acrashb

I know, but the subtlety of this reaction is important to grasp.

Well the issue is that this war is definitely of the old way, slow and grinding with sharp pulses.  Analysis needs phenomena to unpack and evaluate.  From that one can test assumptions and theories, or synthesize new ones. We only see a limited amount of actual new phenomena.  
We see lots of tweets of tanks getting blown up, or arty or aircraft or infantry but these are all tactical vignettes.  Sometimes these vignettes yield an insight but often they are just snapshots.  Russian bashing makes people feel better in a pretty uncertain time, so it is bound to happen.  In a bizarro world in Russia there probably is a small wargame company forum filled with people Ukraine/West bashing.
One thing that is becoming troubling is the lack of movement at Kherson.  UA is still projecting corrosive warfare on the Russian operational system but that system, though falling back, is still holding.  The theory was that fog-eating-snow would erode the RA forces on the wrong side of the river until they collapsed, much as they had done elsewhere, but that still has not fully developed.  I think we said that end-Oct the weather turns against the attacker, maybe early Nov.  So the UA might have 2-3 weeks to make gains, or at least gains that do not cost too much?  
Not sure what is happening but it is possible that ISR and precision are not enough, or maybe they need more precision mass.  Possibly not enough heavy mass, although we have seen little of that utility outside of Kharkiv.  Or maybe these things just take more time and the RA will fully collapse next week.  Either way if the RA can hold then we likely have to revisit the underlying theories and assumptions.  
All of this will take more solid data, and until we have that…well not much to do but wait.

Directly from the Hill article (Brookings is a liberal think tank BTW):
"Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, said “it will be fascinating to watch” the debate over Ukraine assistance play out among Republicans.
He warned that McCarthy needs to be careful so that he doesn’t come across as inadvertently helping Putin.  
“I have a hard time believing that deep down, McCarthy and most Trump Republicans really will want to be seen as the folks that prevent Ukraine from staying afloat as a country,” he wrote in an email to The Hill. “The political perils of actually helping Putin win would be enormous — to say nothing of the ethical downsides.” "
Like I said a couple of days ago, no one wants to be on the losing side of this once in a life time geopolitical issue. Unless a political figure can be proven to be on Putin's payroll (maybe there are a very a few on either side), then let's stop the "they care about supporting dictators" hyperbole. It will go nowhere. 

Losses can also be indirectly judged by the number of recruits called in to replace the losses. On this occasion, I can say that of all my friends, and these are more than 100 people (aged 30 to 40), only two are currently in the army and both went there voluntarily. On the street, I see a lot of men of military age, that is, no one captures men on the streets and sends them to the army, as was the case in Russia. If the losses of the Ukrainian army were critical, the situation that I observe would be directly opposite.

Nah PEBKAC is the real one.
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/pebkac.htm 

The 'devolution' of the thread is partly inevitable, as net-new news (vs. more pictures of HIMARS) that can be thoughtfully analyzed dries up.  This is a combination of better OPSEC all around, less movement of the front line, and overall 'groundhog day' syndrome.

The last well-analyzed net-new event was the Kersch bridge attack.
On top of that, everyone likes to identify with a winner, and much like in high school football games one's emotional state is amplified by cheerleading.

By far the most popular post I have done, "winning" the day with likes, was the long Putin table photoshopped as partly collapsed (Kersch bridge analogue).  Posts where I spend some time and try to add something useful - not nearly as popular.  Others see the same effects and end up posting memes etc.

Avoiding group-think / echo-chamber is a long-standing problem in business.  "lateral thinking", "paradigm shift", "six hats" - all attempts to breakout of the assumed box.  None have been terribly successful, but I find deliberate "lessons learned" exercises to be helpful, as the facilitator deliberately leads identification and assessment / ranking / actioning of "what went less well" (I avoid negative words like 'failed').  Not sure how to do that on a forum, except to encourage the occasional red-team / emperor has no clothes remark.  Harking back to the "Remember you are mortal" role in ancient Rome, or the court jester's privilege in medieval times.

Volunteers?
So the mobiks have had at least partial success in plugging lines and reducing effectiveness of 'dagger' attacks.  At least I think so.  And if the human cost is terrible, how does that affect the goals of Russian leadership?  Short-term, not at all.  Longer term, it puts more levers into the fracture lines of their society and power structures.
The Ukraine side we can only do educated guesses at.  If we assume that infantry losses have some correlation to equipment losses, the Oryx site provides some indications about how the UA infantry is doing.  Reducing the pace of (land) advance implies either slackened fighting or increased attrition. I think the latter, based on continued loss rates.  For example, the Russian army has, incredibly, lost about 400 tanks in the last six weeks.

The 'devolution' of the thread is partly inevitable, as net-new news (vs. more pictures of HIMARS) that can be thoughtfully analyzed dries up.  This is a combination of better OPSEC all around, less movement of the front line, and overall 'groundhog day' syndrome.

The last well-analyzed net-new event was the Kersch bridge attack.
On top of that, everyone likes to identify with a winner, and much like in high school football games one's emotional state is amplified by cheerleading.

By far the most popular post I have done, "winning" the day with likes, was the long Putin table photoshopped as partly collapsed (Kersch bridge analogue).  Posts where I spend some time and try to add something useful - not nearly as popular.  Others see the same effects and end up posting memes etc.

Avoiding group-think / echo-chamber is a long-standing problem in business.  "lateral thinking", "paradigm shift", "six hats" - all attempts to breakout of the assumed box.  None have been terribly successful, but I find deliberate "lessons learned" exercises to be helpful, as the facilitator deliberately leads identification and assessment / ranking / actioning of "what went less well" (I avoid negative words like 'failed').  Not sure how to do that on a forum, except to encourage the occasional red-team / emperor has no clothes remark.  Harking back to the "Remember you are mortal" role in ancient Rome, or the court jester's privilege in medieval times.

Volunteers?
So the mobiks have had at least partial success in plugging lines and reducing effectiveness of 'dagger' attacks.  At least I think so.  And if the human cost is terrible, how does that affect the goals of Russian leadership?  Short-term, not at all.  Longer term, it puts more levers into the fracture lines of their society and power structures.
The Ukraine side we can only do educated guesses at.  If we assume that infantry losses have some correlation to equipment losses, the Oryx site provides some indications about how the UA infantry is doing.  Reducing the pace of (land) advance implies either slackened fighting or increased attrition. I think the latter, based on continued loss rates.  For example, the Russian army has, incredibly, lost about 400 tanks in the last six weeks.

The 'devolution' of the thread is partly inevitable, as net-new news (vs. more pictures of HIMARS) that can be thoughtfully analyzed dries up.  This is a combination of better OPSEC all around, less movement of the front line, and overall 'groundhog day' syndrome.

The last well-analyzed net-new event was the Kersch bridge attack.
On top of that, everyone likes to identify with a winner, and much like in high school football games one's emotional state is amplified by cheerleading.

By far the most popular post I have done, "winning" the day with likes, was the long Putin table photoshopped as partly collapsed (Kersch bridge analogue).  Posts where I spend some time and try to add something useful - not nearly as popular.  Others see the same effects and end up posting memes etc.

Avoiding group-think / echo-chamber is a long-standing problem in business.  "lateral thinking", "paradigm shift", "six hats" - all attempts to breakout of the assumed box.  None have been terribly successful, but I find deliberate "lessons learned" exercises to be helpful, as the facilitator deliberately leads identification and assessment / ranking / actioning of "what went less well" (I avoid negative words like 'failed').  Not sure how to do that on a forum, except to encourage the occasional red-team / emperor has no clothes remark.  Harking back to the "Remember you are mortal" role in ancient Rome, or the court jester's privilege in medieval times.

Volunteers?
So the mobiks have had at least partial success in plugging lines and reducing effectiveness of 'dagger' attacks.  At least I think so.  And if the human cost is terrible, how does that affect the goals of Russian leadership?  Short-term, not at all.  Longer term, it puts more levers into the fracture lines of their society and power structures.
The Ukraine side we can only do educated guesses at.  If we assume that infantry losses have some correlation to equipment losses, the Oryx site provides some indications about how the UA infantry is doing.  Reducing the pace of (land) advance implies either slackened fighting or increased attrition. I think the latter, based on continued loss rates.  For example, the Russian army has, incredibly, lost about 400 tanks in the last six weeks.

I’m not surprised at all about the possibility of the U.S. House of Representatives flipping in these mid-term elections. In my half century plus of voting in U.S. elections, the party opposite of the President tends to gain more seats in the House. When the President’s party also controls both houses of Congress (the House and Senate), the opposition tends to flip the House. I think U.S. voters as a whole want at least some “balance” in the Legislative Branch so one Party can’t “run roughshod” over the other, and can’t ”run amok” passing legislation that’s either “far left” or ‘far right.”

Finally. Without arty Russians are dead meat.

Finland thinks a wall (mostly fencing) will help.  I wonder if they are anticipating a flood of refugees from a collapsing Russian Federation:
 
 

Shaping the battlefield:
 

Shaping the battlefield:
 

Pretty sure that would be perceived by most of the West to be a WMD use. Possibly China as well, given its vulnerabilities to similar effects.

All is not lost:
 

'Merica.  
Caution: not for the faint of ear and do not turn the sound on at work.
 

All is not lost:
 

Finland thinks a wall (mostly fencing) will help.  I wonder if they are anticipating a flood of refugees from a collapsing Russian Federation:
 
 

Finland thinks a wall (mostly fencing) will help.  I wonder if they are anticipating a flood of refugees from a collapsing Russian Federation:
 
 

'Merica.  
Caution: not for the faint of ear and do not turn the sound on at work.
 

All is not lost:
 

All is not lost:
 

Regarding US politics.

Let's all just remember that what a politician says is not always what they do.

"Read my lips no new taxes"

"If you like your doctor, you can keep them"

This is particularly true during election season.

I am not posting this to start a debate/pissing match over which party said/says/lies most.  Just pointing out some examples from somewhat recent history.

Over the weekend the media has been latching on to this angle:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/10/18/buzz-bombs---what-ukraine-can-learn-from-londons-drone-war-80-years-ago/?sh=5a2d13d77541
" no matter how many Spitfires and AA guns were deployed, not every flying bomb could be brought down. The threat was only ended by bombing the launch sites and by moving forward after D-Day and pushing German forces in France and Belgium back out of range."

You could try to be optimistic and happy about what @danfrodo and @Billy Ringo said above and stop trying to drag the topic back down into hateful US politics.   Give it a try.