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*** Official Discussion of US Politics Resulting From The Ukraine Conflict *** aka Discuss what Donald and AOC said/tweeted here here (1 Viewer)

Ministry of Pain said:
This is the absolute truth BAR NONE!

Anyone who cannot see this is already in a vegetative state let's say. 
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I'm in a vegetative state and pine for the day of justice when the grifting, egregious stain on American democracy is revealed and PROSECUTED! I think we're getting closer every day.

If you can handle Trump truth, just go get ya some right here.

 
Joe Mammy said:
I'm in a vegetative state and pine for the day of justice when the grifting, egregious stain on American democracy is revealed and PROSECUTED! I think we're getting closer every day.

If you can handle Trump truth, just go get ya some right here.
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Out of respect for what is unfolding in the Russia-Ukraine War/Holocaust I'm going to let it go but I had a lengthy reply. 

All good JM 

 
Ministry of Pain said:
Out of respect for what is unfolding in the Russia-Ukraine War/Holocaust I'm going to let it go but I had a lengthy reply. 

All good JM 
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Poor Trump.  He's such a victim.  Never does anything wrong, he's just unfairly hassled by the left.  Can't imagine why, I mean maybe painting US planes with Chinese flags and attack Russia is a really solid strategic move?

Although withholding aid to Ukraine in order to get dirt on Biden seems like a real bad idea right about now.  And man that pandemic response team might just have proved useful.

Poor, unfairly treated Trump. 

 
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James Daulton said:
Poor Trump.  He's such a victim.  Never does anything wrong, he's just unfairly hassled by the left.  Can't imagine why, I mean maybe painting US planes with Chinese flags and attack Russia is a really solid strategic move?

Although withholding aid to Ukraine in order to get dirt on Biden seems like a real bad idea right about now.  And man that pandemic response team might just have proved useful.

Poor, unfairly treated Trump. 
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Just stop, have you no shame? 

I said this already but you just make the dialogue up as you go, forget if someone will respond, you just fill in the blanks as you like...this is easily resolved though, we are given the power here fortunately. 

Once, Twice...have fun talking to yourself  :lmao:

 
Fox News (website) really seems to be trying to hammer Biden and Liberal policies on the fact that the US is still buying oil from Russia.  The Biden administration has handled everything really well so far (Russia/Ukraine war), so they are looking at anything to ##### about.

From Nikki Haley

https://www.foxnews.com/media/nikki-haley-providing-russia-with-oil-money-is-absolute-lunacy

NIKKI HALEY: Stop reacting and start leading. First of all, work with Ukraine on real-time intelligence so that we can tell them everything that's happening that they can't see. Make sure that we send anti-tank, anti-air missiles immediately. Make sure that we are telling Poland and NATO that they've got to supply these planes to Ukraine. They need them right away so they can cover their own airspace. We've got to make sure we sanction these energy companies, all of them. We've got to make sure that we pull them out of the international banking system, and we need to stop taking any Russian oil. The idea that we would give our money to an enemy is unthinkable, and it's absolute lunacy. We can't allow this to continue… 
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I like Haley, but isn't the US already doing most of these things (except not stopping the purchase of oil).

 
Chaz McNulty said:
Fox News (website) really seems to be trying to hammer Biden and Liberal policies on the fact that the US is still buying oil from Russia.  The Biden administration has handled everything really well so far (Russia/Ukraine war), so they are looking at anything to ##### about.

From Nikki Haley

https://www.foxnews.com/media/nikki-haley-providing-russia-with-oil-money-is-absolute-lunacy

I like Haley, but isn't the US already doing most of these things (except not stopping the purchase of oil).
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Did Nikki Haley look up a list of things the administration is doing, and then yell that they need to do that?
Is that what just happened?

Oh hey:

"In less than a week, the United States and NATO have pushed more than 17,000 antitank weapons, including Javelin missiles, over the borders of Poland and Romania, unloading them from giant military cargo planes so they can make the trip by land."

https://twitter.com/DanLamothe/status/1500646406612213760

 
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massraider said:
Did Nikki Haley look up a list of things the administration is doing, and then yell that they need to do that?
Is that what just happened?

Oh hey:

"In less than a week, the United States and NATO have pushed more than 17,000 antitank weapons, including Javelin missiles, over the borders of Poland and Romania, unloading them from giant military cargo planes so they can make the trip by land."

https://twitter.com/DanLamothe/status/1500646406612213760
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I respect her as a possible presidential nominee, but I find it disappointing when she plays the partisan politics on Fox News.  I understand that she needs some of Trump's base, but it's still an awful look.

 
Stoneworker said:
The Two Blunders That Caused the Ukraine War

The Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted from two immense strategic blunders, Robert Service says. The first came on Nov. 10, when the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The pact made it likelier than ever that Ukraine would eventually join NATO—an intolerable prospect for Vladimir Putin. “It was the last straw,” Mr. Service says. Preparations immediately began for Russia’s so-called special military operation in Ukraine.

Mr. Service, 74, is a veteran historian of Russia, a professor emeritus at St. Antony’s College, Oxford and a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. He has written biographies of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky. The last work, published in 2009, attracted the ire of die-hard Trotskyites world-wide for saying that their hero shared many basic ideas with Lenin and Stalin on the “one-party, one ideology terror state.” Mr. Service says they still “mess around” his Wikipedia entry.

The November agreement added heft to looser assurances Ukraine received at a NATO summit five months earlier that membership would be open to the country if it met the alliance’s criteria. Mr. Service characterizes these moves as “shambolic mismanagement” by the West, which offered Ukraine encouragement on the NATO question but gave no apparent thought to how such a tectonic move away from Moscow would go down with Mr. Putin. “Nothing was done to prepare the Ukrainians for the kind of negative response that they would get.”

After all, Mr. Service says, Ukraine is “one of the hot spots in the mental universe of Vladimir Putin, and you don’t wander into it without a clear idea of what you’re going to do next.” The West has known that since at least 2007, when the Russian ruler made a speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy that was, in Mr. Service’s words, “a rage against Ukraine ever joining NATO.” He was about to step down from the Russian presidency (to become prime minister for four years), “so it was his last lion’s roar in the jungle.” When he returned as president in 2012, he made it clear again that “the Ukraine-NATO question wasn’t negotiable.”

In July 2021 he wrote an essay that foretold the invasion. Mr. Service sums it up as saying, “more or less, that Ukrainians and Russians are one people.” Mr. Putin had said so many times before, “but not as angrily and punchily—and emotionally.”

It rankles Mr. Putin that Ukraine would seek to join the West—and not merely because he wants it as a satellite state. He also “can’t afford to allow life to a neighboring Slav state which has even a smidgen of democratic development. His Russian people might get dangerous ideas.”

As a result of the invasion, which began on Feb. 24, “the U.S. has started to get its act together,” Mr. Service says. “But I don’t think American diplomacy covered itself in glory in 2021.”

The second strategic error was Mr. Putin’s underestimation of his rivals. “He despises the West and what he sees as Western decadence,” Mr. Service says. “He had come to believe that the West was a shambles, both politically and culturally.” He also thought that the leaders of the West were “of poor quality, and inexperienced, in comparison with himself. After all, he’s been in power 20 years.”

In Mr. Putin’s cocksure reckoning, the invasion was going to be “a pushover—not just in regard to Ukraine, but in regard to the West.” He’d spent four years “running rings around Donald Trump, ” and he thought the retirement of German Chancellor Angela Merkel left the West rudderless. That set the scene for the “surprise he got when he invaded Ukraine, when he found that he’d inadvertently united the West—that what he’d done was the very opposite of what he wanted.” Mr. Service calls Mr. Putin “reckless and mediocre” and scoffs at the notion that he is “some sort of genius.” What kind of Russian leader, he asks, “makes it impossible for a German leader not to build up Germany’s armaments”?

Mr. Putin evidently “hoped there wouldn’t have to be a war” because the massing of troops on the border would lead to the collapse of the Ukrainian government. He underestimated Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he’d met in Paris in December 2019, six months after the Ukrainian president took office. Mr. Putin had “done his usual brutal discussion performance with him. Zelensky came out of these talks obviously shaken.” (poster note: first mtg of Khruschev and JFK, anyone?)

Mr. Service says the key to understanding Mr. Putin is his adamant belief that Russia is “a great global power” and that the Russian sphere of influence should extend to as many of the former Soviet republics as possible: “There’s no state that’s more important to him than Ukraine.”

The historian describes the Russian ruler as “not a communist but an anticommunist.” In Mr. Service’s telling, Mr. Putin regards the Soviet period as “a rupture” with the path to greatness that Russia should have taken. “Putin believes in Eternal Russia” and regards Lenin with “ridicule and detestation” for stunting Russia’s expansion. While Mr. Putin may say “occasionally pleasant things about Stalin, he has never said anything positive about Lenin.”

In Mr. Putin’s view, according to Mr. Service, Lenin committed a primordial sin in 1922 when the Soviet Constitution set up a federation of republics with their own boundaries within the Soviet Union. “This made possible the breakup of the U.S.S.R. into separate independent states in 1991,” Mr. Service says. Mr. Putin, like Stalin—who fell out with Lenin over these constitutional arrangements—would have liked all these republics to have been merged into a Greater Russia, ruled from Moscow.

“Putin despises democracy,” Mr. Service says. “He believes in the right of the leadership to impose the authority of the state on society.” In the Russian president’s view, this is good for citizens because it brings stability and predictability into their lives. He also believes in the importance of the secret police as an adjunct of government. In this, Mr. Service points out, many of his methods are “reminiscent of the Soviet period,” even if his ideology isn’t.

Mr. Putin “sees himself messianically,” Mr. Service says—as a leader come to deliver Russia to its destiny. He runs his government like “a court, though the czars were much more polite to their ministers.” Unless they go into political opposition, he doesn’t get rid of people who don’t share his vision. Instead, he “bats them down, and overawes them, treating them like schoolboys.” He “peppers them with questions” to keep them on their toes. He was a senior officer in the KGB, and the KGB is still in his soul. Rebranded as the FSB, “it’s the one agency from the old Soviet Union that has survived.”

As the Russian invasion continues into its second week, Mr. Service is pessimistic, certain that we’re heading into a prolonged war that will end in the subjugation of Ukraine. “He’ll win the war,” Mr. Service says, “by flattening Ukraine. By devastating a brother people, he could win the war. But he won’t win the peace. The task of tranquilizing the Ukrainians is beyond the Russians. There’s too much bile that’s been let loose in the stomach of Ukraine.”

Looking to history for analogies, he rejects Czechoslovakia in 1968, preferring instead the example of Hungary in 1956, when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to quell a major uprising. “When the Soviets suppressed the Hungarian Revolution, they had to pay for it economically,” Mr. Service says. “They had to subsidize Hungary with oil and gas.” Moscow bore a huge economic burden for “the retention of Hungary within its political orbit, and that would be the case with Ukraine. And they’d be hated at the same time—hated.” Not to mention taking on the weight of appeasing a conquered people at a time of impoverishment in Russia itself.

“Putin’s got to be removed from power,” Mr. Service says. That is the only way to end Ukraine’s torment. But how?

It could happen in two ways. The first is “a palace coup,” which at the moment “looks very, very unlikely” but could become plausible. The second is a mass uprising, “a tremendous surge in street demonstrations as a result of the economic hardship” imposed by the war and Western sanctions.

For a palace coup to succeed, there would need to be palpable disaffection in the Russian establishment. Mr. Service notes that the Russian Orthodox Church hasn’t yet condemned the war, nor has the Academy of Sciences. “By and large, the establishment has been quiescent.” But the “personal and collective interests” of the ruling elite are at stake. Not only will sanctions stop them from traveling to the French Riviera or sending their sons to England’s Eton College; they’ll have to line up behind “a really reckless line of policy, which will require Russia to patrol the biggest state in Europe, now full of angry, vengeful people.”

Reaching for the history books again, he cites the case of Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s all-powerful state security chief, who was almost certain to succeed the latter on his death in 1953. But the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, as the Politburo was known at the time, got together with Nikita Khrushchev and decided that they “weren’t safe with Beria.” With the help of the army, they arrested, tried and executed him. “The thing that makes me think about this,” says Mr. Service, “is that the Presidium at the time seemed to be working under the impetus of Beria’s various initiatives quite peacefully.” His end came as a surprise to the world—and undoubtedly to Beria himself.

“So it’s quite possible,” Mr. Service continues, “that the apparently overawed associates of Putin in the Kremlin could decide that the Russian national interest and their collective interest will best be served by getting rid of Putin.” Yet Mr. Putin is surely aware of the history of Beria, and is accordingly prepared: “He’s very elusive, and very, very edgy. I should imagine his security orders are quite severe.”

The longer the war goes on, the more likely it is that Russia will see protest movements that are hard to contain, Mr. Service says. “Especially if the police themselves have elements in their ranks who sympathize with the people they’re meant to be suppressing.”

There have been frequent uprisings in Russian history, and Mr. Service lists them. “In 1905, they nearly led to revolution. In February 1917, they did.” There were also “very, very powerful” street demonstrations in the early 1930s that shook Stalin; disturbances in the labor camps in the late 1940s, and also at Stalin’s death. “There were whole cities that erupted against the Soviet order in 1962, because of high meat prices, and there were strikes in 1989 among the coal miners, which destabilized Soviet politics.” And in 1991 an attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev prompted a demonstration outside Parliament, where future Russian President Boris Yeltsin famously faced down a Soviet tank.

He acknowledges that only twice did opponents succeed in toppling the political establishment, but he says that “if there’s a combination of political disorder on the streets and political unease in the ruling group,” as in 1917 and 1991, these factors could converge to powerful effect: “This is a distant possibility at the moment, but it can’t be ruled out.”

Mr. Service is certain, however, that the Russians will find conquered Ukrainians as difficult to control as free ones. “The Ukrainians have become more nationally conscious over the 20th century, and they’re a proud people who’ve seen what happened to them when they were subjugated by the U.S.S.R.” It is inconceivable that they will accept subjugation again. “They had it in the early 1930s, when millions died under Stalin’s famines. They had it again in the late 1940s, after the war ended. I don’t think they’re going to let history repeat itself.”

The invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Service says, is not a tragedy for Ukraine alone. It’s a tragedy for Russia. “Russian people don’t deserve a ruler like Putin. They’ve not had very much luck with their rulers in the last 150 years. In fact, they’ve had appalling luck.”

Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University Law School’s Classical Liberal Institute.

Source: WSJ
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Thanks for posting this fascinating article, it has lots of stuff I didn’t know. I was especially interested in Putin’s opinion of Lenin. It is true that Lenin was more of an internationalist than Stalin, but it may be unfair to blame Lenin for the changes made in 1922 since by that time he had suffered a few strokes and was kept away from decision making. 
Stalin, though originally from Georgia, was much more of a Russian nationalist like Putin is. 

 
BladeRunner said:
Unfortunately, we've been direct witness to the hyperbole and overly dramatic nonsense the left has pushed over the last 5 years in their quest to GET TRUMP!!!   That was the entire plan before he even took office so you can remind the public all you want but your timeline doesn't start until 2020 and completely forgets about the years or 2016-2019.

So, yeah, my original response to Raider's DNC-backed talking points still stands - he'll have to give Trump credit because Trump was in office for MOST of those years he's talking about.  But, those DNC Talking Points he listed are just that - talking points with no basis in facts or loose playing with the facts at best.

But that's his shtick anyways.
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You know, both can be true.  Trump can be corrupt and broke the law and the left could have come up with hatchet jobs.

massraider said:
The fallout from this is going to be massive. 

Pompeo, can he mount a presidential campaign? search his name on Twitter

Trump? Gonna get KILLED on this. Oh, hey, here's John Bolton, dunking on Donald on NEWSMAX, for pete's sake.

Marco Rubio is being the smart one, by jumping on the anti-Putin bandwagon. He isn't very bright, in general, so you get the Zoom call snafu, but the fact that he was all 'look at meeee, I'm texting with Zelensky cause we are totally besties!!!' tells you so much about how he is trying to position himself.

Wait till these Russians start talking. I mean, once the jig is up, how many of these oligarchs and Russian leaders are gonna go scorched earth on this one? Sooo many people in the West are about to lose their careers, because they sided with Russia. 
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I really doubt this.  I suspect they'll be positioning themselves for the new gov't and not poke their heads up to be whacked.

Ruffrodys05 said:
Liz Cheney appears the sanest of them all right now. If she threw her bonnet in the ring for the Republican presidential primary I'd pay attention.
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Anyone in the Rep party you consider sane or would pay attention to would still most likely be anti-abortion, anti-single payer, anti-weed.  Anyone one of those would be non-starters for someone on the left.

 
timschochet said:
Thanks for posting this fascinating article, it has lots of stuff I didn’t know. I was especially interested in Putin’s opinion of Lenin. It is true that Lenin was more of an internationalist than Stalin, but it may be unfair to blame Lenin for the changes made in 1922 since by that time he had suffered a few strokes and was kept away from decision making. 
Stalin, though originally from Georgia, was much more of a Russian nationalist like Putin is. 
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It also lends further credence to what I said earlier that nobody in the jingoism thread wants to hear: that there were U.S. policy blunders along the way that helped contribute to this tragedy. Which of course is different than assigning a purely binary score for "blame."

With better diplomacy along the lines of JFK/Khruschev, we may have avoided what is surely one of the worst on the scale of outcomes. A red line may have had a malleable interpretation for personalities like Obama/Biden re: Syria, but clearly its meaning was literal for Putin re: Ukraine. Shame the West is realizing that too late.

 
Stoneworker said:
It also lends further credence to what I said earlier that nobody in the jingoism thread wants to hear: that there were U.S. policy blunders along the way that helped contribute to this tragedy. Which of course is different than assigning a purely binary score for "blame."

With better diplomacy along the lines of JFK/Khruschev, we may have avoided what is surely one of the worst on the scale of outcomes. A red line may have had a malleable interpretation for personalities like Obama/Biden re: Syria, but clearly its meaning was literal for Putin re: Ukraine. Shame the West is realizing that too late.
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Of course we made mistakes along the way. In my own opinion, none were as catastrophic for American interests as Trump’s deliberate attempt to blackmail Zelensky. I believe this caused Putin to think that he could do whatever he wanted with Ukraine. (Fiona Hill eloquently made this point on the Sunday shows). But that doesn’t mean there weren’t errors by the Biden team. 

 
timschochet said:
Of course we made mistakes along the way. In my own opinion, none were as catastrophic for American interests as Trump’s deliberate attempt to blackmail Zelensky. I believe this caused Putin to think that he could do whatever he wanted with Ukraine. (Fiona Hill eloquently made this point on the Sunday shows). But that doesn’t mean there weren’t errors by the Biden team. 
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Agreed. Hopefully the diplomatic lessons learned are being catalogued and will be applied to China/Taiwan. 

 
re: "blame" - here's how I think of it - think in terms of growing a plant.

  1. the fertilizer was put down over the past 100 years or so, regarding Russians and Ukrainians.  These people have lived under one country where Ukrainians maybe didn't get such a great deal (to understate it), but they have resources and are are geographically located to be desired to be reintegrated into Russia.  The metaphorical ground is fertile.
  2. the seeds were planted in 2014 during the Maidan Revolution where Yanukovych went against the decision of the Rada (Ukrainian parliament) and sided with trade agreements with the EU instead of Russia.     Yanukovych was outed and fled to Moscow.  Pro-Russians protested in Crimea and Donbass, and Russia intervened...and kept Crimea.
  3. the seeds were watered with Zelenskyy's election - he came in as a reformer, and looked to strengthen Ukraine's ties with the west. 
  4.  US government provided sunlight and allowed the seed to germinate.  We did send arms to Ukraine, but we tied strings to them - pushed for political favors, etc.  It certainly help that we weakened NATO and did nothing but display internal strife, signaling to Russia that the west was fractured. 
If you want to play the "blame red team or blue team" game, have at it;  Both sides share culpability.  #2 above happened on Obama/Biden's watch.  #4 was all under Trump.  Could we have discouraged Ukraine from turning to the west?  Maybe...maybe Russia could have considered more carrot, less stick if they wanted Ukraine to be an ally.  Ultimately though, I think #4 was crucial. 

Team Trump used Ukraine as nothing more than a pawn in a game against the Democrats.  Let's not forget the nonsense about Hillarys emails on a server in Ukraine, not to mention extorting Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden.  Of course, we can't forget about Paul Manafort who has been rocking the boat in Ukraine politics since 2004 or so.  There has been a hell of a lot of connections between the Trump organization and Ukraine.  Now, it may not all be on Trump.  Personally I think Manafort was the real antagonist but when Trump pardoned him, that kind of makes it hard to sever that association.

 
Chaz McNulty said:
I respect her as a possible presidential nominee, but I find it disappointing when she plays the partisan politics on Fox News.  I understand that she needs some of Trump's base, but it's still an awful look.
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Agreed --and she's all but lost my potential vote if this is why she's in the newsfeed --

 
To paraphrase a wag on Twitter, the last President was briefed daily by the most comprehensive and sophisticated intelligence organization in the world and his solution to the war is to slap some China stickers on US warplanes and send them into the fray incognito.

 
roadkill1292 said:
To paraphrase a wag on Twitter, the last President was briefed daily by the most comprehensive and sophisticated intelligence organization in the world and his solution to the war is to slap some China stickers on US warplanes and send them into the fray incognito.
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Not a Trump fan at all but clearly he was kidding here and didn't mean anyone to take this seriously. 
I mean I hope he was? 

 
roadkill1292 said:
To paraphrase a wag on Twitter, the last President was briefed daily by the most comprehensive and sophisticated intelligence organization in the world and his solution to the war is to slap some China stickers on US warplanes and send them into the fray incognito.
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To directly quote one of the most noted Russian historians on the planet in the article above, the current president's 2021 diplomatic moves amounted to nothing more than “shambolic mismanagement."

 
I am finding that a big talking point amongst some Republicans seems to be to cut off oil purchases from Russia.  Meanwhile they keep harping on gas prices.  I think this is intentional.  There are some in the media that would love to see inflation get to double digits.

 
Chaz McNulty said:
I am finding that a big talking point amongst some Republicans seems to be to cut off oil purchases from Russia.  Meanwhile they keep harping on gas prices.  I think this is intentional.  There are some in the media that would love to see inflation get to double digits.
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All while complaining that Biden is talking to Venezuela about anything or Saudi Arabia.  Which I get that criticism…trading one evil regime for another is not a good idea.

 
sho nuff said:
All while complaining that Biden is talking to Venezuela about anything or Saudi Arabia.  Which I get that criticism…trading one evil regime for another is not a good idea.
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Exactly.  He has to really balance the pain the Russian mandates cause at home vs. the pain they cause to Russia.  So far, almost everyone is on-board with them.  And if talking to Venezuela or Saudi Arabia results in lower gas prices, and the ability to tighten the mandates on Russia, then it is the correct move.

 
Chaz McNulty said:
Exactly.  He has to really balance the pain the Russian mandates cause at home vs. the pain they cause to Russia.  So far, almost everyone is on-board with them.  And if talking to Venezuela or Saudi Arabia results in lower gas prices, and the ability to tighten the mandates on Russia, then it is the correct move.
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No. The correct move is drilling here. And no despite what the NYT and Wapo are lying about in plain site, we are not producting anywhere near s much oil as we could. We have the ability to be completely energy independent from the entire world and yet we continue to buy oil from people we openly declare as enemies. Why? Why do we continue to do this?

 
Insein said:
No. The correct move is drilling here. And no despite what the NYT and Wapo are lying about in plain site, we are not producting anywhere near s much oil as we could. We have the ability to be completely energy independent from the entire world and yet we continue to buy oil from people we openly declare as enemies. Why? Why do we continue to do this?
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We did that even when Trump claimed we were energy independent.  And yes, we are producing oil at a high rate and ramping it up even more expected to be at record highs by 2023.

 
roadkill1292 said:
To paraphrase a wag on Twitter, the last President was briefed daily by the most comprehensive and sophisticated intelligence organization in the world and his solution to the war is to slap some China stickers on US warplanes and send them into the fray incognito.
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I wonder if he still thinks Putin's invasion is "genius" and "savvy"

 
This is quite a Twitter Thread Kamil Galeev, who is a Fellow at the Wilson Center.

It is a very long thread, but it was a good read. I’ll post some highlights…

(The author is probably not a native English speaker…)

Let's discuss Russian economy.

Many underestimate its dependency upon technological import. Russia's so deeply integrated into Western technological chains that severing these ties will lead to its collapse. Sanctions are already effective and can be made even more efficient🧵

…

…The government pressures producers to be self-reliant and independent upon import. However, import-substitution is 95% PR. Producers and mid-ranked officials pretend to do "import-substitution" because Putin tells so.

Consider Svetlana Orlova, governor of Vladimir. In 2017 she presented new tractor designed and produced by a local factory under her wise leadership.

President Putin ordered to launch import-substitution.

Governor Orlova obeyed and commanded a local factory to create a Russian tractor. CEO obeyed and engineers designed a new amazing machine АНТ 4135F. That's how Russian vertical of power works.

And yet, Russian tractor АНТ 4135F isn't Russian. It's a Czech tractor Zetor Forterra 135.

I wanna clarify, it is not a copy of a Czech tractor. It literally *is* a Czech tractor. Russian plant buys tractor kits in Czech Republic, assembles them and pretends they're home produced.

…

Let's return to avocados. Have you ever heard of blood avocados? They're called "blood" because almost all avocado production in Mexico is controlled by cartels. Thus, when buying Mexican avocados, you are directly funding organized crime.

But why avocados? Why not chairs, why not smartphone apps?

Mafia is quite simple. It can't administer something complicated without either destroying the production completely or evolving to something that wouldn't be a mafia anymore.

That's why cartels choose avocado. It's resource extraction providing tradable goods for export. Perfect forage base for a mafia.

Z-guys are not that different from Jalisco cartel. Putin's moves make more sense if you consider that Russia is run by a mafia. By a criminal group which extracts tradable export goods through violence or threats. Violent image is Kremlin's means of production and must be kept.

…

Let's make a simple visualization of dominance hierarchy within Russian economy. Oil &gas are the simplest lucrative industries. Thus, they are dominated by Putin's friends - the most mafia-like interest group. Metallurgy is more complicated. So, it's run by old 1990s oligarchs.

Why old oil and gas tycoons were expropriated, while metallurgy oligarchs were spared and largely remained rich through the entire Putin's era? Because metallurgy is too complicated for Putin's friends to control it directly. They spared it, because they are too mafia to run it.

The closer you are to the seat of power, the more mafia like and thus simpler you are. You are just unable to administer anything complex.

…

Let's sum up what we discussed today.

Economic progress (=development of complex economic activities) presents a clear danger to existing mafia-like interest groups.

The more mafia-like you are, the simpler you are, the less able to administer complex economic activities. If you engage in them, power balance within your structure will change and former strongmen might become irrelevant.

Extractive businesses are relatively simple in a sense that they can be administered by mafia for very long and still produce value.

 
Justin Baragona

@justinbaragona

The Conservative Entertainment Complex, in a nutshell.

March 3: Ben Shapiro calls Biden a "coward" for not yet sanctioning Russian oil.

March 9: Shapiro says Biden's oil sanctions are "an excuse so then he can blame Putin and Russia for gas prices.”
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Jesus.

 
Since this is the place, I want to ask a question.....how does Twitter allow this propaganda twitter account @mfa_russia to stay up while banning the sitting President during the election for tweeting mis-information?

I hated Trump and never voted for the man, but I'm a little disgusted at the inconsistency.  If Trumps tweets about a "stolen" election are too dangerous for the world to read, how is the Russian propaganda station not the same while they are literally killing thousands of Ukrainians during a war they started?

Twitter isn't exactly hiding it's political agenda here.

 
Jayrod said:
Since this is the place, I want to ask a question.....how does Twitter allow this propaganda twitter account @mfa_russia to stay up while banning the sitting President during the election for tweeting mis-information?

I hated Trump and never voted for the man, but I'm a little disgusted at the inconsistency.  If Trumps tweets about a "stolen" election are too dangerous for the world to read, how is the Russian propaganda station not the same while they are literally killing thousands of Ukrainians during a war they started?

Twitter isn't exactly hiding it's political agenda here.
Click to expand...


That's a very good question.

 
"Remember that Zelensky is a thug," Cawthorn said. "Remember the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and it is incredibly evil and it has been pushing woke ideologies."

It's not clear where or when the comments were made, but former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove (R) mentioned the remarks in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Wednesday evening, saying Cawthorn made them at a town hall in Asheville, North Carolina, on Saturday.

 
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Amused to Death said:
"Remember that Zelensky is a thug," Cawthorn said. "Remember the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and it is incredibly evil and it has been pushing woke ideologies."

It's not clear where or when the comments were made, but former


White


House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove (R) mentioned the remarks in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Wednesday evening, saying Cawthorn made them at a town hall in Asheville, North Carolina, on Saturday.
Click to expand...
That's how tough Ukrainians are, even their comedians are thugs.

 
The Ten Hardest Truths About the War in Europe by Seth Abramson

tl;dr would be an understatement for this, but well worth the time. IMO, he seems to understand nuance somewhat better than most independent reporters.

I'll list the 10 points he discusses below so those uninterested in the entire piece can pick and choose from items of particular interest.

Disclaimer:  He slams Trump pretty hard but not from a left/right viewpoint, but due to his history of corruption.  He also doesn't play nice with Biden, so hopefully all you gents/gals can attempt to give it an unbiased read.

(1) America is now in a world war

(2) If Donald Trump again becomes president in January 2025, America will lose the war we are currently in with Russia and our democracy may collapse.

(3) All this is complicated by the fact that what we’re witnessing in Europe is the start of the first genocide in the West since the Holocaust.

***I served in Europe during the Kosovo campaigns, so I have an issue with this one as he seems to have forgotten about Bosnia. However,  he does make several good points. 

(4) No one in the U.S. government, NATO, or the European Union believes Ukraine can win this war.

(5) The fact that Russia can stay in Ukraine long-term—and can weather sanctions long-term—underscores a key indicator that we are in a world war: global alliances are already shifting dramatically in response to the crisis in Ukraine.  

6) The costs of the current world war may well be more than Americans are willing to bear—and if a majority of Americans come to wrongly believe that it’s President Biden rather than Vladimir Putin and his allies (very much including Donald Trump) who’ve brought the world to its current pass, they’ll punish the Democrats and reward the Republicans. Yet doing so would play into Putin’s hands.

(7) Putin has no exit strategy.

(8) The Biden administration is in denial about much of this—either deliberately or negligently.

(9) Yes, America’s “culture war”—launched by Republicans as a cynical rhetorical exercise in the 1990s, but ultimately reified as a discrete, personally and politically profitable phenomenon—is relevant to the ongoing war in Europe.

(10) Everything now happening is only the beginning.
Click to expand...
 
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Sitting around having a few beers and wondering what effect economic sanctions on Russia will have on Russian mob activity in the US. Feels like it might be a bonanza for the justice dept and the FBI, as US criminal operations (CRIMOPS, copyright pending) lose the attention of their handlers and try to make new plans.

 
More thinking.  Crazy talk I'm sure, but can we turn some attention towards Syria right now?   I'm fixated on the notion that Russia cannot walk and chew gum right now (and you know China is too).  I see many needle-threading opportunities.

  • Provide the relief that Syrian citizens so desperatley need and help build diplomatic bridges
  • America, #### yeah
  • Putin regime, #### you
EDIT:  Assad, let's go check out your new penthouse.

 
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