Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, December 5, 2024
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85 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Yesterday (Wednesday) Scott posted this link in the forum:
https://www.texasobserver.org/revealed-operators-neo-nazi-x-accounts/
I posted a response there this morning, but reposting here as well:
@Scott:
Those 4 guys all follow each other. Two of them have about 225,000 followers which is only a small fraction of the total number of people on Twitter. Their follower count is rising rapidly though, image here:
https://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/image-768×551.png
snip
Politico: White House considering preemptive pardons for Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, and Anthony Fauci:
Not unreasonable as Patel promised to come after everyone who opposed Trump’s big lie:
But Biden broke all the norms by pardoning his son! /s
@drj:
Let’s do a Time Magazine, and pardon everyone residing in the United States.
Who can argue with that?
@charontwo:
Bottom line: Nazis welcome at Twitter, liberals not so much.
FWIW, pretty much everyone I followed at Twitter is now on Bluesky, a few have closed their Twitter accounts.
@drj: Biden was wise to protect Hunter from Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and Trump’s neofascist retribution campaign.
There’s nothing untoward about pardoning someone convicted of a low level, victimless, rarely-prosecuted paperwork crime after a 6-year partisan special counsel probe otherwise came up empty. Especially in a country that just protected rapist Trump from prosecution for inciting the J6 terror attack.
People who’ve done far, far, far worse have received pardons without any of the phony backlash from our lazy pundit class, venal rightwingers, and weak Vichy Dems.
If Fauci, Cheney, Schiff, and others on Trump’s enemies list will accept it, Biden should pardon them too. Then he should examine how far he can go in using executive authority to arm Ukraine and Europe, to advance fair cannabis policy, and to cancel as much student debt as possible — per the MAGA Supreme Court rewriting the constitution to place former presidents above the law.
Trump and Republicans unapologetically leverage their power on behalf of their thugs, druggies, dog killers, sex criminals, and billionaire oligarchs. Long past time for Dems to boldly use their power for the good of working Americans and our democratic allies.
Biden should pardon anyone who might even have a whiff of trouble from this group of incoming clowns. I don’t care if it is thousands of people. Stop this nonsense before it even starts.
@charontwo: Back before I quit Twitter (Dec 2021), I got into a back and forth with Chuck DeVore about COVID. He tried to throw some bogus statistics at me. Either he didn’t know what he was talking about or was just basically dishonest. Either way I didn’t bother too much more with him. BTW, if I remember right, he is a retired Army LTC by way of background.
Now the Texas Public Policy Foundation is a far right billionaire funded group that has an outsized influence on Texas politics. It is increasingly Christian Nationalist among other things. On its board, there are players like Brooke Rollins (Trump’s nominee for Sec of Agriculture), Kevin Roberts (president of Heritage Foundation (Project 2025 fame), and Tim Dunn, another oil billionaire Christian theocrat.
NYT –
Maybe I was too fast to say not a disgruntled customer.
Comments on why threats against health management execs are considered common and unremarkable:
https://thefuckingnews.substack.com/p/insurance-slaying-sparks-search-for?
@Argon:
I briefly had a job where I helped count large amounts of cash. After a while, you see the piles of bank notes as tasks to get done and not as money, and you don’t even care how many times your monthly salary you counted on a given day. I’ve heard similar things from people doing this kind of work, and also from employees at government mints and engraving shops.
It’s too easy for people at insurance companies to see claims as tasks to process, not as the real people with real issues these represent. For executives to focus on denying or delaying claims in this way, in order to boost share price, would be only too natural. Too wrong, as well.
@Joe:
Also “defend” and “depose.”
@charontwo:
I hate Hispanic Nazis.
@Bill Jempty:
Sure, why not…not literally everyone in America will be pardoned, but 40,000+ draft dodgers were pardoned by Carter and while there was some outrage expressed by folks due to this action by him, the United States did not fall to pieces and I sit here typing out this response not worried that the state police are going to break down my door.
Folks like Patel even drew up a list making it ridiculously easy for President Biden to issue a blanket pardon to those folks, plus others who are not on the Patel list but are probably on other GOP members hunt them down like a witch list.
President Biden has been provided with a blueprint on who to pardon, and he would be smart to use this blueprint to good effect. I love that he has the GOP to thank for this list of who to pardon.
@Joe: The whole thing is just so odd. The shooter apparently carried a very expensive (~$330) backpack.
As far as the delay/deny, there’s a saying that justice delayed is justice denied–which is different than the delaying or denying of claims.
If this is a disgruntled health insurance customer, it appears to be one with a fair amount of resources. The whole thing is odd, like made-for-TV-movie-odd.
@inhumans99:
I don’t think Biden has it in him to be subversive.
The Hunter pardon smells like plan C. Plan A was the original plea deal that was rejected. Plan B, I’m guessing, was to let the legal process play out*, then commute his sentence (this hits a snag when Biden withdraws from the race, but one thinks Harris would have gone along). Plan C was the pardon, as neither Biden nor Harris could do anything about it after Jan 20th 2025. All independent of the fact that felon’s thugs would go after Hunter Biden later.
His big mistake was saying he wouldn’t issue a pardon. He might have said he hasn’t considered it, or “we’ll see what happens,” or it probably isn’t even necessary, etc. In general, it’s not a good idea to limit your options when the stakes are high.
* By the legal process, I mean after however long appeals take as well.
@Jen:
As I noted above, “defend” and “depose” were also printed on the shells. That sounds somewhat MAGA to me.
It’s a real puzzle.
IMO Biden should offer pardons to everyone on Patel’s enemies list. Then he should announce them at a press conference and call out Trump for nominating someone as FBI director who has an enemies list. And make sure to say that many people are on the list because they did not buy into the big lie that the election was stolen. Maybe ask if Patel is planning to investigate Trump for his various crimes.
@drj:
Aside from the possibility that there are ways to circumvent these Presidential pardons, it is unlikely Biden will get around to covering everyone who might be served up to a MAGA kangaroo court as a warning to this entire nation of the danger in opposing their rule. That’s what fascist minded do.
Don’t waggle your finger at the use of that term, fascist. If you are so inclined to do so, I refer you back to the 1st post in this thread and charontwo’s post on the Texas Observer piece.
They have repeatedly told us who they are, and their tentacles now reach to the highest levels of our leadership. They have support and cover from nodes of fantastical amount of wealth.
Rough road ahead. Not for those of faint resolve.
@CSK: Those are both lawsuit-type terms as well…again, so odd.
@Jen: @CSK:
There’s a book titled Delay, Deny, Defend.
This is interesting:
Interesting. All people whose crimes or malfeasance involved misuse of government authority. And they would have had the help of dozens, if not hundreds of government employees. Such a pardon would certainly signal the need for investigations. Not toward prosecution, but toward finding the malevolent actors in the bureaucracy so they can be transferred to posts where they can’t do anymore damage or fired.
Fun part, if pardoned, Schiff, Cheney, Fauci and others would no longer be able to claim the fifth amendment when questioned about their “crimes” as they would no longer be at risk of prosecution. But their minions, now they would have legal risks.
If desired, Hunter can be brought before a Congressional committee and be required by law to testify about all the crimes and cronies during the period covered by the blanket immunity impulsively given him.
@Michael Reynolds:
That does make it sound as if the shooter had the claim of a loved one denied.
@Kathy:
All true.
But Biden (and anyone) has the right to change their mind. This “performative shock” over Biden doing so, writ large in our media is the same kind of disingenuous uneven treatment of Biden and Trump’s cognitive decline.
Things change on the ground. Trump won and Team MAGA started announcing their vindictive, retributive intentions. So change of plans for Biden. He gave pretty much his all for this country, including his dwindling days of functional cognition as the sun sets on this life. The expenditure of time is no small thing at the end of one’s life.
Hell yes, he should save his son. Not to have done so would have been a different kind of betrayal, a betrayal of a father, after having suffered so much personal loss …… a much worse betrayal than changing his mind in the face of the approaching pack of rabid dogs.
Meanwhile, we are witnessing the approach of the largest attempt at the betrayal of this country in its history.
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s weird that these drone flights have been allowed to continue umconfronted for weeks.
@Michael Reynolds:
When they say not to panic that’s when you run.
Preemptive pardons, even before any charges filed? Can that even be done? Imagine how many 47 will be issuing at the end of his term (assuming, of course, that we have future elections).
Dr. T bait
Tossing Out the Reform Handbook
@Assad K:
Ford did it with Nixon.
If Biden decides to do this, he should wait until the last week of his term.
@Rob1:
What strikes me is that a seasoned politician like Biden should know how much appearances and perceptions play in politics, and be mindful of them.
@Kathy:
Actually, I think Biden has figured out that appearances don’t matter, not anymore. American politics now mirrors Trump: everything is either transactional, or strokes a needy ego. Appeals to patriotism are dead – Republicans are no longer patriots and Democrats have never been happy with that language. Character is dead, with a stake through its heart. Moral appeals also dead, ever since grab ’em by the pussy.
What can you give me? And which of my erogenous zones can you stroke? That’s all that’s left. We are a nation of political whores.
@JKB:
You got that wrong – they didn’t commit any crimes. You shouldn’t lie like that. It will get you a bad reputation.
@inhumans99:
If the pardon specifically mentions Patel, and his book, I would be entirely, almost gleefully supportive.
It would put Patel in a spotlight that he has managed to avoid because of Gaetz and Hergseth or whatever his name is (I don’t think he will be around long enough to make fully learning his name a good investment of brain cells)
@Kathy:
Biden is an old man, whose future is spending time with his family. Many have prattled on about his legacy, which, in truth he damaged. But so what, he’ll be dead soon. The truth is, no one cares about the pardon but political junkies and historians. Biden faced a choice, his legacy or watching his last child tormented by his political enemies, I’d agree that he made the proper choice.
Russian ships in Syrian port have apparently gone to sea.
How the mighty have fallen. These ships have nowhere to go except the Baltic, which is now a NATO lake. If Russia loses Tartus that will be a huge blow to them, and to Assad. I’ll say it again: this is the best deal in the history of American foreign policy since we bought Louisiana from Napoleon. Zero American lives lost and one of our two remaining foes has been severely weakened – so weakened that, given their economy and demographics, they will probably not recover.
Thank you, Joe Biden, and the great Winston Zelensky.
All the Trump horses, and all the Trump men, won’t be able to put this Humpty Dumpty together again.
@Michael Reynolds:
During 2019-2020 there were nighttime drone “squadrons” flying grid patterns in NE Colorado and western Nebraska, in areas where there are still active Minuteman missile silos. No government agency ever claimed credit for them, nor was able to identify non-government actors. Most of the speculation was about the US Air Force conducting tests of drone-detection systems at the silos.
The whole point of these threatened investigations is to harass people and make them spend gobs of money hiring attorneys. Unlike Trump who gets suckers and losers to send him money, these investigations hurt real people.
7.0 earthquake off Northern California coast. Tsunami warning issued.
@Michael Reynolds:
Wouldn’t overstate this just yet.
Looks a bit like it my just be an exercise; though it may also be a prep. exercise for a real bug-out.
I doubt HTS, or Turkish back-up, intend to try crossing the Coastal Range into the Alawite heartlands, where the Syrian Army may be more inclined to stand and fight, backed up by the Alawite militia.
But as the HTS/SNA are now taking Hama, their logical next step is Homs.
That isolates the Alawite coast from Damascus, and makes the southern overland route from Iraq iffy.
If Homs falls, or is surrounded, I’d bet on negotiations between the rebels and the Alawites.
Exile for Assad, quite likely, and at that point the Russians perforce bugger off.
To the Baltic, perhaps? Or to Iran via Suez and the Red Sea?
Somebody memo the Houthi not to shoot at them, lol.
(Incidentally HMS Astute just transited into the Med; perhaps to keep a not especially friendly eye on matters Russian naval.)
And if so, the collapse of the Iranian Pasdaran strategy is virtually complete.
Leaving a Trump administration to scoop the pot in a Middle East settlement; if it’s sensible.
(Big bloody IF there, I grant.)
I ran across another article on Skiplagging. Nothing I didn’t already know, but it got me thinking about how effed up airline fare pricing is.
Short explanation. A flight from NYC to LA costs more than one to Las Cruces, NM with a connection in LA. So you buy a ticket to Las Cruces, and get off in LA.
The airlines hate this. they price fares largely by demand, not by cost and a markup. I suppose this works well for them because they keep doing it. Skiplaggers can face reprisals. it’s not illegal, but an airline can do several things. From cancelling your frequent flier account, to banning you from flying the airline.
Ok. Now suppose you go into a fast food joint and notice the value meal package of burger, fries, and soda costs less than a burger and soda bought separately. You don’t like fries, but you like saving money. So you order the package.
Suppose further you tell the employee at the counter you don’t want the soda, and the employee then tells you “in that case, you have to pay full price.” Or suppose you take the soda but throw it in the trash when you’re done, or give it to someone else, and the restaurant then demands the higher price as well.
I wonder if a law could be passed so airlines would charge by distance flown, not by demand. It would screw up a lot of airlines.
@becca:..tsunami warning cancelled…
I have been listening to KCBS 740 AM San Francisco via the internet. They have reported that NOAA has cancelled the tsunami warning.
@becca:
The warning’s been canceled, according to the SF Chronicle.
Regarding the Hunter pardon – has every reporter forgotten the gist of the “perfect phone call” Trump had with Zelensky? He wanted dirt on Hunter Biden’s Burisma affiliation to use against Joe Biden in 2020. No one gave a flying fig about Hunter Biden until Trump got the ball rolling. The appointment of a special counsel and a six year Congressional colonoscopy couldn’t make the Burisma corruption case stick, but Kash Patel and his ilk were not going to let this one go. Trump wanted to show Joe Biden to be as corrupt as Trump is, and Hunter Biden was going to be the key to that particular lock. A lack of evidence never was, and never was going to be, a deterrent. Remember the phone call’s directive to Zelensky: You just have to SAY you are investigating. So good for Joe Biden throwing a bucket of water on it all, and curse the dimwitted media for failing to connect the dots of the Hunter Biden pardon that lead directly to Donald Trump.
Many years ago, I was in Oregon when a tsunami alert was issued. The highways became packed with people driving to the coast. They didn’t want to miss the spectacle.
@Michael Reynolds:
This is so manifestly true, the pushback from the Republicans on US military aid to Uktaine is a big red flag concerning their actual “goals.”
40 years ago Republicans would have jumped all over this “deal.”
More than just a “twofer,” making Putin pay for his horrific breech of the established norms of modern state relations, puts a check on China’s own ambitions, draws down DPRK’s capacity, and ensures continued dominance of Western global power.
Now that last item might make some of our own in the US cringe, but they would be wise to consider the alternatives, and how they themselves benefit from the American dollar being the reserve currency of choice.
And it is that last part, that makes the America First, last, and only crowd particularly out of sync with their “Patriot” flag waving performance.
Boggles the mind.
@JohnSF:
Aleppo to Hamas to Homs, it’s a straight north to south line whose logical endpoint is Damascus. Turkey (whose clients are apparently focusing on killing Kurds) could theoretically blockade the naval base which leaves the Russian air base high and dry.
I don’t have any idea if Erdogan is ready for that level of commitment, but he’s ambitious and he’s going to be feeling pretty good, like he’s on a roll. And he’s been willing to stand up to the Russians in the recent past. The fate of Tartus is in his hands, as is the entire Russian presence. What missions are the Russian planes going to fly? The rebels may not have the AA missiles needed to shoot them down, but Turkey does.
I don’t see a good outcome for the Russians. Or for humanity, but oh well.
@JohnSF:
That’s the other fascinating thing. The speed of this reversal of fortune is astonishing. I wonder if there’s anyone in Iran capable of ousting the regime.
@Rob1:
Trump may be able to help Putin enough to slow the bleeding, but I think it’s probably too late for Putin to salvage very much. Even if Trump manages to bully Ukraine into a treaty, Putin will have lost hundreds of thousands of men, impoverished his country, exposed the weakness of the Russian military and the crappiness of Russian arms and expanded NATO He’s defenestrated anyone he’s spotted as a potential rival, but even Mafia families have turncoats. Someone, several someones, have got to be thinking it’s time for the Godfather to retire.
@Michael Reynolds:
Strikes me as a really long detour 🙂
Sorry. I usually don’t call out typos, because I make many myself, but sometimes I just can’t help it.
@Kathy:
Shit. Too late for me to edit.
@Michael Reynolds:
Actually, looks like HTS are making kissy-face to the Kurds.
And the Kurds are reciprocating by telling the Iranians to not try moving reinforcements through their area of control.
There are also indications that Erdogan may be willing to do a deal with the Kurds, in return for their disavowing the militant extremists in Turkey.
Erdogan is a pragmatic actor, most of the time.
A settlement in Syria that removes a bleeding ulcer on Turkeys frontier, gets the refugees home, and makes relations with the EU easier re refugee transit etc AND gets Iran out of Syria AND Russia out of Tartus (and the gratitude of the Saudis, likely countable) is probably worth a little circumlocution with the Kurds, from the Ankara pov.
@Michael Reynolds: And replacing it with what?
“Ousting the regime” is just another “something better will fill the vacuum”/”nation building” stupid move that the US is so good at.
I have to say, I rather differ on the Biden administration policy re Ukraine.
Yes, they did not roll over for Russia.
But they also slow-walked various areas of support, largely imo because of National Security Council chin-strokery.
Going faster on Abrams, Bradleys, Patriot batteries, ATACMs, F-16’s, and on hard-nosed sanctions enforcement, etc could have likely seen Ukraine in a much better position at this point re the attrition rates, leaving Trump look an obvious total idiot if he shafted Kyiv, and Russia more inclined to take a bad deal, from their pov.
It’s not much of a secret that London and Warsaw, and the Nordic/Baltic group, have been enormously pissed off at the Washington/Berlin “axis of timidity”.
Keeping in mind that there are other ways to torment your political opponents, like launching FBI investigations on family members including minor children for imaginary-fictional crimes, what actual guardrails exist?
That the “principal” is pardoned doesn’t preclude the devious FBI director from accusing family members of whatever, just to cause anguish, and legal expenses.
@Michael Reynolds:
The Felon may find an easy treaty too hard for him.
For one thing, no way Ukraine agrees, or should agree, to stop fighting without a solid guarantee Mad Vlad or his successors won’t try again. How can this be implemented? Short of stationing NATO* troops in Ukraine, I don’t see a way.
It would be preferable to keep the war going until Russia wants to give up the fight, or has to. Then they’d be willing to offer concessions.
@just nutha:
It would not be a US attempt to oust the regime.
There is plenty of purely domestic discontent with it, as being oppressive, lavishly corrupt, and sacrificing the well-being of the Iranian people for a the sake of Arabs, and a “death to America” stance that is seen as quixotic folly.
If the Pasdaran are discredited within the regime structure, there is a reasonable opportunity for the more pragmatic elements to try to head off domestic upheaval by abandoning a strategy of “confrontation and resistance” for a deal with the US (and the Saudis and Turkey).
@JohnSF:
It’s a rebellion of otherwise warring factions to depose Assad. Typically, if successful, such rebellions wind up fighting each other for control in a series of civil wars, and/or partitioning into several new states.
I can’t eagerly damn the Shia and whatnot for fighting for a multi-confessional Levant. There are no white hats in this that I can see. The Saudis? A monarchy that seeks to eliminate all other forms of Islam. Antithetical to the morals we supposedly stand for, but they do have a lot of oil…
@dazedandconfused:
The Alawites are only “Shia” out of convenience; were they in Iran, they’d have the Pasdaran stomping them non-stop.
I’ve said it before: trying to impose an Assad dynasty Alawite ascendancy on Syria was never going to work in the longer run. It’s just been accelerated by the power collapse of their various allies.
Combined with the the HTS (under Turkish tutelage) adopting a more conciliatory stance re other actors.
The end product may well be a “cantonized” Syria, and none the worse for that.
And the regime was never an inclusive alliance: it was the Assad clan dominating the Alawites (NOT the Shia), and that in turn being able to sell itself as effective allies to the IRG and Russia, crushing all opponents by mass slaughter, and getting the smaller groups to align with the winner to avoid being crushed between ISIS-as-was, and the regime (or in practice, the IRG/Hezbollah plus Russian bombing)
@JohnSF: Just for the record, people other than MAGAts thinking that Trump was obviously an idiot has had little apparent impact on his idiocy.
I await the torrent of counterfactual post hoc examples of why I’m wrong.
@JohnSF: Provided that a “more pragmatic [element]” is available, yes this could happen. Just be careful about trusting a guy who brags about his ability to create fictional universes do your wishing for you.
According to the WSJ, Brian Thompson and his wife Paulette had been separated for years and were living apart.
@Charley in Cleveland:
True, but at what point do Biden and Democrats accept that broken-brained pundits and Vichy Libs just don’t get it and need it spelled out in stark terms?
“I will using my executive authority — expanded by the Trumpified Supreme Court — to issue pardons for some individuals on MAGA’s enemies list, starting with Hunter Biden. Convicted felon and terrorism-inciter Trump has pledged to weaponize the FBI and DOJ, using Kash Patel and Pam Bondi for political retribution and lawfare. I take Trump at his word that he will try to deploy the military against what he calls “the enemy within.” In using my presidential pen to safeguard against the Project 2025 revenge tour, I am heeding the warnings of Trump’s first term colleagues like Gen. John Kelly and Gen. Mark Milley, who have warned Trump has fascist tendencies and admired Hitler.”
This is the sort of plain language statement Dems need to issue, since so many Americans are too lost in their boiling frog era to figure it out themselves.
I have seen reports that Zelensky is saying, “Either we get NATO membership or we start developing nuclear weapons”. Presumably after a treaty.
It’s unclear exactly how long it would take Ukraine to make some nukes, but it’s plausible that they could.
Apparently something like this happend under Nixon with Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Nixon wanted to cut back the military commitment to them, and they responded with, “then we will have to develop a nuclear deterrent”. So he dropped the issue.
I don’t know how this will affect Trump who hates all those people telling him what to do.
Sorry, can’t quite see the connection.
I think the Biden admin policy on Ukraine was better than leaving it to swing in the wind, but could, nonetheless, have been more forceful, without running foolish risks like a “no fly zone” or troops on the ground.
What that has to do with Trump being a venal and egotistical fool, and most of his circle either idiot ideologues, or for sale to the highest bidder, slips past me.
The Biden administration were neither fools, exactly, nor corrupt.
But they trapped themselves into a paradigm of “foreign policy as rational messaging”, not as daft as Mearsheimer-style paleo-con “realism”, but preferring diplomatic “signalling” to enabling maximum military power for Ukraine.
@CSK:
If this was a disgruntled customer, as the shell casing etchings seem to indicate, I’ll surprised if they find Thompson’s killer alive.
If the etchings on the shell casings were a misdirection to hide a personal hit, that’s a bit on-the-nose.
@JohnSF: Well, in 2024 we have the advantage of hindsight knowing that the lower-intensity signals had little effect. Also, Putin has spent an enormous amount of resources this year for very, very little territory (in terms of percentage of the Ukraine’s square mileage).
@just nutha:
Iran is not a stable state.
The fairly recent mass demonstrations displayed that plainly enough.
As do the evident disputes within the regime between Pasdaran jihadi mahdist headbangers, Islamic law absolutists, and those who think providing the Iranian people with a decent life is a better option to avoid uprisings.
An external overthrow is a foolish goal: a negotiation under pressure of events and economics (and a background threat of war) is not.
It has to remembered: hostility to the US was a choice of Khomeini and his successors, not based either on doctrine, or on any consistent attempt by the US to crush the Islamic Republic by force.
Many Iranians simply cannot see any point in that stance, or in sacrificing their well-being and security for the Arabs, who Iranians tend, quite often, and with a long historic basis, to not be overly fond of.
@JohnSF: I agree NATO has been far too timid in backing Ukraine, but only to the extent I believe NATO wants Ukraine to win.
But why assume NATO’s military-industrial complex actually cares about Ukrainians and whether they succeed?
If the goal is merely to keep NATO’s hands as clean as possible while juicing Western defense economies and seeing Russia bogged down in a quagmire — endlessly draining its military, power, finances, and credibility — then how Biden, Scholz, and the rest have played it makes sense.
That second strategy is immoral, but not everyone is a proud moralist like me, especially these days. I get it in terms of ruthless realpolitik. And when you see how Russia being distracted and drained in Ukraine has alternately weakened and exposed the scumsucking leaders of Iran and Syria by proxy, then Biden’s hesitation looks like the kind of 3D-chess IR masterclass we were told was Putin’s wheelhouse.
I still would rather see Putin totally and fully humiliated in and driven out of Ukraine, but I respect the case for strategic restraint despite its icky, amoral, selfish implications.
@Jay L Gischer:
A lot of people said at the time, the US administrations obsession with signalling and melioration, and pandering to Berlin’s spooked-horse act, was entrenching self-deterrence.
And dangerously inviting Russia to play “crazy Ivan” to take advantage of that.
To say we could not have moved then, because we did not know then that we could, would argue for never having moved at all.
Russia has indeed bled out massively over the past two years.
But so has Ukraine, to a degree that could likely have been reduced significantly had the supplies gone to max from day 1.
It would still be an attritional slogging match, but in such maximising enemy attrition asap is probably the most sensible course.
@DK:
Is it? We want to stop Russian expansion, and not start WW3 at the same time. And we have to bring some of the laggards in the EU and NATO along with us. It’s a fine balancing line of what is the most that we can do without making things worse or making our most weak kneed allies start opposing.
If you’re a deontologist, that might be immoral, but as soon as you mix in even a little bit of consequentialism it’s entirely defendable.
@JohnSF: Assad is a Baathist. Toleration of all sects is one of their calling cards. You damn the Alawites. Why? They are the most like ourselves of any sect of Islam.
Hell Week season just kicked off. I’ll be posting irregularly. I apologize in advance, as sometimes I won’t be able to answer comments to my postings here.
@Jay L Gischer:
A quick search indicates Ukraine doesn’t have breeder reactors. You need these to make plutonium. They could set up uranium enrichment centers, these use the centrifuges one hears so much about in connection with nukes, to separate the very rare U235 isotope needed for nukes.
The problem is one of time. It takes time to build breeder reactors or enrichment plants. Then there’s the design for the weapons and the assembly site(s), building of the latter, making the weapons and testing them. Then you need a means of delivering them* (missiles or planes pretty much).
The theory on how to make a nuke is generally known. the engineering details are not.
I’m saying it’s the work of years, maybe a decade or two.
*Unless you want to make a backyard nuke. This is one so powerful that setting it off destroys the whole world. You don’t need a delivery system, because it would already be on the planet. I’m not sure it’s even possible.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m withholding my thoughts and prayers on the dearly departed CEO, having determined the incident occurred outside of the proper network.
@Gustopher:
It is. I doubt NATO’s leaders have intel indicating either that sending Ukraine the full monty would start WW3, or that Russia and its allies have any desire or ability to so engage.
The “WW3” talking point is usually Russian propaganda designed to mobilize Western opinion against helping Ukraine. Hence why it’s frequently and uncritically repeated by Russian asset MAGA propagandists like Carlson, Greenwald, Rogan, and Musk.
For nearly three years we were assured we absolutely could not greenlight Ukrainian strikes on legitimate military targets inside Russia “Because WW3.” Well, in the past month, with Putin-puppet Trump returning, we finally reneged.
Where’s WW3 at?
Oh.
Dear Mr. Brian Thompson,
Following a careful review of the claim you submitted for emergency services on December 4, 2024, you are rejected for coverage because you failed to obtain prior authorization before seeking care for the gunshot wound to your chest.
If you would like to appeal our decision, please call 1-800-555-1234 with case # 123456789P to initiate a peer to peer discussion within 48 hours of the fatal gun shot.
I have thoughts and prayers for UHC.
The problem is really the culture of rich people, and we shouldn’t waste police time investigating this case. Surely he had it coming, and maybe we can pin the blame on any of the various criminals he hangs out with.
Note that in addition to being a CEO of basically the most brazen healthcare insurance company, he was being investigated for insider trading.. plenty of reason to think someone else in the scheme may have believed Thompson was in the process of ratting them out.
@JohnSF: Forgive my obliqueness. DJT DGAFF about what people who are not him think. About anything but especially about his intelligence. “[L]eaving Trump look[ing] an obvious total idiot if he shafted Kyiv” would not have deterred him for even as much as a nanosecond. He “knows” how to bring peace to the region. Americans know his plan, and voted for it. Why does he need to care about what anyone thinks regardless of what Biden did or didn’t do?
@JohnSF: I await the arrival of the radical moderates to drag the country to a deal with breathless anticipation. But I suspect that I will collapse into unconsciousness and return to breathing by reflex before they arrive.
178/106 blood pressure…..I think I need to get this machine checked at our local clinic. It was my Dad’s. Surely that can’t be right. I’m only 49.
@Jax: IANAD, but that is dangerous territory. I’d suggest getting a checkup if you haven’t done so recently. Are you abnormally stressed at the moment? (I recall you’ve gone through a hard time, but that top number … !)
Just of note, my home blood pressure device tends to read lower than the one at the doc’s.
@Franklin: I went last week for my yearly checkup, and it was 152/100 at the clinic, they wanted me to keep checking it, so I went and dug Dad’s out. Surely that’s wrong, though. The machine must be out of whack.
@Jay L Gischer:
I don’t believe mutual defense treaties are worth the paper they’re printed on so long as Trump is in the WH. A malignant narcissist with deep insecurity has zero reason to take even the smallest risk for anyone other than himself. Give the spotlight over to mere soldiers? Not our Donny. There is no article 5 under Trump.
Ukraine should absolutely build nukes if they can. So should Poland, South Korea, Japan, Germany (God help us) and Taiwan – if they could do it very quickly and very secretly.
@dazedandconfused:
Assad is a Baathist only by courtesy and heritage; if you think he has any political ideals beyond the rule of the Assad clan and making money off the captagon trade, I have a pile of rubble formerly called Raqqa to sell you.
I have never “damned the Alawites”. They are are a rather tolerant branch of Islam, albeit so divergent that, like the Druze, a lot of “mainstream” Sunni and Shia consider them outside the ummah or “community of Islam”. There is nothing, from my pov, essentially problematic about them.
What is a problem is their current position as a ruling minority in Syria, and being the power-base of the Assad rule.
Which itself derives from their history of persecution, their co-optation by the French in the 1920’s as key allies, their post-1945 eclipse and their return to dominance in a coup in 1966, exploiting the splits of the Sunnis and others between the Baathists, Ikhwanites, etc.
And then became captured by the Assad clan, and its allies who leveraged positions in the secret police, security forces, and military elite units into complete state capture.
At the same time acting like a mafia family.
It’s not, at core, the Alawites that are the key wreckers of Syria: it’s the Assad family and its allies.
A minority dominance is not necessarily a fatal problem for a state. It is when the state concerned devolves into a rather brutal police state, dedicated to enriching the ruling elite via corruption, smuggling, and drugs production on an industrial scale, and using external allies for support, in return for serving the policy goals of those allies:
Pasadrani dreams of regional ascendancy via confrontation with Israel, and Russian desire for a Mediterranean base, and to poke the Americans in the eye by whatever means may be to hand.
The Assadites could perhaps have continue to rule, had they moderated their appetites and arrogance.
But their brutal intolerance of dissent and utterly self-serving approach to power has made them loathed.
@just nutha:
They don’t have to be moderate, just relatively pragmatic.
Most people are, given the incentives.
The dominance of power by fanatics is not the norm in most states over most time.
Pezeshkian, and a lot of other “civil” politician seems inclined to prioritise the economy (which is a bad way) and widespread desire for a decent standard of living, and less repression by the “Guidance Patrols”.
There is a route to a deal; war is not an inevitability.
@Kathy: Here’s my source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HB-zbWDXLo
Will Spaniel is a professor – I think of poli sci, though maybe international relations, something like that.
Getting nukes for Ukraine won’t be easy or quick, but one can’t say it’s impossible, either.
So Biden DOJ is tougher on the police? No consent decree for the city of Memphis.