dan/california

Now we just have to find ~five Republican house members with a spine.

Allow me to ramble about the founders worst mistake, they didn't like political parties, they didn't understand political parties, and they tried their very best to create a system that would preempt the creation of the political parties. they failed utterly and within a decade they were starting /joining political parties en masse. The way the system is supposed to work is that the three branches would zealously check each others power, and this would restrain each of them in turn. It worked better than it probably should have for~250 years because the parties themselves were complicated bottom up organizations that had a broad diversity of opinion in each of them. the only real exception to that was slavery, and well that one got heated. But with that unfortunate exception there enough overlap in the opinion spectrum of each party to create a working middle ground and exclude the fire eaters and nutcases on both sides of the spectrum. Throw in an elite press/culture/establishment that excluded truly unsuitable candidates without being terribly obvious about it, and the worst case U.S. Governments were not terrible. So the internet, gerrymanders calculated on supercomputers, geographic sorting by political opinion, and party primaries that tend to draw only the most motivated voters have combined to mostly break the system. The parties are now one hundred percent sorted. The most liberal Republicn is well to the right of the most conservative democrat and vice versa. Furthermore the primary voting base, especially on the Republican side is extremely willingto punish any hint of comprimise. The last factor that makes all of this worse id that the country is very close to a fifty fifty split, so each party is permantly convinced it can out right win the next elction and not have to comprimise. It is a mess. Steve did a better explanation of the primary part a week or two ago BTW. Edit: the point I am actually trying to make is members of the Presidents own party in Congress are completely unwilling to hold that President accountable, so the biggest and most important check has become all but null and void.

If you were announce a Civil War game a lot of the excess energy would wander over there, just saying. edit: I am guaranteed pre order for that FYI.

the interview didn't fail because Tucker Carlson is an incompetent propagandist, it failed because Putin is incapable of taking advice or direction, and NOBODY can make him

Jack Watling's book makes a very strong case for open country and urban warfare being extremely different. To the extent that they should be conducted by completely different units with completely different TO&Es. Open country should focus HEAVILY on ISR and fires. Large urban areas require huge quantities of well trained heavy infantry, and short range firepower. He does mention that this is extremely expensive, but so is losing. It is worth pointing out that even in Ukraine we haven't seen heavy fighting in the heart of a truly large city. In Kyiv the Russians didn't get that far, and most of the places in the East that have seen heavy fighting have had populations in range of tens of thousands. There are a lot of places around the the planet where things could get extremely contested that involve cites with populations well into the millions. I don't think we have really wrapped our minds around how ugly that could be. U.S. President has enough control over the armed forces to lose a war if he sets his mind to it. Unfortunately The nutcase faction of the Republican party is making extensive plans to eliminate the guard rails that made Trump's first term merely unpleasant instead of disastrous. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/11/us/politics/trump-nato.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/us/politics/trump-2025-overview.html?searchResultPosition=10 A second term would be much worse, perhaps orders of magnitude worse.

The_Capt requested we bring reciepts, you seem to have shown up with half a library's worth. Just outstanding.

Tuberville is such a rube I am honestly not sure if understands he is working for the Russians. Edit: Forgive me for adding something quite a bit later, but this is the rational place to put this. I have just realized the other thing that happened with Tuberville, There was was IMHO a right ring communication plan and talking points in place before the Putin interview to lean into Putin's attempt to undercut Western support. Carlson has more than enough MAGA connections to at least attempt something like that. I suspect many people who were cued up to say things in the same general vein as Tuberville realized the interview had been a complete failure and had the sense to simply throw the planned remarks un the trash. Tuberville, being Tuberville simply barged ahead regardless. The man would make an excellent Russian general.

This photo has never been explained, but this photo explains everything.

When the guy that owns and operates the platform is on your(Putin's) side, it is truly amazing how good your reviews can be.

THIS!

It is much worse than that, the right wing has been selling this fantasy that Putin cares deeply about the same things as an enthusiastic Fox News viewer. Putin just shredded that in in his own words. Anybody who watches this interview is wondering what PLANET Putin is from, and how can he possibly be in charge of anything. This result is so contrary to the conventional wisdom that it requires extraordinary proof. The other thing I haven't had time to work through though, is does his sample include any battles where the attempt to take the city failed? The only battles that come to mind are from Ukraine, but they might REALLY move the numbers. It seems quite possible to me that to extent that this data holds it is because no sane commander attempts to take a city unless he has overwhelming force available to do it with. The times it has been tried without massive overmatch seem a lot like sticking sensitive bits in a meat grinder.

My opinion of Carlson is unprintable, but he would have helped Putin do a vastly better job of this if he had been asked/allowed. The boring and idiotic rant Putin just subjected everyone on too was his own world view, in agonizing detail. Putin's problem is dictators syndrome, it has been so long since anyone was willing to give him honest advice, much less criticism, that he probably thinks he was fascinating for the whole multi hour spiel. This is of course also how he wound up launching a completely unnecessary war with grossly inadequate forces, lousy logistics, and one of the worst plans in human history. Edit: ...in the mud season.

It was me. One of the greater outbreaks of sanity in Pentagon history. The tech has simply left manned helicopters behind. There are smart people working frantically on phased array radars that can tell real sparrows from the carbon fiber version that is coming to kill you, You simply can't hide a full size rotor blades anymore.

The_Capt's line about the collision of certainties comes to mind. Just because it is total bleep doesn't mean they don't believe it. It is probably worth mentioning that the textbooks say that because some pet pseudo historian that Putin likes wrote them. It would fascinating to compare what they say now to what they said in 1985.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ukraine-the-latest/id1612424182?i=1000644777185 Today's Ukraine the latest has deep and nuanced look at the replacement of Zaluzny, I highly recommend it.

This is quite possibly true, but the first shot is the best shot in things like this. Whatever he does in the next one will have less impact simply because the novelty/news factor of simply hearing from him will be gone. Putin had a chance to really present/reset his case to the english speaking world. His most quotable line was that WW2 was Polands fault. So in addition to wasting a golden opportunity to reframe the war to West at large he ensured that one of Ukraines strongest and most important allies will remain such.

If he is dead? The 22 months he lasted were a gift to Ukraine.

I second this!

Three significant fires in Russia tonight. One of them a LONG way east of Moscow, That one involves a happy combination of a freight train and a gas pipeline Big fire somewhere in Moscow

He was, and Ukraine is lucky that Gerasimov and Shoigu are still in the jobs they are in. Luck is always a factor in war, but what you do with matters.

I would argue that Grant was aggressive, but not careless. His single greatest strength when he took over the Army of the Potomac was the strategic understanding that the Confederates simply could not fight a war of attrition, then he made them fight one. Which they duly lost. This is not irrelevant to Ukraine's situation now. The war in Ukraine is coming down to which side runs out of something truly important first, whether that is fuel, money, men, surface to air missiles, or, or. We have to give Ukraine enough support that they can stay in the fight until Russia finishes breaking itself. If we give them enough support that Russian casualties go from approximately one thousand a day, to three thousand a day, it will end a lot sooner.

Which was a rather large error. But once Grant figured out what was going on he did a fantastic job of not letting a mistake become a disaster. The Confederates on the other hand managed to turn early success into a fiasco that they never really recovered from.

One of the things most obscured by that fog is how much help they are getting from China. I mean it isn't zero, but is it enough to keep them in the field two longer than they would have lasted otherwise?

I have been advocating getting rid of Jake Sullivan for at least a year. His epic foot in mouth Atlantic article right before Oct-7 was the perfect opportunity for him to spend more time with his family, Biden didn't take it. As the podcast with General Breedlove I posted above makes clear, the administration has been scared of its own shadow all the way from the beginning.

I agree that the entire Russian election is pure theater, this heavy handed disqualification is merely an opening act of the play. Having said that it would not be the first time an authoritarian system made a severe miscalculation on something like this. Sometimes when you shove it in peoples face that they are nothing but sheep for the sheering it goes badly wrong. Ceaucescu's last speech being the most optimistic example. The great unhappiness when Putin took the Presidency back form Medvedev is another, although obviously the regime was able to repress that one.