration, and may France prosper!
Ukraine will always remember your friendship and support. Vive la France!
🇺🇦🤝🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/Zb1mPVE8w5

— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) July 14, 2023

The Ministry of Defense of Denmark has provided 6 drones for mine scanning as part of their aid package for Ukraine.
These drones are used for non-technical inspection of territories, including water bodies, for explosive ordnance. It is the latest innovative approach to… pic.twitter.com/aKhS50nQDr

— Oleksii Reznikov (@oleksiireznikov) July 14, 2023

The Ministry of Defense of Denmark has provided 6 drones for mine scanning as part of their aid package for Ukraine.
These drones are used for non-technical inspection of territories, including water bodies, for explosive ordnance. It is the latest innovative approach to inspecting territories.
I’m grateful to our Danish friends and especially to my colleagues @mfMorten and @troelslundp!
🇺🇦🤝🇩🇰

Commenter Suzanne emailed me her question from the other night:

I had posed a question in the Ukraine thread last night for you, and I’d appreciate your insight. I had asked what the scenario looked like for Ukraine joining NATO if the war doesn’t really definitely end with a treaty or a ceasefire. You have made the point that low-level war has been the status quo since 2014. Conceivably, this could continue indefinitely…. yes? If there’s a guarantee for Ukraine to join NATO, does that incentivize Putin to drag this out?

Most wars – large (interstate) or small – end in a negotiated settlement. That’s just the reality. That said, it is very clear that the Ukrainians are not going to be willing to pursue a negotiated strategy until they have achieved their objective, which is the removal of the genocidal Russian occupation from Ukraine. Since the failure of Putin to take Kyiv within 72 hours, his strategy has been to draw thinks out as long as possible. To create a frozen conflict that turns his genocidal re-invasion and Ukraine’s defense against it into a perpetual low intensity war and occupation. Part of his strategy is to seek time. Specifically for the 2024 election in the US to take place, return Trump to the White House, for the GOP to expand their House majority, and for the GOP to retake the Senate majority. But what he really wants is Trump back in office. Because in his mind his frozen conflict turns into a Russian rout of Ukraine when Trump stops all US aid and pulls the US out of NATO. So guarantee or no guarantee, Putin is incentivized to drag this out.

Last night in comments Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom asked:

Since this is, kind of, an open thread, I have to ask here. Adam, what do you think of this whole Tuberville situation? Even I know that this is a disaster for the US military. Who/what can be done to get this arsehole to STFU already?

Senator Tuberville is mule stupid. He really has no idea what the ramifications are of his actions in holding up not just the military promotions, but also placing a hold on all senior DOD civilian nominations. And this is going to have serious repercussions. It will ripple out across the Services and it will make it impossible for acting senior civilian appointees to adjust policies.

I am going to write something, however, that is going to be very unpopular here. While Tuberville is responsible for engaging in this stupidity, this is happening because the Senate Democratic leadership is allowing it. We keep watching the same thing play out over and over and over and over again since the Clinton administration. In the majority or in the minority, Senate Republicans bend a rule as far as possible or break a longstanding norm and the Democrats do nothing. Senate Republicans weaponize the rules to hamstring and trip up the Democrats when the latter are in the majority and to brutalize them when in the minority. And the Democrats do nothing. As such, the Senate Republicans have been taught by the Democrats that breaking the rules and the norms and the traditions gets them what they want rather than results in a punishment. What Tuberville is doing is based on a procedural rule. The Democratic leadership could just ignore him and push on. What the Senate Democrats have failed to learn over the past 30 years is that it is not possible to restore the Senate’s norms and reestablish its rules by following them while the Senate Republicans do not. Senate Republicans turned off the blue slip procedure for judicial nominations during the Trump administration. They refused to honor Democratic blue slips on nominations. What have the Democrats been doing for the past two and a 1/2 years? Honoring Republican blue slips in the mistaken belief if they model following the rules/good behavior, then when the Senate Republicans retake the majority they will then have learned to do the same. It doesn’t actually work that way. This isn’t rocket science, but it is the most powerful empirical social science theory: social learning. Among its components, social learning theory posits that people and groups will continue to engage in behaviors, including deviant ones, as long as they are receiving positive rewards. The Senate Democrats always ensure that Senate Republicans are positively rewarded. And, as a result, we get what we have here with Senator Tuberville. His hold will continue, just as Rand Paul’s on DOJ/FBI nominations, and other senators’ holds will continue because they are being rewarded. The behavior will change only when they begin to be punished. There is absolutely no evidence that that is ever going to happen, just like the Federal judge in south Florida is NOT going to recuse herself. The lesson we all should have learned from Robert Mueller’s tenure as Special Counsel is to stop relying on people conning you with false hope.

The Dnipro:

Battle for the islands on the Dnipro.
Here is a short film about a special operation carried out by the Ukrainian “Navy Seals” of the @SOF_UKR. pic.twitter.com/QplmALJArV

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) July 14, 2023

Previously at Azovstal:

Redis. Azovstal, 2022.

💔 pic.twitter.com/yVbfZuyiGV

— Kateryna Prokopenko (@KatProkopenkoUa) July 14, 2023

And yes, he is one of the Azovstal commanders that was returned safely from Turkey.

Russia, Florida, who can really tell these days:

Russia's parliament has banned gender transitions, hormonal therapy, and legal gender changes.

MPs called gender transitions "Satanism" and "fornication," explicitly linking the ban to Russia's war effort in Ukraine.https://t.co/01mjwNIXQz

— max seddon (@maxseddon) July 14, 2023

Here’s an interesting thread, transcribed by The Economist‘s Shashank Joshi, of a podcast featuring Dmitri Alperovitch. First tweet from the thread, the rest from the Thread Reader App:

Informative podcast with @DAlperovitch reflecting on his recent trip to Ukraine. " They certainly had hopes that the Russians would not be as deeply as entrenched as they are…It's really, really tough going, they're taking enormous casualties." https://t.co/LRy2OcGX23

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) July 14, 2023

“the debate in western capitals…is often framed in the context of lands, how much land is Ukraine going to take back…debate in Ukraine is actually very different. The fundamental issue they’re focused on…is how do we end this war in a way where we have durable security?”

Alperovitch: “We’re meeting with someone very senior in [Ukraine’s] MoD. And we asked them what are your needs. And this person said: I have just five needs and they’re shells, shells, shells, shells and shells.”

Alperovitch: “part of their [Ukraine] pitch to Sweden is to say…we can show you combat experience, we can do the marketing for your Gripens. Just give them to us and we’ll show you how they do against Russian Air Force. They’ll be great for future marketing of your aircraft.”

Alperovitch: “one of the things that they [Ukraine] are very insistent on is that they want detailed manuals…for those systems so that they can maintain them to large extent themselves… we’ll figure it out, we can resolve the IP issues, just help us help ourselves.”

Alperovitch: “The Ukrainians…don’t think that Wagner is in Belarus. They think that maybe a few dozen people have gone into Belarus. Some of them have come out since then. They don’t think that Prigozhin is based in Belarus.” Ukraine thinks not many Wagner signing MoD contracts

Alperovitch: “the other thing that the Ukrainians told me is that they don’t think that MoD is paying salaries for Wagner anymore … the Ukrainians believe that those payments have now stopped.” Ukrainians also “don’t believe that Surovikin is in jail.”

Alperovitch: “the Ukrainians believe that there were some Russian pilots that ignored orders to strike the Wagner column as it was on its way to Moscow, that many in the Russian military and Rosgvardiya did not want to shoot at Wagner. And that’s clearly a problem for Putin…”

Alperovitch: Ukrainians assess that operational leadership in general staff were not in favour of war. Nor was SVR. “FSB, right in the lead-up to the war, was quite luke-warm….at one point, they say that in their [FSB] briefings to Putin, Putin unloaded on them.”

Alperovitch: Ukraine believes Russia “want to cause, at some point, some sort of explosion, potentially in the cooling pool [of ZNPP] where nuclear fuel rods is stored, in order not to necessarily spread radiation [but] use it as nuclear blackmail, to threaten Europe…”

Alperovitch: “Ukrainians believe that about 20,000 new [Russian] recruits are being pulled every single month. So that’s providing replacement troops, after training, to be used in Ukraine…that may give them some options to delay the more general mobilisation wave”

Alperovitch: “the other thing we’ve learned is that [Russian] production capacity is increasing…they’re believed to be producing at least a million artillery shells a year and targeting significantly more—targeting over 2mn, but the Ukrainians don’t believe they’ll get there.”

Rob Lee:” Ukraine has not made as much territorial gains as they would want. But the thing that is quite significant & we can’t really measure v. well is attrition. And there’s clearly a lot of attrition going on, it’s not very clear how the relative attrition is playing out…”

Rob Lee: “Russia can stand attrition in convict units pretty easily because they can replace them. If the naval infantry units or if spetsnatz brigades take heavy casualties, that could be a problem for the ability to defend going forward..here’s a lot of things we can’t see.”

And here’s one from Dara Massicot regarding Russian military leadership. First tweet from the thread, the rest from the Thread Reader App:

Dysfunction is reaching peak levels in the Russian military command as another general is sacked for speaking truth to power and others are detained, or under suspicion. Where incompetence meets betrayal: a thread of the Russian high command and implications for the front /1 pic.twitter.com/V5TS44agFo

— Dara Massicot (@MassDara) July 13, 2023

Rumors are still swirling that a house cleaning may or may not be underway inside the military in the aftermath of the Prigozhin rebellion. Thoughts on how bad it has become in the Russian high command to get to this point, in the middle of the UAF offensive. 2/

Gerasimov and Shoigu have a history of privately and publicly kicking around their subordinate for various infractions: understanding the tactical situation better (Surovikin), perhaps too popular with the men or trusted by Putin (Teplinskiy) or flag urgent problems (Popov) /3

Last year Surovikin as commander put Russian forces on the defensive and ordered the construction of the defensive networks which bear his name (Surovikin lines). But Putin wanted an offensive and so he was out. Here’s a thread about that tension/ 4

Unroll available on Thread Reader

Teplinsky, the other deputy commander and popular within the VDV, is another. He disappeared for a few months, with rumors he disagreed with the high command, only to remerge with Putin. Teplinskiy is responsible for overseeing/improving many of the defensive positions. /5

Here’s an overview of the Teplinskiy / Gerasimov issues from @KatStepanenko @TheStudyofWar /6.

Unroll available on Thread Reader

Now that Surovikin is MIA for 3 weeks, my working theory is that there is no one in Rostov HQ to absorb Gerasimov’s moods and bad ideas. Teplinskiy is in the field most likely, and Alexei Kim is silent. So now the operational group commanders experience Gerasimov more directly/7

Enter Popov. His command, 58th Army, (Southern MD) has been engaged for over a month in the Zaporizhzhia where the fighting is the most intense (Rabotine, Orikhiv etc, 42nd GMRD, other regiments like 70th, 291st, and the 1430th). /8

Popov is sacked, in his words, for speaking truthfully about his units difficult situation. They have defended against the offensive for a month with no rotation, and have problems with logistics, counterbattery and recon. /9

They do have mounting problems with rotations and reserve units which that are conducted very inconsistently across the front. @ISW can see it and noted it here: /10

Institute for the Study of Warhttps://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-11-2023

Popov’s command 58th Army also had its deputy commander killed this week by Storm Shadow strike in Berdyansk, and presumably other HQ staff killed this week too, adding to the chaos. /11

Ukraine: Russian general reported killed in attack on Berdyansk hotelLt Gen Oleg Tsokov’s death is announced on TV and by Russian war channels on social media.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66171638

As a commander it is his responsibility to voice these concerns given the strain to his units. Not many of his colleagues do. Popov claims that Shoigu drew up orders to relieve him within 1 day and that they are betrayed by their senior commanders. this is very rare to hear. /12

Russian channels claim that Gerasimov was angry that Popov’s report was “spreading alarmism,” or blackmail, i.e., pointing out real problems observable to all. Perhaps he tried to jump the command chain but we don’t know. /13

What’s different about this event to me is that there is a recording, promoted by a former deputy commander of the Southern MD. And Popov says what a lot of his colleagues know to be true: the incompetence of the Russian high command at this point is a betrayal of the army /14

To recap: exactly where on the front that Russian forces need relief, Shoigu/Gerasimov sack their commander for saying so in direct terms. Popov has enough and posts a message. In doing do, he could either inspire others to speak out, or keep their heads down. /15

Kartapolov, who yesterday said Surovikin is on ‘vacation’, said this: “the important skill of any boss is to see problems and hear subordinates […] I think those who are supposed to have heard seen and will take action.” They did indeed take action – by shooting the messenger.

Making waves or demandsgets you in trouble. Compare to how incompetent generals are treated who don’t push back and get their units killed. they get posted to other commands or Syria, like Lapin or Chaiko. Or perform on camera. /17

The Russians have one of their most combat experienced and notorious 4-star generals with roots inside the army and air force, last seen with no ranks on, MIA for 3 weeks post rebellion, while no one speaks of it. Of course it impacts the rank and file in the military. /18

But here is the issue. Minefields do not care about Russian command dysfunction. Dense minefields laid months ago are hard for Ukrainian forces to get through while being shelled. If they cannot get to Russian lines, they cannot exploit any disarray. /19

This story from @olliecarroll explains the difficulties and extreme conditions for UAF sappers. /20

Sappers risk their lives to win Ukraine back, inch by inchDemining by hand, combat engineers try to break through Russian lines https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/07/09/sappers-risk-their-lives-to-win-ukraine-back-inch-by-inch

As Popov said, senior commanders stab them in the back “treacherously & vilely decapitating the army at the most tense and difficult moment.” Gerasimov smiles publicly when the boss comes around; he’s Putin’s choice. So кто виноват/who is guilty? How is this worth fighting for?/x

The split between the Moscow dacha generals and those in the field has been deepening for over a year. Regular sackings of field generals helps prevent any risk of Bonapartism

— John Foreman CBE (@John_ForemanCBE) July 14, 2023

And one more long thread, this time from Samuel Bendett of CNA and CNAS. First tweet from the thread, followed by the rest from the Thread Reader App:

1/ This is an interesting thread from a Ukrainian soldiers going through Western military training in Germany. Key points that stand out: "They do not rely on electronic devices at all, and the fact that we go on missions with Chinese smartphones and tablets was wild for them." https://t.co/y9DocbYQAU

— Samuel Bendett (@sambendett) July 13, 2023

2/ “But after “Kropyva”, I don’t want to go back to paper docs at all. The same for quadcopters – the concept of DJI Mavics and the use of civilian copters is simply not even in their plans. Of course, they study our war, but they are still surprised that we use it (quadcopters)… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

3/ (For the record, “Kropyva” is a Ukrainian proprietary intelligence mapping software developed for planning, calculations, and orientation that is used by hundreds of units throughout Ukraine).

Defense Mapping Software “Kropyva”. You can help!Defense Mapping Software “Kropyva” is our proprietary intelligence mapping software. Join the cause now!https://armysos.com.ua/defense-mapping-software/

4/ More from the Ukrainian soldier: “For a week, we were taught to read maps, take the azimuth, transfer the azimuth from the compass to the map and vice versa. When we told them that we use electronic cards on tablets and phones, they did not take us seriously.”

5/ “They have different drone types, but this is purely brigade level. This shows that in addition to the war with the aborigines in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, the Americans have not participated in a serious war for a long time. Their army does not have an analogue of the Chinese… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

6/ The points about Western militaries not having the equivalents of cheap, commercial-type drones for tactical ISR is a major topic of deliberation in the US military today.

Army Seeks Bomb-Carrying Drones Like Ukraine’sAverage U.S. soldiers could pilot lethal quadcopters—if they are ever fielded.https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/06/army-seeks-bomb-carrying-drones-ukraines/387091/

The Financial Times reports on Finland’s view of providing aid to Ukraine.

Finland has hit back at claims aired at a Nato summit that Ukraine has failed to show gratitude for western support, saying aid should not be regarded as charity.

Finnish foreign minister Elina Valtonen said in an interview that “we in the west need to understand that obviously, this is not charity because Ukraine is fighting for us. They are fighting for our liberty and the European security architecture.”

Over the course of the two-day Nato summit in Vilnius earlier this week, tensions surfaced between Kyiv and some western officials, undermining a show of unity among allies in the face of Russian aggression.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted Nato for its “absurd” lack of a clear timeline for his country’s membership of the military alliance.

Senior officials from the US and the UK retorted that Ukraine should be grateful for the assistance and not jump immediately to the next item on its weapons wish list. “We are not Amazon,” said UK defence secretary Ben Wallace, in reference to the online shopping platform. Zelenskyy later responded that he did not know he had to express gratitude “personally” to the minister.

Valtonen said the west remains committed to Ukraine and that it’s in its interest to do so. “I wouldn’t say there’s any fatigue and I hope there never will be,” she said.

Even if Nato would have met Ukraine’s demands for a clearer path to membership, that “wouldn’t be a 100 per cent guarantee” it would be joining soon, she said. And once a member, Nato’s mutual defence clause “is always still a political decision — what to send, how much to send, on which terms to assist,” she said.

Ukraine’s allies made long-term pledges to its security and backed the country’s eventual Nato membership — though that support fell short of Kyiv’s expectations, as well as those of some Nato members such as the Baltic states and Poland.

Zelenskyy later took pains to emphasise Ukraine’s appreciation for the sustained assistance and described long-term security commitments from the G7 and other powers as a “significant security victory” that would eventually help the country on its path to Nato.

Valtonen said the most important thing was for the US and its partners to “keep on solidifying their support.”

Asked whether the US could be counted on to do so should a Ukraine-sceptic such as Donald Trump win the US election in 2024, she said the US Congress had played an important role in sustaining assistance but that the war has also made clear Europe has more to do.

“I’m very hopeful that the US will continue its unwavering support, there seems to be very, very widespread support across Congress, both sides, so I really rely on that” she said.

But, she added: “There’s a truth to the fact that Europe also needs to do more. And I think, as sad as the war is, the key takeaway has been that there is suddenly also the awareness in Europe that we need to invest into our defence, much, much more than we have done before.” She said the war in Ukraine was also useful in exposing “the weakness of Russia”. Finland, for decades a neutral country bordering Russia, joined Nato in April after a fast accession process prompted by the war.

The Washington Post has a long profile of GEN Zaluzhnyi:

A career military man, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny long ago confronted three questions: Am I ready to die? Am I ready to kill? Am I willing to send people to die and kill?

Now, Ukraine’s top commander in a war with a Russian force larger and better-equipped than his own is asking himself a new question: How can I reduce the loss of life? He starts each morning by learning how many soldiers were killed or wounded following his orders the day before. Sometimes he stumbles across a contact in his cellphone who is dead. He refuses to delete them.

Zaluzhny said he’s saving the grieving for later. Mourning now would distract him from his important work as the man Ukrainians trust to keep them safe and Western partners trust with billions in security assistance. Both expect him to re-create Ukraine’s earlier underdog success on the battlefield.

But if it were up to Zaluzhny alone, this is not how he would get the job done. He would fight with air superiority. He would fire back at least as many shells as the Russians are firing at his troops. And he would have cruise missiles that could match Moscow’s. Instead, modern fighter jets, such as the U.S.-made F-16, are not expected on the battlefield until next year. Ukraine’s ammunition supply is constrained, with the Russians often shooting three times as much in a day.

And Western allies, citing fears of escalating the war with Russia, have placed a condition on the longer-range missiles and other materiel they’ve so far provided: They can’t be used to strike Russian soil.

So, Zaluzhny said, he uses weapons made in Ukraine for the frequent strikes across the border that Kyiv never officially acknowledges as its own.

“To save my people, why do I have to ask someone for permission what to do on enemy territory?” Zaluzhny recently told The Washington Post in a rare interview. “For some reason, I have to think that I’m not allowed to do anything there. Why? Because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will … use nuclear weapons? The kids who are dying don’t care.

“This is our problem, and it is up to us to decide how to kill this enemy. It is possible and necessary to kill on his territory in a war. If our partners are afraid to use their weapons, we will kill with our own. But only as much as is necessary.”

The challenges facing Zaluzhny and his forces are significant. Even after he orchestrated a series of military feats — a defensive stand that forced the Russians to retreat from around Kyiv and counteroffensives that expelled the invading troops from the northeast Kharkiv region and the southern regional capital of Kherson last year — large swaths of Ukraine’s east and south, about a fifth of the country, remain occupied.

Carrying out a counteroffensive to reclaim that territory, defeat Russia and minimize Ukraine’s casualties requires resources that Zaluzhny said he’s still lacking. Western officials have said Ukraine has enough to succeed, but Zaluzhny was sharply critical of counterparts who have argued that Kyiv doesn’t need F-16s. Their own militaries would never fight like this, he said in the interview.

Zaluzhny’s attempt at culture change can be seen on the battlefield, too. Years of training and deepening ties with NATO forces have made Ukraine’s forces more nimble than Russia’s in this war. Lower-level commanders on the ground often feel empowered to make decisions quickly rather than run each call up the chain of command — a Soviet mind-set.

“The assumption that this would be a war between a big Soviet army and a small Soviet army was wrong in many countries,” Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said. “That’s why they told us that Kyiv would fall in three days and Ukraine in three weeks. But this is no longer a Soviet army.”

After Reznikov learned that Russia had launched a full-scale attack on Feb. 24, 2022, he arrived at Zaluzhny’s office to find the general standing over large maps and answering multiple phones. Zaluzhny was receiving information from the battlefield and then responding with curt orders, Reznikov said. But Zaluzhny would also add a small term of endearment each time, calling his subordinate a “beauty” or telling him “good job.”

“This is humanity,” Reznikov said. “The guy is in a general’s uniform, but his humanity is what makes him special.”

The military still demands strict order and discipline, Zaluzhny said. He can be stern and demanding, but “I do not mock people, I do not oppress them, I do not humiliate them.”

The turn away from the Ukrainian military’s Soviet legacy is far from complete. More offices must be changed, Zaluzhny said. And more change will come with the new generation — soldiers Zaluzhny proudly described as knowing English and being well-read. “It’s a pity we’re losing them,” he said.

After fighting an internal Soviet ideological enemy, he now faces an external one that lauds the very heritage Zaluzhny wanted eradicated. But he still has respect for his adversary’s doctrine. He eagerly read everything Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s military chief, has ever written, describing it as “very, very interesting” and lamenting that he hasn’t published anything lately.

“He is an enemy — an enemy who is very smart,” Zaluzhny said. “Smart and therefore devious. He is still strong. So you have to respect him as such and look for ways to kill him. Because that is the only way to win.”

Zaluzhny, however, isn’t shy about his intent to reclaim Crimea, the peninsula Russia illegally annexed in 2014, even as some Western officials privately worry about what Putin’s response would be if Ukrainian troops ever reached the territory. “As soon as I have the means, I’ll do something. I don’t give a damn — nobody will stop me,” Zaluzhny said.

The figurative Western handcuffs on his military operations have prompted Zaluzhny to think more about Ukraine’s future — beyond this counteroffensive and this war — and how to make the country so strong that no one will dare attack it again. To accomplish that means producing weapons for defense rather than being reliant on others to provide them.

He lamented that Ukraine is dependent on other countries for ammunition as partners struggle to meet the demand. The more Ukraine can fire, pinning down Russian forces, the fewer casualties it will suffer, Zaluzhny said. But what happens if the precious resource becomes scarcer the longer the war lasts?

“I’ve been asking myself that since last March — and not just myself; I ask it everywhere I can ask it,” Zaluzhny said.

His vision for a formidable Ukraine is why he struggles to consider his own future after the war. Maybe he’ll take some time off. “But as my wife says: ‘Okay, three days. What’s next?’” he said with a laugh. He might write a book, he said. He’d like to travel, though his Brussels airport experience left him wary.

But Zaluzhny expects that even after the war, he’ll be busy. His concept of victory is more than just Ukraine restoring its full territorial integrity.

“Victory will be when we will have an army — maybe even a not-insignificant one — that will guarantee the safety of children who are now riding in baby carriages, so that they grow up knowing that this won’t happen again,” Zaluzhny said. “And that’s a tremendous amount of work. It has to start now.”

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

So many bastards, so little time.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

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

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

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

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

We will not go back.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

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

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Family Is Family: OzarkHillbilly

Moneyballsacks (Open Thread)

War for Ukraine Day 507: A Quick Saturday Night Update

We cannot leave any city and village under Russian occupation, where violence and humiliation of people reign – address of President of Ukraine

Statement by Council members on foreign and defense policy

Weekend Reading Strange Tales: ‘Ginni and Clarence: A Love Story’

The Diplomat (Open Thread)

Late Night Open Thread: How You Can Tell R(atf*cker)FK Jr Is Still Out There

War for Ukraine Day 506: (Some of) You Have Questions, I (May Have) Answers

Every thousand meters of advancement, every success of each of our combat brigades deserves gratitude – address by the President of Ukraine