Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
They had a Tu-22M3 bomber plane crash on takeoff last night as well. The Soviets had a couple of hundred of these 40 years ago, but God knows how many remain serviceable today - obviously not that one.
I’ve got my hopes up a few times in this war, and my wife is in Ukraine at the moment, but I’m not sure I’ve been more confident than this week, that Ukraine will prevail and quickly.
Russia now looks like they have nothing serviceable of note left in their military.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Minnesota is more of a swing state than Ohio.
It isn't, Minnesota has voted Democrat at every presidential election since 1976. Ohio voted for Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton twice and Obama twice over the same timeframe even if it voted for Trump last time.
Biden won Minnesota by 7% in 2020 which was only fractionally less than the 8% Trump won Ohio by
The Cook PVI for Minnesota is D+1, and for Ohio it is R+6.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Vance brings an understanding of the working class, of success through adversity, of the importance of family.
He has the backstory of a modern Abraham Lincoln, of the supposed 'American dream' personified.
Unfortunately Vance is a bit odd and has picked up some extreme views along the way - unsurprisingly with his traumatic background.
So why weren't these oddities and extreme views picked up on during the selection process ?
My theory is that Don Jnr and Vance have some sort of bromance based upon family issues - Vance had a difficult upbringing and having Trump as your father might not have been easy.
I'm not sure about Vance and the working class.
His characteristics are that he has changed his name and presentation a number of times, has turned his views 180 when it is necessary to get ahead, his accounts are highly questionable, and he got into higher end politics by making himself a billionaire's bitch - which he is still. Since then the weird obsessions have come out.
I think the working class USA place some value on consistency and - to borrow a word - normalcy. That is not Vance.
...So, I make Harris the very narrow favourite. I think this race comes down to women's turnout: women are (a) much less likely to be Trump fans, and (b) much more concerned about abortion rights. And abortion is literally on the ballot in Florida and Arizona. If those voters come out to express their concern about abortion bans, then Trump is in real trouble. If Trump keeps the story on the economy and immigration, and he manages to keep discussion away from abortion, then he stands a good chance of winning.
Does he really win on the economy ? The Biden Harris administration can point to some pretty decent economic figures; inflation is falling; and there's likely to be at least one interest rate cut before November, possibly two. Trump's offering is, putting it generously, incoherent. And his tariff proposals plain nuts.
Economic reality matters less than economic perceptions.
The determinant isn't how well the national economy is doing but how well individual voter's think they are doing compared to how well they think they deserve to be doing.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
I think the last has also been apparent by how much Orban and other Russian sympathisers have been calling for a ceasefire.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
I'm not getting ahead of myself; there's still a non-negligible chance that this move into Kursk was a terrible strategic decision for Ukraine. Much depends on what the aim(s) of this attack are, and I have no idea which of the options are foremost in the Ukrainian leadership's minds.
As for the sizes; AIUI Ukraine have, in less than a week, captured more terrain than Russia have in the entirety of this year. And they still appear to be advancing.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
Ideally the entire 'lawfare' thing needs to be dialled down/de-escalated somehow.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Minnesota is more of a swing state than Ohio.
It isn't, Minnesota has voted Democrat at every presidential election since 1976. Ohio voted for Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton twice and Obama twice over the same timeframe even if it voted for Trump last time
Ohio had voted for every winning candidate since 1960 until it didn't. (And only twice in all the twentieth century did it vote for the losing candidate - 1944 and 1960.)
Things can change. Just as Kensington used to be the safest Conservative seat in the country just 20 years ago and is now a safe Labour seat.
Kensington is no longer a safe Tory seat but it is still certainly a swing seat not safe Labour. Indeed Kensington and Bayswater is now only the 76th Conservative target seat so the Tories could win it back from Labour even if Labour still won a clear majority nationally https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/conservative
Ohio is also still a swing state just one that is particularly pro Trump relative to say Romney or McCain when they were GOP nominees and it voted for Obama
Swing states don't tend to go to the losing candidate, let alone the losing candidate by 8%.
Ohio used to be a swing state, it might be again in the future, but currently its safe GOP.
It is reasonably safe for Trump, not necessarily for the GOP.
Just as Mansfield or Grimsby were reasonably safe for Boris not necessarily for the Tories and now both have Labour MPs again since Boris left
Right - it is safe for Trump. So in the context of who Trump picks as VP nominee it is less of a swing state than Minnesota for the presidential election. If Trump is replaced as GOP candidate then Ohio might, who knows, probably not, become more of a swing state than Minnesota. But Trump IS still the GOP nominee so in fact Ohio is less of a swing state than Minnesota - until polling says otherwise!
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
And of course Russia does still have its nukes, and the more that Ukraine pushes into Russia (using US, UK, German, etc. weaponry), the more justification it can claim for using them. If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
The Russians may be being denuded, its not clear that Ukraine are.
Ukraine may have limited supplies of people, but they are getting supplies of munitions, tanks etc from around the globe.
While Russia acts as if it has a limitless supply of people but actually has an acute demographic crunch of its own and is sending its people into a meat grinder.
In long wars its logistics that wins wars, and Ukraine has the superior logistics.
Ukraine still isn't receiving enough artillery ammunition. Most casualties in this war have been from artillery.
This is why Ukraine are still being forced to retreat in Donetsk.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
Ideally the entire 'lawfare' thing needs to be dialled down/de-escalated somehow.
That would be good.
They could maybe start by ditching convicted criminals from the political tickets?
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
Trump ultimately picked Vance to double down on his Maga message and take it through to 2028 if he wins given he could not run again anyway. Vance also represents what was a swing state, Ohio, which even though it has voted for Trump twice also voted for Obama twice.
Ohio is no longer a swing state.
Still more of a swing state than Minnesota, albeit Walz was born in Nebraska where Biden won 1 EC vote in 2020
No it isn't more of a swing state than MN.
You can't look at the states winner history. You have to look at the margin, and based on that MN is more of a swing state
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
That list doesn't have "overcharge it too fast" in it !
Overcharge/Overdischarge protection is a function of the BMS not the battery. I don't think there is much that can be done to the battery, in isolation, to inhibit dendrite formation eventually leading to entertaining fires and explosions.
The LFP chemistry is inherently far less prone to dendrite formation, which is one of the reasons for its much higher cycle lifetime than other Li-ion chemistries.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
Ideally the entire 'lawfare' thing needs to be dialled down/de-escalated somehow.
Which is really difficult when prosecutors are directly elected in many places in the US, and the likes of George Soros realised that they can get a lot more of their agenda from funding prosecutors, mayors, and police chiefs, than from funding expensive Senators and Presidents.
...So, I make Harris the very narrow favourite. I think this race comes down to women's turnout: women are (a) much less likely to be Trump fans, and (b) much more concerned about abortion rights. And abortion is literally on the ballot in Florida and Arizona. If those voters come out to express their concern about abortion bans, then Trump is in real trouble. If Trump keeps the story on the economy and immigration, and he manages to keep discussion away from abortion, then he stands a good chance of winning.
Does he really win on the economy ? The Biden Harris administration can point to some pretty decent economic figures; inflation is falling; and there's likely to be at least one interest rate cut before November, possibly two. Trump's offering is, putting it generously, incoherent. And his tariff proposals plain nuts.
Economic reality matters less than economic perceptions.
The determinant isn't how well the national economy is doing but how well individual voter's think they are doing compared to how well they think they deserve to be doing.
"The criminology student's previous convictions include threatening behaviour, drunk and disorderly behaviour, production of cannabis, possession of cocaine and MDMA and breaching a suspended sentence order."
Can't say he isn't studious....
He’s a criminology student, or a criminality student?
As a criminology student he can persuade himself that it is all someone else’s fault.
That list doesn't have "overcharge it too fast" in it !
Overcharge/Overdischarge protection is a function of the BMS not the battery. I don't think there is much that can be done to the battery, in isolation, to inhibit dendrite formation eventually leading to entertaining fires and explosions.
The LFP chemistry is inherently far less prone to dendrite formation, which is one of the reasons for its much higher cycle lifetime than other Li-ion chemistries.
There has also been a considerable amount of work on improving manufacturing and detailed materials composition and finish. Which has had a massive effect on the reliability/safety of higher grade Li-ion batteries. Including reducing dendrite formation, but not exclusive to that issue.
I owed DavidL a response on the OBR discussion yesterday, as this is a rare overlap between things I have a strong opinion on and things I feel qualified to talk about, but my phone died and then I had to do some work. A couple of thoughts - first on the assertion that we will see 2%+ growth this year - that is highly unlikely absent some big data revisions, owing to the weak numbers at the end of last year. You would need to see growth of at least 1.5% q/q in Q3 and Q4 to get to 2% for 2024 as a whole. In the last 20 years outside of Covid the highest quarterly growth rate we've seen is 1.1%. So this is unlikely. Somewhere around 1-1.5% is the more likely number for 2024. The second thing worth saying is that whatever the OBR's near term forecasting record (and fwiw they are actually comparatively good - forecasting is hard) any errors on GDP growth in the next couple of years have little effect on whether the fiscal rules are judged to be met or not. The binding rule is that debt/GDP should be falling in 5 years' time, and the only part of the GDP forecast that has a really big impact on that calculation is the forecast of nominal GDP growth in 5 years. That's basically a forecast of trend growth and inflation and the OBR's forecasts there are similar to other people's. Now you can question whether our fiscal framework - which is centered on this rather odd rule about the debt ratio outside of the current parliament and based on poorly defined fiscal forecasts, which the government typically tries to meet by the narrowest of margins - makes sense. Fwiw I think it doesn't. But the OBR's contribution to the process, namely bringing some transparency and honesty to the forecasts, is undoubtedly, to my mind, a positive one.
That list doesn't have "overcharge it too fast" in it !
Overcharge/Overdischarge protection is a function of the BMS not the battery. I don't think there is much that can be done to the battery, in isolation, to inhibit dendrite formation eventually leading to entertaining fires and explosions.
The LFP chemistry is inherently far less prone to dendrite formation, which is one of the reasons for its much higher cycle lifetime than other Li-ion chemistries.
There has also been a considerable amount of work on improving manufacturing and detailed materials composition and finish. Which has had a massive effect on the reliability/safety of higher grade Li-ion batteries. Including reducing dendrite formation, but not exclusive to that issue.
Is the dendrite formation what makes old batteries bloat and fail?
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken on an intern for the summer in a tech role.
Interns often have issues with their (usually first) interactions with an office-based work environment, but one lass is having more than usual, as she has zero idea how to drive a Windows-style WIMP GUI. It looks as though she has only ever used phones and tablets.
I wonder how common an issues this is?
Perhaps she's a Mac Victim ?
(Good morning everyone.)
A Mac should be fine, interface-wise. It's not too hard to move from a desktop Mac to Windows and vice versa.
The problem is many tablet apps are rather simplified, and the way desktop GUIs work can be rather different. For one thing, the presence of both network and local storage can be much more pronounced on desktop than it is on tablets. Not realising you've saved a file onto the local device, and not onto the network, as an example.
I've had to use Windows for a client project recently - the first time I've ever touched it.
Not difficult, but rather mind-boggling - you have to do what to install apps? Why are there four different control panel systems, each with a completely different look and feel but no clear delineation of responsibilities? If the registry is so damn important, then why isn't there a documented schema? And on and on and on...
So, yeah, it's deeply frustrating, but not actually difficult if you've used MacOS/GNOME/KDE/etc
But if they can make wilfully-obscure mobile apps like Snapchat work, then surely any sort of trad gui ought to be fairly trivial?
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lgov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
200,000 bitching to whoever will listen that they have been evicted from their Russian homes by Ukrainians. There comes a point when even the state apparatus can't close that down and it bursts into the public consciousness.
My first assumption was that they’d just confiscate their phones and ship them to camps in Siberia, but you can’t do that with 200,000 people in one go. 4,000 busses required for a start, which would have been doing other things.
So many Russians are now getting their news from Telegram rather than what’s on the TV.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
What Russian resources?
They can't even manufacture bearings.
They've gone through the Soviet back catalogue of weaponry, Iran's weaponry has been taken and spent, now they're using North Korean weaponry while they're sending their people to the front on motorbikes and unarmored buggies, glorified golf carts.
Its twenty years late, but the Axis of Evil is being denuded all at once.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
As the police only implement the sentences of the court or arrest those who breach existing state or Federal criminal law not do what the President decides on a whim
Second sentence confirmed.
Even the Secret Service are only there to protect the President not arrest others except those directly threatening the President's life. The armed forces in the US swear to uphold the constitution as well as follow the orders of the President
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
They had a Tu-22M3 bomber plane crash on takeoff last night as well. The Soviets had a couple of hundred of these 40 years ago, but God knows how many remain serviceable today - obviously not that one.
I’ve got my hopes up a few times in this war, and my wife is in Ukraine at the moment, but I’m not sure I’ve been more confident than this week, that Ukraine will prevail and quickly.
Russia now looks like they have nothing serviceable of note left in their military.
It does seem that since the last Ukrainian counterattack didn't go to plan, they've really thought through what to do next and it seems that they've drawn their inspiration from Cassius Clay.
It seems that Ukraine have been playing rope-a-dope with Russia for the past year, letting Russia send its forces and weaponry into the Donetsk meat grinder while Ukraine meticulously prepares her counterattack at an exposed and weak point and not where expected.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
And of course Russia does still have its nukes, and the more that Ukraine pushes into Russia (using US, UK, German, etc. weaponry), the more justification it can claim for using them. If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
The US had not already first invaded Mexico I assume in that scenario as Russia first invaded Ukraine
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Minnesota is more of a swing state than Ohio.
It isn't, Minnesota has voted Democrat at every presidential election since 1976. Ohio voted for Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton twice and Obama twice over the same timeframe even if it voted for Trump last time.
Biden won Minnesota by 7% in 2020 which was only fractionally less than the 8% Trump won Ohio by
The Cook PVI for Minnesota is D+1, and for Ohio it is R+6.
Tbf Cook PVI for Pennsylvania is R+2 and if Pennsylvania is the tipping point state it's actually close to halfway between the two.
OTOH current polling has Pennsylvania (and Michigan Wisconsin) not far off the national polling, but Trump seems to be much further ahead in Ohio than Harris is in Minnesota.
If you look at the map, in a close election there are probably more plausible ways flipping Minnesota wins it for Trump than flipping Ohio wins it for Harris. Though both are surely unlikely - in most worlds where Trump wins Minnesota he wins without Minnesota, and in nearly all worlds where Harris wins Ohio she's already won comfortably without Ohio.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lgov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
200,000 bitching to whoever will listen that they have been evicted from their Russian homes by Ukrainians. There comes a point when even the state apparatus can't close that down and it bursts into the public consciousness.
My first assumption was that they’d just confiscate their phones and ship them to camps in Siberia, but you can’t do that with 200,000 people in one go. 4,000 busses required for a start, which would have been doing other things.
So many Russians are now getting their news from Telegram rather than what’s on the TV.
That list doesn't have "overcharge it too fast" in it !
Overcharge/Overdischarge protection is a function of the BMS not the battery. I don't think there is much that can be done to the battery, in isolation, to inhibit dendrite formation eventually leading to entertaining fires and explosions.
The LFP chemistry is inherently far less prone to dendrite formation, which is one of the reasons for its much higher cycle lifetime than other Li-ion chemistries.
There has also been a considerable amount of work on improving manufacturing and detailed materials composition and finish. Which has had a massive effect on the reliability/safety of higher grade Li-ion batteries. Including reducing dendrite formation, but not exclusive to that issue.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Minnesota is more of a swing state than Ohio.
It isn't, Minnesota has voted Democrat at every presidential election since 1976. Ohio voted for Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton twice and Obama twice over the same timeframe even if it voted for Trump last time
Ohio had voted for every winning candidate since 1960 until it didn't. (And only twice in all the twentieth century did it vote for the losing candidate - 1944 and 1960.)
Things can change. Just as Kensington used to be the safest Conservative seat in the country just 20 years ago and is now a safe Labour seat.
Kensington is no longer a safe Tory seat but it is still certainly a swing seat not safe Labour. Indeed Kensington and Bayswater is now only the 76th Conservative target seat so the Tories could win it back from Labour even if Labour still won a clear majority nationally https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/conservative
Ohio is also still a swing state just one that is particularly pro Trump relative to say Romney or McCain when they were GOP nominees and it voted for Obama
I wonder if the Kensington Seat could be a place for a deal between the Greens and Lib Dems, both of which received just under 7% of the vote? There perhaps won't be a LD-Lab informal deal, looking at the numbers.
There is strange local politics in Kensington, where they give an over-priority to motor vehicle ownership - 60%+ have no motor vehicle, and non motor vehicle users are placed at excessive risk in major streets through actions or inactions of the Borough Council.
At some stage that will come out in the politics via some route.
Her principal qualification, being Trump's largest political donor. I know Trump isn't particularly popular with the military, but this amounts to taking a large and very public dump on them.
Trump: When we gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom… It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor— it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824244644714369470
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
Her principal qualification, being Trump's largest political donor. I know Trump isn't particularly popular with the military, but this amounts to taking a large and very public dump on them.
Trump: When we gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom… It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor— it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824244644714369470
He's completely bonkers.
Trump 2016 would never have insulted the military like this.
Her principal qualification, being Trump's largest political donor. I know Trump isn't particularly popular with the military, but this amounts to taking a large and very public dump on them.
Trump: When we gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom… It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor— it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824244644714369470
This is what I don't get - why Trump dissing military heroes doesn't just immediately finish off his candidacy. I mean what the hell is going on? I get that I high proportion of those getting military medals won't be white and that might annoy Trump because he's a fucking racist, but still, how do his patriotic supporters explain this stuff away? He's got a fair bit of form on this, I guess he just doesn't love America.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
Ukraine has ordered the evacuation of Pokrovsk, a city in the Donetsk Oblast, as Russian forces approach the region.
Russia is also claiming its forces have taken control of Serhiivka, a village in the region
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
They had a Tu-22M3 bomber plane crash on takeoff last night as well. The Soviets had a couple of hundred of these 40 years ago, but God knows how many remain serviceable today - obviously not that one.
I’ve got my hopes up a few times in this war, and my wife is in Ukraine at the moment, but I’m not sure I’ve been more confident than this week, that Ukraine will prevail and quickly.
Russia now looks like they have nothing serviceable of note left in their military.
It does seem that since the last Ukrainian counterattack didn't go to plan, they've really thought through what to do next and it seems that they've drawn their inspiration from Cassius Clay.
It seems that Ukraine have been playing rope-a-dope with Russia for the past year, letting Russia send its forces and weaponry into the Donetsk meat grinder while Ukraine meticulously prepares her counterattack at an exposed and weak point and not where expected.
The other thing is that the poor Russian logistics means that they can't just shift the forces in Donetsk elsewhere, easily. Or even shift the supplies to those forces to supply those around Kursk, probably.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
What Russian resources?
They can't even manufacture bearings.
They've gone through the Soviet back catalogue of weaponry, Iran's weaponry has been taken and spent, now they're using North Korean weaponry while they're sending their people to the front on motorbikes and unarmored buggies, glorified golf carts.
Its twenty years late, but the Axis of Evil is being denuded all at once.
Though the Russians seem to have developed reasonable micro-drone capabilities, which are the innovation of this war. The Donbas is basically a fairly attritional artillery, trench and artillery war that would be recognised by veterans of the Siege of Petersburg.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lgov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
200,000 bitching to whoever will listen that they have been evicted from their Russian homes by Ukrainians. There comes a point when even the state apparatus can't close that down and it bursts into the public consciousness.
My first assumption was that they’d just confiscate their phones and ship them to camps in Siberia, but you can’t do that with 200,000 people in one go. 4,000 busses required for a start, which would have been doing other things.
So many Russians are now getting their news from Telegram rather than what’s on the TV.
Same as everywhere else then.
Sadly, a large number of Russians still get their news from what’s on TV at 9pm.
Mrs Sandpit has had some awful conversations with older relatives in Russia, who have a very different view of what’s happening in Ukraine gleaned from the TV news.
Oh, they’re just trying to get the Nazis out of the Donbas…
Umm, they bombed our house 100km West of Kiev, and now we’re out $5,000 for new windows.
Her principal qualification, being Trump's largest political donor. I know Trump isn't particularly popular with the military, but this amounts to taking a large and very public dump on them.
Trump: When we gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom… It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor— it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824244644714369470
This is what I don't get - why Trump dissing military heroes doesn't just immediately finish off his candidacy. I mean what the hell is going on? I get that I high proportion of those getting military medals won't be white and that might annoy Trump because he's a fucking racist, but still, how do his patriotic supporters explain this stuff away? He's got a fair bit of form on this, I guess he just doesn't love America.
I think it comes down to the fact that for MAGA Republicans owning the libs is more important than anything else. Therefore Trump gets away with running the country and everything else down so long as he looks like he’s owning the libs. The GOP will be utterly screwed if the MAGA spell breaks before the election.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
Ukraine has ordered the evacuation of Pokrovsk, a city in the Donetsk Oblast, as Russian forces approach the region.
Russia is also claiming its forces have taken control of Serhiivka, a village in the region
At what cost?
As I said, slowly pulling back as your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions can be a good strategy. A controlled pullback is better than an uncontrolled one.
That's been one area where Ukraine has consistently outsmarted Russia in this war. Russian leaders operate hubristically on a "don't give an inch" basis until they collapse. Ukraine have been willing to pull back at times and push forward at others depending upon what works best for them.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
They had a Tu-22M3 bomber plane crash on takeoff last night as well. The Soviets had a couple of hundred of these 40 years ago, but God knows how many remain serviceable today - obviously not that one.
I’ve got my hopes up a few times in this war, and my wife is in Ukraine at the moment, but I’m not sure I’ve been more confident than this week, that Ukraine will prevail and quickly.
Russia now looks like they have nothing serviceable of note left in their military.
It does seem that since the last Ukrainian counterattack didn't go to plan, they've really thought through what to do next and it seems that they've drawn their inspiration from Cassius Clay.
It seems that Ukraine have been playing rope-a-dope with Russia for the past year, letting Russia send its forces and weaponry into the Donetsk meat grinder while Ukraine meticulously prepares her counterattack at an exposed and weak point and not where expected.
The other thing is that the poor Russian logistics means that they can't just shift the forces in Donetsk elsewhere, easily. Or even shift the supplies to those forces to supply those around Kursk, probably.
Indeed.
The weakening of the forces in Donbas won't happen overnight as those who are there will largely remain there, the bigger weakness is what happens next?
If new supplies need to go to Kursk, then the troops in Donbas are going to find themselves weak and isolated.
If no supplies go to Kursk, then Russia continues to lose territory to a superior force.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
Her principal qualification, being Trump's largest political donor. I know Trump isn't particularly popular with the military, but this amounts to taking a large and very public dump on them.
Trump: When we gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom… It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor— it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824244644714369470
This is what I don't get - why Trump dissing military heroes doesn't just immediately finish off his candidacy. I mean what the hell is going on? I get that I high proportion of those getting military medals won't be white and that might annoy Trump because he's a fucking racist, but still, how do his patriotic supporters explain this stuff away? He's got a fair bit of form on this, I guess he just doesn't love America.
I think the MAGA base is pretty well at the point that he could stage a public execution at Mar a Lago, and they'd find a way to rationalise it. And the NYT would report it as a campaign pivot.
No suggestion yet that the bridge was actually damaged.
From what I've read on X today the aim is to keep the bridge intact(ish) as long as possible because a large number of Russian air defences are deployed to defend it.
And it's easy to identify their locations by attacking something close by, locate where the defence fires from and then hit those defences..
That’s an interesting theory.
The S400 air defences around the bridge are really rare and expensive to use. Sending large drones or small rockets to the area not only gives the locations away, but also consumes the expensive rockets on cheap targets. They’re designed to be used on enemy aircraft or ICBMs. The really amusing thing is that you can take them out with tiny drones they can’t see on radar!
I don’t see the Ukranians actually having a way of doing any more than minor damage to the bridge from the air, it’s well-built and you can’t deliver tonnes of explosives from above to a single point. The successful attack is going to be either a lorry on the bridge, a boat underneath it, or humans laying explosives.
The security is ridiculously tight after the last truck bomb, and they have border-style lorry scanners on the approaches, so the only way to get a truck bomb on the bridge is going to be some sort of an ambush involving dozens of special forces. Attacking from underneath could be possible with an ambush of drone boats, taking out the defences then following the gaps created to get a drone barge filled with explosives under a pillar. Getting humans to place explosives needs a lot less of the explosives, they can for example use shaped charges aimed at weak points in the same way you’d demolish a building, but the difficulty is getting them close by without detection, possibly some mad SBS/James Bond-style frogman operation from a submarine?
On the Air Defence systems, afaics Russia has far deeper stocks of those relative to the number destroyed than, for example, tanks.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
I assume in this analogy it is a case of USA invaded Mexico first, and now Mexico is counterattacking not invading unprovoked?
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
They had a Tu-22M3 bomber plane crash on takeoff last night as well. The Soviets had a couple of hundred of these 40 years ago, but God knows how many remain serviceable today - obviously not that one.
I’ve got my hopes up a few times in this war, and my wife is in Ukraine at the moment, but I’m not sure I’ve been more confident than this week, that Ukraine will prevail and quickly.
Russia now looks like they have nothing serviceable of note left in their military.
The Russians are also utterly trashing their economy in the process of pursuing this war. One point of note is that Kursk is an economically important part of Russia. The huge disruption there will be adding to the economic pressures.
The Russian dead and injured will shortly exceed 600,000. The number of people fleeing Russia to avoid the conflict - either economically or militarily - exceeds 3 million. The brightest have left. This brain drain will continue to have an impact for decades to come.
The only comfort the Russians can take is that the Ukrainian econmy is in a grim place too. But Ukraine has friends with deep pockets. Russia has "friends" who will price gouge them on the vital supplies they require or sell.
I find it difficult to argue with this thread. The decision on the Edinburgh computing centre just seems to have been a bad one, and they're unwilling to admit outright that it was wrong.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
I assume in this analogy it is a case of USA invaded Mexico first, and now Mexico is counterattacking not invading unprovoked?
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
Ukraine has ordered the evacuation of Pokrovsk, a city in the Donetsk Oblast, as Russian forces approach the region.
Russia is also claiming its forces have taken control of Serhiivka, a village in the region
Those recent captured settlement totals: Russians 2, Ukrainians 78....
I find it difficult to argue with this thread. The decision on the Edinburgh computing centre just seems to have been a bad one, and they're unwilling to admit outright that it was wrong.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking.
Her principal qualification, being Trump's largest political donor. I know Trump isn't particularly popular with the military, but this amounts to taking a large and very public dump on them.
Trump: When we gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom… It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor— it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824244644714369470
He's completely bonkers.
Trump 2016 would never have insulted the military like this.
Though his insults of John McCain, starting in 2015 (He's not a war hero, he's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured, okay? I hate to tell you.) were certainly insulting-the-military-adjacent.
Trump has always been a nasty piece of work. It can get you ahead, which is why he is where he is. But it's a bit like fast bowling, it has to be deadly fast and deadly on-target to be effective. And now he is Old, with a capital O, he has lost a critical bit of pace and accuracy.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
Fresh train strikes have been announced, breaking a peace agreement between the train drivers’ union, Aslef, and the rail industry that lasted less than 48 hours.
Members working for LNER – the government-owned train operator on the East Coast main line – will walk out at weekends from 31 August to 10 November.
The union says the 22 days of planned strikes are in response to “bullying by management and persistent breaking of agreements by the company”.
It is unrelated to the pay dispute that saw three years of strikes by train drivers across England.
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “The continued failure of the company to resolve long-standing industrial relations issues has forced us into this position. We would much rather not be here.
I find it difficult to argue with this thread. The decision on the Edinburgh computing centre just seems to have been a bad one, and they're unwilling to admit outright that it was wrong.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
They had a Tu-22M3 bomber plane crash on takeoff last night as well. The Soviets had a couple of hundred of these 40 years ago, but God knows how many remain serviceable today - obviously not that one.
I’ve got my hopes up a few times in this war, and my wife is in Ukraine at the moment, but I’m not sure I’ve been more confident than this week, that Ukraine will prevail and quickly.
Russia now looks like they have nothing serviceable of note left in their military.
The Russians are also utterly trashing their economy in the process of pursuing this war. One point of note is that Kursk is an economically important part of Russia. The huge disruption there will be adding to the economic pressures.
The Russian dead and injured will shortly exceed 600,000. The number of people fleeing Russia to avoid the conflict - either economically or militarily - exceeds 3 million. The brightest have left. This brain drain will continue to have an impact for decades to come.
The only comfort the Russians can take is that the Ukrainian econmy is in a grim place too. But Ukraine has friends with deep pockets. Russia has "friends" who will price gouge them on the vital supplies they require or sell.
Oh, the brain drain from Russia is totally bonkers, and goes mostly unreported.
Dubai prime property prices have doubled in the past two years, as anyone able to get themselves and their money out of Russia has done so, to anywhere willing to accept them. Plenty of stories out here of Russians trying to buy houses with gold or bitcoin, as their country joins North Korea and Iran on the sanctions list.
There’s billions of dollars of capital fight from the country.
Her principal qualification, being Trump's largest political donor. I know Trump isn't particularly popular with the military, but this amounts to taking a large and very public dump on them.
Trump: When we gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom… It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor— it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824244644714369470
He's completely bonkers.
Trump 2016 would never have insulted the military like this.
(OK, from 2018 but he also accepted a Purple Heart from a vet while on campaign saying he'd always wanted one but he got it 'much easier'. Bizarre thing to say, but I suppose not technically an insult.)
Fresh train strikes have been announced, breaking a peace agreement between the train drivers’ union, Aslef, and the rail industry that lasted less than 48 hours.
Members working for LNER – the government-owned train operator on the East Coast main line – will walk out at weekends from 31 August to 10 November.
The union says the 22 days of planned strikes are in response to “bullying by management and persistent breaking of agreements by the company”.
It is unrelated to the pay dispute that saw three years of strikes by train drivers across England.
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “The continued failure of the company to resolve long-standing industrial relations issues has forced us into this position. We would much rather not be here.
Whelan's got Starmer on the rack and he's cracking the whip now.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
I assume in this analogy it is a case of USA invaded Mexico first, and now Mexico is counterattacking not invading unprovoked?
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
It's not my rabbit hole, yet I am sure there are all kinds of obscure powers that can be used to imprison people with no comeback, or at least no comeback for months and years.
Remember that the Supreme Court ruled that Presidential Immunity extended essentially to including assassination of opponents, because any holding-to-account would in one stage be a political process for Congress, not a legal process for the DOJ / Courts.
For an example of the back door, consider the Project 2025 strategy to declare 10s of thousands of civil servants to be political positions so that the President can just sack them.
It was proposed in 2020 under the title "Schedule F". This time they seem to be serious.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
Sure. My point is a limited one. If the purpose of this invasion was to divert Russian resources to Kursk and away from Donbas, the upshot for now is Ukrainian resources have been diverted and the Russian ones haven't.
I find it difficult to argue with this thread. The decision on the Edinburgh computing centre just seems to have been a bad one, and they're unwilling to admit outright that it was wrong.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking.
One thing the Kursk (& likely Belgorod in time too) offensive does is make the war existential for Russia in a way it previously was only for Ukraine. Unless either Kyiv or Moscow falls, facts on the ground will determine any post settlement ceasefire.
"Vice President Kamala Harris is zeroing in on high food prices as her campaign previews an economic policy speech that she will give in North Carolina on Friday, promising to push for a federal ban on price gouging on groceries.
Harris is putting particular emphasis on rising meat prices, which she says account for a large part of rising grocery bills.
Year-over-year inflation has reached its lowest level in more than three years. But many in the United States are struggling with food prices, which remain 21% above where they were three years ago. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been pointing to inflation as a key failing of the Biden administration and its energy policies."
Fresh train strikes have been announced, breaking a peace agreement between the train drivers’ union, Aslef, and the rail industry that lasted less than 48 hours.
Members working for LNER – the government-owned train operator on the East Coast main line – will walk out at weekends from 31 August to 10 November.
The union says the 22 days of planned strikes are in response to “bullying by management and persistent breaking of agreements by the company”.
It is unrelated to the pay dispute that saw three years of strikes by train drivers across England.
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “The continued failure of the company to resolve long-standing industrial relations issues has forced us into this position. We would much rather not be here.
Whelan's got Starmer on the rack and he's cracking the whip now.
I find it difficult to argue with this thread. The decision on the Edinburgh computing centre just seems to have been a bad one, and they're unwilling to admit outright that it was wrong.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
Sure. My point is a limited one. If the purpose of this invasion was to divert Russian resources to Kursk and away from Donbas, the upshot for now is Ukrainian resources have been diverted and the Russian ones haven't.
Well the Ukranians have just gained more territory in a week, at minimal cost, than the Russians have gained this year at a cost of the lives of 1,000 men per day.
Trump was always going to find having a running mate hard. It required him to think about someone else for a moment or two. He also sent a mob to lynch his previous running mate so not everyone would be up for the job.
Pence at least brought his evangelicals into the tent. I am really not sure what Vance was meant to bring but for Trump to pick someone with such a rich vein of misogyny going back for years seems to have doubled down on a weakness of his own. If I was to point to one single factor that was weighing this race Harris's way it would be the differential on women voters. Its the abortion thing, the misogyny, the pussy grabbing thing, the lack of loyalty to serial spouses, the patronising crap and the gratuitous rudeness handed out to Harris. Its a long list of reasons that is going to alienate a lot of women.
Trump didn't pick Vance to bring anything to the ticket - and the selection was one vetted by his son, and really at the prompting of a handful of billionaire donors.
As much as anything, it was an expression of hubris, rather than electoral calculation.
Yet Harris picked Walz from Minnesota, which has voted Democrat since 1976, over Shapiro from swing state Pennsylvania. Indeed Vance represents Ohio which voted for Obama, so is more of a swing state than Minnesota.
Though Harris will hope Walz has appeal in upper Midwest swing states Wisconsin and Michigan too
Coach Walz appeals across a wide spectrum. If AI was asked to generate a VP pick that would maximise support across the political spectrum, it would be hard pushed to generate something better than Walz.
If an assassin took out President Trump/President Harris, which VP would you want stepping up? No contest. A marginal - but non-trivial - factor in how people will vote.
This may also be a consideration given Trump’s age and the fact he doesn’t look or sound well.
The biggest bonus of Walz really though is his skill in warming up the crowds. You see lots of happy, cheering people behind Harris as she mouths platitudes at a modest pace, and lots of puzzled,bored people behind Trump as he witters on about stolen elections, persecution, massive crowds and sharks.
The contrast is stark. Trump won in 2016 partly because his energy and his backers’ enthusiasm were palpable compared to Clinton, who was dull, controversial and had a few health episodes. Now, the candidate who fits *that* bill is Trump himself.
Plus one is more likely to actually be locked up.
If Trump wins, we can be pretty sure Harris will be locked up.
Unless he has the army behind him to impose a dictatorship highly unlikely unless Harris commits a serious crime
She's already committed one. Calling the Great Leader a fraudster and sexual creep.
And he doesn't need the army, just the courts.
Who are, of course, entirely impartial and not at all throwing out cases for political reasons, or declaring Presidents have immunity because it's June.
The courts aren't just going to jail someone who has committed no crime even if most of the judges are Republicans.
They just need to say in light of whatever the Supreme Court called their nonsense on immunity that they have no power to release her.
That's why it was such a stupid, stupid ruling.
Yes but that would assume a lower court had already convicted her of a criminal offence and jailed her, yet if she had committed no criminal offence in the first place that would not happen anyway.
The President has no constitutional powers to sentence and jail individuals himself, immunity just relates to his own liberty from prosecution
If he is immune from prosecution what is to stop him holding Harris under house arrest and denying any application she is granted for habeus corpus?
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
Well, denying habeas corpus would present severe difficulties.
I wouldn't be impossible though. There is the possibility of the President formally suspending the writ - as has been done several times in US history (though only Lincoln did it without prior authorisation of Congress, and had Congress subsequently approve the decision).
Article 1 s.9 ..The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it...
The illegal migrant "invasion" might provide such a pretext, and who knows how the current Supreme Court would rule on that.
Arrest itself would present no difficulty at all. Either the FBI, or the Secret Service have the legal power of arrest without warrant.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
I assume in this analogy it is a case of USA invaded Mexico first, and now Mexico is counterattacking not invading unprovoked?
What part of "fuck off" don't you get?
Can you stop doing that? It's extremely impolite to someone making perfectly reasonable posts.
I find it difficult to argue with this thread. The decision on the Edinburgh computing centre just seems to have been a bad one, and they're unwilling to admit outright that it was wrong.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking.
Can't say I have been impressed at all by Reeve's start. Been v poor so far.
I've yet to hear Reeves interviewed where she didn't come across as basically clueless. Maybe she's just terrible at speaking in public, and brilliant in reality, but nothing I've heard as yet has dissuaded me from my opinion that she sounds unfit for the job. And this observation goes back years now, it's not something I'm jumping on the bandwagon about, I was making this point a long time ago.
Maybe it will all become clear at the budget, but right now I'm expecting even more mad decisions from the government.
Incidentally on the AI vs HPC distinction that is frankly nonsense. Unless you are going for some AI only parts most systems are both AI and HPC capable given that the same hardware is used if you are buying Nvidia, or AMD, which are the main players. And nobody is likely to sink a huge amount of public money into a bespoke AI accelerator based system, or some niche player. There are dozens of AI hardware vendors mostly doing terribly as nobody wants to be the farm on such kit.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
According to D Dump, they already are invading...
Millions every month. And it's the worst, the WORST, people who are coming. They're saying pretty soon all the jails and asylums in Mexico will be empty. Who could ever imagine such a thing.
And deliberately set things up so the final evacuation which would inevitably be chaotic would only happen after the election.
How can Trump control what Biden's team do 18 months after the inauguration? They had time to organise the withdrawal any way they preferred. Cutting and running was a good idea, the fact that it was a lethal fiasco was on the incumbents.
May 2021 (the date Trump’s withdrawal deal took effect) was four months after the inauguration. The withdrawal as the Taliban took Kabul was August - seven months.
Edit - if you check the dates, you will also find significant troop transfers that had not been planned (amounting to around 75% of US forces) happened in November and December 2020.
Incidentally, the only reason I would disagree that withdrawing was the right idea is because I’ve never understood why some people thought the invasion would be a good idea in the first place.
Biden wanted to celebrate the withdrawal on September 11th 2021, and was pushing everything towards that deadline.
That’s why it ended up being such a mess.
America had failed to win the war and peace after 20 years in the country, that's why it ended up being such a mess.
Withdrawals after being defeated are rarely pleasant.
Still, America's mess in Afghanistan is nothing like the mess that Putin has gotten Russia into in Ukraine - that's a whole another level.
The Ukranians are still advancing into Russia, it’s totally nuts.
The Russians are digging trenches around the railways at Lvov, but the Ukranians now have main battle tanks advancing their positions which don’t care much about trenches.
10 days now, and they’ve been totally unable to throw much more than untrained conscripts at the situation, most of which are now PoWs, because we all would be when confronted with an actual enemy army.
I had first assumed that this was some sort of special forces raid that would go and get something close to the border and then extract themselves, but it’s clearly as much of an invasion as we saw in Feb ‘22, just better organised and with reinforcements coming from behind. Oh, and without the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Meanwhile, there’s now 200,000 evacuees in the wider region, that the Russians have to put somewhere.
One of the Russian cope strategies online was to say: "We're slowly advancing in the east of Ukraine whilst our great armoured fist, complete with T-14s and SU-57s, is being prepared for the knockout blow on Kyiv / Kharkiv / Odessa!!!!"
In other words, that Russia had a large force ready to go into Ukraine once they had denuded Ukraine enough.
I think it's now clear that that was utter copium b/s. The Ukrainians may be being denuded, but the Russians have also been. They don't seem to have a great deal spare.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Ukrainians have captured an area about the size of Berkshire. At the same time, they have lost an area the size of England and Wales combined and they seem to be falling back in the south.
Yes, highly embarrassing for Putin. Makes him look stupid. But it comes with significant risks for Ukraine and it's not wholly clear yet what they expect to get from it, never mind will get.
It may put an end to the idea of a stalemated war, Korea Mark 2. But given Russia's size and resources that may not be to Ukraine's advantage.
Ukraine is doing what it can do, not what it wants to do, with its invasion of Kursk. If they hoped to draw Russian troops from Donbas that aim has failed so far. Russia is prioritising its continuing advance in Ukraine over preventing the loss of its own territory in Kursk.
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
Its too early to say it has failed so far, there are already reports of troops going from Donbas to Kursk, but more importantly there's only a finite amount of troops in Donbas and the rate at which Russia is losing them means they need to be continually refreshed.
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
Sure. My point is a limited one. If the purpose of this invasion was to divert Russian resources to Kursk and away from Donbas, the upshot for now is Ukrainian resources have been diverted and the Russian ones haven't.
I couldn't disagree with you more.
Ukraine isn't sending it elite forces forwards in Donbas, its letting Russia send its troops into the meat grinder and killing them off. So long as Ukraine maintains the ability to grind down what Russia sends at it, then its not diverting its own forces.
And Russia has already sent reinforcements to Kursk (including reinforcements that have already been killed and captured), that's quite potentially already diverting away reinforcements away from Donbas.
Opportunity cost is as real in war as it is in economics and Russia faces that opportunity cost struggle with what to do with reinforcements now. Reinforcements it needs in both places, because Ukraine is successfully grinding down its troops in Donbas, and successfully expanding operations in Kursk.
I find it difficult to argue with this thread. The decision on the Edinburgh computing centre just seems to have been a bad one, and they're unwilling to admit outright that it was wrong.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking.
Fresh train strikes have been announced, breaking a peace agreement between the train drivers’ union, Aslef, and the rail industry that lasted less than 48 hours.
Members working for LNER – the government-owned train operator on the East Coast main line – will walk out at weekends from 31 August to 10 November.
The union says the 22 days of planned strikes are in response to “bullying by management and persistent breaking of agreements by the company”.
It is unrelated to the pay dispute that saw three years of strikes by train drivers across England.
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “The continued failure of the company to resolve long-standing industrial relations issues has forced us into this position. We would much rather not be here.
I am sure the govt will happily roll over to whatever the union demands.
That seems to be how they operate now
All of these strikes called just days after the govt rolled over to all of the ASLEF demands, well that's a happy coincidence.
Expect more of this from Public Sector Unions going forward. The Govt has set out its stall as being walkovers.
Fresh train strikes have been announced, breaking a peace agreement between the train drivers’ union, Aslef, and the rail industry that lasted less than 48 hours.
Members working for LNER – the government-owned train operator on the East Coast main line – will walk out at weekends from 31 August to 10 November.
The union says the 22 days of planned strikes are in response to “bullying by management and persistent breaking of agreements by the company”.
It is unrelated to the pay dispute that saw three years of strikes by train drivers across England.
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “The continued failure of the company to resolve long-standing industrial relations issues has forced us into this position. We would much rather not be here.
Whelan's got Starmer on the rack and he's cracking the whip now.
Who can blame him. People go on about Mick Lynch being a canny operator. He's a boorish Corbynite who eventually folded. On the other hand Mick Whelan is a smart cookie. He knows he has the govt on the rack and he is exerting the pressure.
The only question is when the government cave in, not if they cave in.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
I assume in this analogy it is a case of USA invaded Mexico first, and now Mexico is counterattacking not invading unprovoked?
What part of "fuck off" don't you get?
Can you stop doing that? It's extremely impolite to someone making perfectly reasonable posts.
If it were Mexico pushing into the US with weapons supplied by the Chinese and Russians, how long would it be before they broke out the nukes?
10 minutes and I am not joking.
Seems unlikely, given they could utterly destroy any such force with conventional weapons.
If you can imagine Mexico invading the US then surely your imagination can cope with Mexico winning with conventional weapons!
Er.... no.
So let me get this straight - you're willing to go along with Mexico hypothetically invading the USA, but you draw the line at them having any success as being just too unrealistic?
I assume in this analogy it is a case of USA invaded Mexico first, and now Mexico is counterattacking not invading unprovoked?
What part of "fuck off" don't you get?
Can you stop doing that? It's extremely impolite to someone making perfectly reasonable posts.
Ooh, vigilante modding !!!
Sorry if that breaks some kind of etiquette but it does seem a bit unnecessary
Comments
I don't think you really understand the significance of the idea of keeping elected leaders within the law, any more than the Supreme Court do.
https://x.com/dekunle27/status/1824366515568746723
I’ve got my hopes up a few times in this war, and my wife is in Ukraine at the moment, but I’m not sure I’ve been more confident than this week, that Ukraine will prevail and quickly.
Russia now looks like they have nothing serviceable of note left in their military.
His characteristics are that he has changed his name and presentation a number of times, has turned his views 180 when it is necessary to get ahead, his accounts are highly questionable, and he got into higher end politics by making himself a billionaire's bitch - which he is still. Since then the weird obsessions have come out.
I think the working class USA place some value on consistency and - to borrow a word - normalcy. That is not Vance.
The Government has offered a 15 per cent pay rise over three years'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/14/train-drivers-strikes-labour-starmer-payrise/
The determinant isn't how well the national economy is doing but how well individual voter's think they are doing compared to how well they think they deserve to be doing.
Genius. It works on so many levels...
As for the sizes; AIUI Ukraine have, in less than a week, captured more terrain than Russia have in the entirety of this year. And they still appear to be advancing.
This is why Ukraine are still being forced to retreat in Donetsk.
They could maybe start by ditching convicted criminals from the political tickets?
You can't look at the states winner history. You have to look at the margin, and based on that MN is more of a swing state
https://thepostmillennial.com/revealed-george-soros-uses-army-of-radicalized-government-lawyers-to-tear-apart-the-justice-system
The second thing worth saying is that whatever the OBR's near term forecasting record (and fwiw they are actually comparatively good - forecasting is hard) any errors on GDP growth in the next couple of years have little effect on whether the fiscal rules are judged to be met or not. The binding rule is that debt/GDP should be falling in 5 years' time, and the only part of the GDP forecast that has a really big impact on that calculation is the forecast of nominal GDP growth in 5 years. That's basically a forecast of trend growth and inflation and the OBR's forecasts there are similar to other people's.
Now you can question whether our fiscal framework - which is centered on this rather odd rule about the debt ratio outside of the current parliament and based on poorly defined fiscal forecasts, which the government typically tries to meet by the narrowest of margins - makes sense. Fwiw I think it doesn't. But the OBR's contribution to the process, namely bringing some transparency and honesty to the forecasts, is undoubtedly, to my mind, a positive one.
Not difficult, but rather mind-boggling - you have to do what to install apps? Why are there four different control panel systems, each with a completely different look and feel but no clear delineation of responsibilities? If the registry is so damn important, then why isn't there a documented schema? And on and on and on...
So, yeah, it's deeply frustrating, but not actually difficult if you've used MacOS/GNOME/KDE/etc
But if they can make wilfully-obscure mobile apps like Snapchat work, then surely any sort of trad gui ought to be fairly trivial?
So many Russians are now getting their news from Telegram rather than what’s on the TV.
They can't even manufacture bearings.
They've gone through the Soviet back catalogue of weaponry, Iran's weaponry has been taken and spent, now they're using North Korean weaponry while they're sending their people to the front on motorbikes and unarmored buggies, glorified golf carts.
Its twenty years late, but the Axis of Evil is being denuded all at once.
It seems that Ukraine have been playing rope-a-dope with Russia for the past year, letting Russia send its forces and weaponry into the Donetsk meat grinder while Ukraine meticulously prepares her counterattack at an exposed and weak point and not where expected.
OTOH current polling has Pennsylvania (and Michigan Wisconsin) not far off the national polling, but Trump seems to be much further ahead in Ohio than Harris is in Minnesota.
If you look at the map, in a close election there are probably more plausible ways flipping Minnesota wins it for Trump than flipping Ohio wins it for Harris. Though both are surely unlikely - in most worlds where Trump wins Minnesota he wins without Minnesota, and in nearly all worlds where Harris wins Ohio she's already won comfortably without Ohio.
Similarly with the BMS;
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2024/08/419_380650.html
I think lots of them will say it's shit though
The operation has been a morale booster for Ukraine. This is valuable but as you point out there's a potentially large cost.
There is strange local politics in Kensington, where they give an over-priority to motor vehicle ownership - 60%+ have no motor vehicle, and non motor vehicle users are placed at excessive risk in major streets through actions or inactions of the Borough Council.
At some stage that will come out in the politics via some route.
I know Trump isn't particularly popular with the military, but this amounts to taking a large and very public dump on them.
Trump: When we gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom… It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor— it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824244644714369470
Now Russia has a major headache, does it send new reinforcements to Kursk or to Donbas. If reinforcements go to Kursk instead of Donbas, then even if no troops leave Donbas, that's still weakening Russia in Donbas.
Plus its "advance" in Donbas is minute and costly. Slowly pulling back while your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions in a costly grind can be a good strategy.
Trump 2016 would never have insulted the military like this.
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1823944548403253453
Russian helicopter takes out two armoured vehicles. Two *Russian* armoured vehicles.
Russia is also claiming its forces have taken control of Serhiivka, a village in the region
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824194532390617154
If there really were a liberal press in the US, every headline this morning would have been: This Man is a Moron.
Mrs Sandpit has had some awful conversations with older relatives in Russia, who have a very different view of what’s happening in Ukraine gleaned from the TV news.
Oh, they’re just trying to get the Nazis out of the Donbas…
Umm, they bombed our house 100km West of Kiev, and now we’re out $5,000 for new windows.
In which case, a few tactical nukes probably wouldn't either.
So goodbye Mexico City ?
As I said, slowly pulling back as your enemy loses a lot of troops and munitions can be a good strategy. A controlled pullback is better than an uncontrolled one.
That's been one area where Ukraine has consistently outsmarted Russia in this war. Russian leaders operate hubristically on a "don't give an inch" basis until they collapse. Ukraine have been willing to pull back at times and push forward at others depending upon what works best for them.
The weakening of the forces in Donbas won't happen overnight as those who are there will largely remain there, the bigger weakness is what happens next?
If new supplies need to go to Kursk, then the troops in Donbas are going to find themselves weak and isolated.
If no supplies go to Kursk, then Russia continues to lose territory to a superior force.
Major headache for Putin and his Generals.
And the NYT would report it as a campaign pivot.
Strange times.
Perun was on this last Sunday:
https://youtu.be/VlljA8zAupY?t=1737
So whilst they keep chipping away, any clearance of air defence from around the Kerch Bridge would perhaps be temporary.
In terms of munitions they have glide bombs including French ones, but if they have them the heavy ones have the shorter range, which is not ideal !
The Russian dead and injured will shortly exceed 600,000. The number of people fleeing Russia to avoid the conflict - either economically or militarily - exceeds 3 million. The brightest have left. This brain drain will continue to have an impact for decades to come.
The only comfort the Russians can take is that the Ukrainian econmy is in a grim place too. But Ukraine has friends with deep pockets. Russia has "friends" who will price gouge them on the vital supplies they require or sell.
The decision on the Edinburgh computing centre just seems to have been a bad one, and they're unwilling to admit outright that it was wrong.
Yesterday, the @FT ran a piece about government assurances around compute. We’re confused by the government creating an AI Opportunities taskforce days before canning investment, and now backtracking.
We’ve spoken to multiple insiders to figure out what’s going on. It's bad. 🧵
https://x.com/chalmermagne/status/1824387972952682514
As was the social care decision.
Can't say I have been impressed at all by Reeve's start. Been v poor so far.
Trump has always been a nasty piece of work. It can get you ahead, which is why he is where he is. But it's a bit like fast bowling, it has to be deadly fast and deadly on-target to be effective. And now he is Old, with a capital O, he has lost a critical bit of pace and accuracy.
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/train-strikes-lner-aslef-weekend-disruption-b2597322.html
Fresh train strikes have been announced, breaking a peace agreement between the train drivers’ union, Aslef, and the rail industry that lasted less than 48 hours.
Members working for LNER – the government-owned train operator on the East Coast main line – will walk out at weekends from 31 August to 10 November.
The union says the 22 days of planned strikes are in response to “bullying by management and persistent breaking of agreements by the company”.
It is unrelated to the pay dispute that saw three years of strikes by train drivers across England.
Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan said: “The continued failure of the company to resolve long-standing industrial relations issues has forced us into this position. We would much rather not be here.
Dubai prime property prices have doubled in the past two years, as anyone able to get themselves and their money out of Russia has done so, to anywhere willing to accept them. Plenty of stories out here of Russians trying to buy houses with gold or bitcoin, as their country joins North Korea and Iran on the sanctions list.
There’s billions of dollars of capital fight from the country.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/
(OK, from 2018 but he also accepted a Purple Heart from a vet while on campaign saying he'd always wanted one but he got it 'much easier'. Bizarre thing to say, but I suppose not technically an insult.)
Remember that the Supreme Court ruled that Presidential Immunity extended essentially to including assassination of opponents, because any holding-to-account would in one stage be a political process for Congress, not a legal process for the DOJ / Courts.
For an example of the back door, consider the Project 2025 strategy to declare 10s of thousands of civil servants to be political positions so that the President can just sack them.
It was proposed in 2020 under the title "Schedule F". This time they seem to be serious.
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2024/0507/trump-biden-schedule-f-civil-service
Unless either Kyiv or Moscow falls, facts on the ground will determine any post settlement ceasefire.
Harris is putting particular emphasis on rising meat prices, which she says account for a large part of rising grocery bills.
Year-over-year inflation has reached its lowest level in more than three years. But many in the United States are struggling with food prices, which remain 21% above where they were three years ago. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been pointing to inflation as a key failing of the Biden administration and its energy policies."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/kamala-harris-ap-joe-biden-donald-trump-tyson-b2597043.html
I wouldn't be impossible though. There is the possibility of the President formally suspending the writ - as has been done several times in US history (though only Lincoln did it without prior authorisation of Congress, and had Congress subsequently approve the decision).
Article 1 s.9
..The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it...
The illegal migrant "invasion" might provide such a pretext, and who knows how the current Supreme Court would rule on that.
Arrest itself would present no difficulty at all. Either the FBI, or the Secret Service have the legal power of arrest without warrant.
https://x.com/frankluntz/status/1824135764675829891
Maybe it will all become clear at the budget, but right now I'm expecting even more mad decisions from the government.
Incidentally on the AI vs HPC distinction that is frankly nonsense. Unless you are going for some AI only parts most systems are both AI and HPC capable given that the same hardware is used if you are buying Nvidia, or AMD, which are the main players. And nobody is likely to sink a huge amount of public money into a bespoke AI accelerator based system, or some niche player. There are dozens of AI hardware vendors mostly doing terribly as nobody wants to be the farm on such kit.
Ukraine isn't sending it elite forces forwards in Donbas, its letting Russia send its troops into the meat grinder and killing them off. So long as Ukraine maintains the ability to grind down what Russia sends at it, then its not diverting its own forces.
And Russia has already sent reinforcements to Kursk (including reinforcements that have already been killed and captured), that's quite potentially already diverting away reinforcements away from Donbas.
Opportunity cost is as real in war as it is in economics and Russia faces that opportunity cost struggle with what to do with reinforcements now. Reinforcements it needs in both places, because Ukraine is successfully grinding down its troops in Donbas, and successfully expanding operations in Kursk.
"Train drivers to strike every weekend for next three months despite bumper pay rise
Members of the Aslef union are starting a fresh campaign at LNER"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/16/train-drivers-strike-pay-rise/
That seems to be how they operate now
All of these strikes called just days after the govt rolled over to all of the ASLEF demands, well that's a happy coincidence.
Expect more of this from Public Sector Unions going forward. The Govt has set out its stall as being walkovers.
The only question is when the government cave in, not if they cave in.