dan/california

Yeah this is going to break the political stalemate. I am just not sure which side wins.

Much the same overall take. But he emphasizes that Israel is going to be extremely heavy handed in its response.

Friedman is deeply flawed, but he has also been reporting on the middle east since like 1975 or so. He has some subject matter expertise. The biggest issue now is how the Israelis handle the hostages. Historically Israel has tied itself in knots to get hostages back. There is also this little issue of who gets the blame, of which there appears to be great deal to go around.

Pretty clearly Hamas has attempted, with at least some success to put more rockets in the air than the Israelis could deal with at one one time. I also think the rockets have been the least serious part of the attack. The successful ground assaults across this kind of broad frontage just shouldn't have been doable. I am wondering if Hamas, or one of it supporters managed a truly large scale successful cyber attack on the Israeli army com system.

Just repeating what I said earlier, The real question here is does it spread beyond Gaza. Regardless of how badly they got caught napping Israel can handle Gaza. If Hezbollah piles in Israel can still handle it, but the disruption is going to be severe. And we are REALLY going to regret not starting new ammo plants a year or more ago if this thing goes completely off the rails. As screwy as it seems, the real definition of a super power is still making half a million rounds a month of 155, and a great deal else, obviously

All of the guests invited on the tour were from noted human rights champions.

Now start increasing munitions production by a factor of at least ten, on top anything already under way. China is already violating Taiwan's air and sea space in every way possible short of war. The general level of chaos might convince Xi now, or soon, is the time to go for it while there are just too many fires happening at once. Nobody thought Putin was this crazy either. Edit: We have let Ukraine go to long, hoping for that perfect, low risk negotiated position. The old red gods may have have a different plan.

Yes, sadly, not rationality is there strong point. I think this is generally correct. My two big questions, was this primarily driven by internal factors in the Gaza strip? Or was it inspired/driven by Iran? Hamas and Iran both have significant reasons to be unhappy about a Saudi/Israeli peace deal among other things. And Iran would certainly like a distraction from the fact that yesterday's Peace Prize winner is in Iran's least pleasant prison. You are generally correct, and I suspect the Israelis are going to reoccupy most or all of the Gaza Strip at least temporarily. On the other hand We have done a tenth of what we should have on things like 155 production, and the Israelis are about to shoot a non trivial amount of it. This will not make supplying Ukraine any easier. SO the big question now is does it stop with the Gaza Strip? Or does Southern Lebanon light off next? Russia and Iran probably didn't plan this, that doesn't mean they won't try to pour gasoline on it. There is a non trivial possibility this thing spreads to the pre existing Syrian mess. Israel invading Syria from the south, at the same moment the Turks invade from the North? Likely, no, a lot more likely than it was yesterday, very most definitely Among other things Iran might decide this is the moment to hold a nuclear test?

He likes it a lot better than a BMP.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deep-state-radio/id1245002955?i=1000630463434 An excellent interview with the head if the IAEA, which i am strongly of the opinion is the ONLY truly international agency that has done its job in Ukraine. If the IAEA Director Rafael Grossi is not the next Secretary General the UN should just close. Plenty of discussion of both Ukraine and Iran.

In the first phase or two of the war, Kyiv and then the first Russian push in the Donbas, Javelins and other missiles were a major component of of the casualties. Dumb artillery rounds probably accounted for most of the rest. Since the lines stabilized, and both side got mines out to restrict lanes of attack, various special artillery rounds, the mines themselves, and drones have done much more of the damage. By special rounds I mean artillery delivered mines, the nifty german round with with the top attack sub munition and Excalibur. there are probably more. Ideally you don't use an unless some leakers make it through everything I just listed, because it reveals your position.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ukraine-the-latest/id1612424182?i=1000630462480 Ukraine the Latest had a conversation about that today in fact. Reporter quoted multiple Ukrainian soldiers from the 47th that said they are alive because of the Bradleys armor, and and other damage control systems. He also said they were very tired, and he thought they were about to rotate out.

I just read the first bit, it seems excellent, and not just because he agrees with me that helicopters are obsolete.

Is there any meaningful unclassified information about Russian permissive action links? How hard would it be for the new warlord of greater Perm to actually use an intact weapon? Instead of having pull three or four of them apart to rig up a crude Hiroshima type bomb? This might be a really important question.

The notable part is that maybe one of these implies Russia will not be hell on earth to live in for the next fifty or a hundred years. Any rational person still in Moscow would be buying a plane ticket before he finished the summary.

To a very large extent the job of being running anything bigger than a medium sized company, much less something as complicated as the U.S. government, is to present well, hire well, and pray you handle the curve balls well. Biden has has handled the hiring, and the curveballs as well as anyone could have, over all. He has been a little weak on the presentation side, but I am hoping he he hits a better stride as the general election effectively starts six months early. A lot of leaders at of all ages, and in a great many fields make the fundamental energy=productivity mistake. The one I understand the least is Wall Streets obsession with working beyond crazy hours. People just don't make good decisions at the end of eighty or ninety hour weeks. Soldiers wind up doing it because war is an endurance sport, and nobody ever starts with enough of anything. For a more or less steady state business though it has always struck me as just completely nuts.

No good deed goes unpunished, my vote for a title would be that "Our Robots Need Maximum Jointness.". Edit: Only sort of kidding. Thank you for reminding me that this is actually out.

There are five driving factors in U.S. politics right now. The first is that the balance is is close to even between the parties. The second is the coalitions are extremely locked in, very few people actually switch sides from election to election. The winner is determined by marginal turnout differential, not anybody switching sides. Third, as The_Capt detailed exquisitely yesterday, being able to pick your own social media effectively becomes the ability to pick your own facts/reality which makes side switching even less likely. Fourth is that less locked in, less motivated voters who matter enormously at the margin just don't pay much attention to politics at all, which makes them unpredictable. Fifth and last is that the recent Supreme court decision to rip open an abortion debate most of the country thought was settled has confounded most of the first four things I just wrote. The many trillion dollar question is by how much? Obviously i am trying to jam a book into a paragraph here, I hope it is somewhat useful.

This exactly, pretend it never happened. Trust was perhaps the wrong word. The U.S.-Turkey relationship is built on the basis that that we both dislike Russia, and Iran, more than we dislike each other. Indeed Erdogan was in The Caucuses this week trying to tighten the squeeze on Armenia and thumb his nose at Iran. He is pushing a corridor through Armenia from Turkey to Azerbaijan. Iran is less than enthusiastic, nobody seems to actually care what the Armenians think. The Russians are obviously a little busy. The Armenians have crap choices in both friends and neighborhoods.

In another Mid-east complication, and perhaps a more significant one for Ukraine, The U.S. and Turkey are either having major trust issues, or major deconfliction issues. U.S. clearly did not want that drone overhead. Article goes on to imply it was some Turkish intelligence agency. Maybe everyone involved will be smart enough too declare it was an accident, even if it maybe wasn't.

Te best sentence Upton Sinclair ever wrote "You cannot get a man to understand something when his salary depends on is not understanding it".

The first half of this podcast is as good a summary as will get of the current state of the process to pick a new speaker. I don't think it is meanigfully different fro what I posted above, but it has more details.

Unless people start putting up confirmed lists of supporters, we will have know idea until next week. Someone basically has to round up all but ~5 republicans, or get some Democratic support. No R is going to ask for democratic support unless he has exhausted all of his other options. Edit: There are approximately fifteen Rs who are from districts Biden won and is quite likely to win again. They can't vote for Gym Jordan, and be back for the next Congress, and I think most of them know that. To repeat, we have no clue...

It was a bad plan in a great many ways, to many axis of attack, no unified command, not nearly enough men or supplies if real resistance was encountered. The fact that the timing was lousy is just one more bad choice in a hole catalogue of them. The whole mess assumed an at least semi successful coup, that never really came close to starting, much less succeeding. Putin rolled the tanks anyway, and here we are. Even the initial success in the the south didn't accomplish nearly what it should have because their just weren't enough troops to from a decently manned continuous front and follow up on the initial victories. There was also a self licking ice dream cone of intelligence failures. We were reading the Russians mail in real time, the Russians thought they would on Kyiv in three days, a week in the worst case scenario. Western intelligence agencies broadcast the Russian plan far and wide, but they basically agreed Ukraine would fall almost instantly. So Putin's senior people went back to him and said, "Boss, even the CIA thinks our plan will work". It didn't...

If these laser systems work? They should rolling out of the factory, and on to a plane headed for Ukraine. Whatever level of deep strike the Russians have seems to be based on drone reconnaissance. These systems seem to kill drones rather well, SO SEND THEM.