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This post was originally published on this site

“Get a poke, and get a toke.”

Kimmel looks back at the sepia-tinged yestermonth of April 2021 in…

And we all lived happily ever after…

Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 28, 2022

Note: All of you owe Elon Musk an apology. Like, a really, really BIG apology.

The above note paid for by Elon Musk for God of the Universe. Elon Musk, Treasurer.

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til Mother’s Day: 10

Days ’til the 30th annual Dandelion May Festival in Dover, Ohio: 8

Projected real GDP growth for the 4th quarter relative to pre-pandemic growth: 6.1%

Rank of heart disease and cancer among leading causes of death over the last year, per the CDC: #1, #2

Rank of Covid-19: #3

Number of voter fraud claims, out of 11-million votes cast, forwarded to Florida law enforcement after the 2020 election: 75

Percent chance that this has given Florida cult governor Ron DeSantis the impetus he needs to create his own Election Gestapo to intimidate and persecute Democrats: 100%

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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:

My favorite running story these days is the Year 2000 Problem. This is the wonderful news that come midnight Dec. 31, 1999, all computers will tick over a notch and announce that it is Jan. 1, 1900.

If you believe the most dire analyses of the consequences of this slight misunderstanding, planes will then fall from the sky, ballistic missiles will run amok, global financial markets will crash, hospital life-support systems will shut down, your microwave won’t work, your Pontiac won’t start, and in general, a fine time will be had by all.
—April, 1997

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Puppy Pic of the Day: I’ll take Things You Could Never Do With Squirrels for $600, Alex…

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CHEERS and JEERS to schlepping through the hallowed marble halls again. Here’s a fun fact: 99.8 percent of Americans had no idea that Congress had adjourned for an extended Easter break. And here’s another fun fact: 99.9 percent of Americans have no idea that Congress is back in session.

Yes, under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi in the House and John Kennedy Jr. in a Chuck Schumer mask in the Senate, the dueling chambers are once again drafting drafts, gaveling gavels, shouting shouts and, depending on the circumstances, either flocking to or fleeing from the press with their “note pads” and “flash bulbs.” The good news: President Biden’s judicial nominees are expected to continue enjoying an easy path to confirmation. The bad news: with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema still tragically consuming oxygen and fluids, President Biden’s legislative agenda is expected to continue going through this rigorous process:

Thankfully, the Affordable Care Act that Biden helped pass a dozen years ago includes coverage for chiropractic services. He’s gonna need ‘em.

CHEERS to predictions of doom. As Russia continues launching everything but nukes and literal kitchen sinks at Ukraine to little effect, Vladimir Putin’s allies have basically dwindled to our Republican party, Tucker Carlson, Belarus, North Korea, on-air propagandists who stand in a little circle on live Russian TV spouting shit like “Ukraine destroyed our national toilet paper reserve on orders from Satan Hitler,” and all the corrupt Russian oligarchs. Well, almost all the corrupt Russian oligarchs:

A Ukrainian oligarch who made his fortune with help from the Kremlin is now denouncing Vladimir Putin, even as he fights extradition to the U.S. on corruption charges.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News while under house arrest in Austria, billionaire Dmytro Firtash said the Russian president cannot win in Ukraine. “He is never going to come out victorious,” said Firtash, who became fabulously rich selling Russian natural gas to Ukraine with the help of powerful Russian interests. “No matter what happens, Russia will lose.”

If he could, Firtash said he would tell Putin: “It’s time to stop. There will be no victory. The longer this war takes, the worse it will be for the Russian people. Not just for the Ukrainian people.”

Wow. Very candid of him to say that. But we’re still keeping his yacht. Gotta store all that Russian toilet paper for Satan Hitler somewhere.

CHEERS to #5.  Happy 264th birthday to President James Monroe—the last Founding Father to occupy the White House.  He creeped people out by wearing his revolution-era clothing and a powdered wig at a time when doing so was long out of style.  He also told Europe and Russia to keep their paws off the west and then sucked up to the AARP by snagging Florida.  And then there was this bit of insanity (From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O’Brien):

Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford once came calling on the president with a stack of patronage recommendations, all of which Monroe rejected.

Enraged, Crawford threw a temper tantrum and demanded to know whom Monroe intended to appoint; the president replied it was none of Crawford’s damn business.

Crawford snapped and actually advanced on the chief executive with his cane raised, calling Monroe a “damned infernal old scoundrel.”  Monroe then stepped to the fireplace, seized a pair of fire tongs, and chased his secretary of the treasury from the Executive Mansion.

Historians call it “The night Monroe went mad.” Fox News calls it “Saturday night with Jeanine Pirro.“

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to toting the tykes.  Today is the 26th Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.  It’s a time to show the kiddies how Mom and Dad’s productivity gets cranked up to the max, while their paychecks do not.  What fun!  I believe I speak on behalf of the entire nation when I say to children of the military personnel who control our nukes: please don’t push any blinking red buttons or turn any keys.  Well, unless the code’s been authenticated, of course.

CHEERS to pigskin fever! Round 1 of the NFL draft is today. Moments after he hears the word “draft,” Ted Nugent will instinctively respond by shitting his pants.

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Ten years ago in C&J: April 28, 2012

CHEERS to something that looks really awesome on your resume. President Obama named this year’s gaggle of Medal of Freedom winners. The awards are given out for “An especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” This year’s gaggle (click the link above for their bios) is pretty damn awesome:

Madeleine Albright, John Doar, Bob Dylan, William Foege, John Glenn, Gordon Hirabayashi, Dolores Huerta, Jan KarskiKarski, Juliette, Gordon Low (Girl Scouts founder—a sly choice), Toni Morrison, Shimon Peres, John Paul Stevens and Pat Summitt

I admit I was shocked to see that John Glenn hadn’t gotten one yet, but he’s gonna live to be 150 so what’s the rush, I guess. Besides a medal, each honoree gets a ribbon, a tie clip and a monogrammed umbrella sword. Now you know why no Medal of Freedom winner has even been mugged.

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And just one more…

CHEERS to a life well-lived…and lived…and lived. I always thought that there were only two things in life that are certain: taxes, and the endless bickering between Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy. But apparently I was lied to by adults in whom I’d put all my trust, because apparently there’s a third thing: death. And last week it struck down an innocent woman in the prime of her life:

Although she didn’t quite make it to her goal of 120 years old, Kane Tanaka still lived long enough to become the world’s oldest person—a title she held for the past three years, and attributed to family, sleep, hope and faith.

Tanaka died last week at 119, Japanese authorities announced. Tanaka, who had been living at nursing home in Fukuoka, died on Tuesday at a hospital.

According to Guinness World Records, Tanaka was born prematurely on Jan. 2, 1903—the same year the Wright brothers brought powered flight to the world. She was the seventh child in her family. ​​​​​​

When she was 19, she married Hideo Tanaka, and helped run a family business selling sticky rice, udon, and the Japanese dessert zenzai.

Doctors say she died of an acute case of being 119, but police say they plan to bring in the recently-crowned world’s newest oldest person for questioning. Neighbors report she’s doing “way too much smirking.”

Have a nice Thursday. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial

“I just want Cheers and Jeers to be ‘The Twilight Zone’ and all go away.”

—Dr. Deborah Birx

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This post was originally published on this site

We start this morning with Robin Givhan of The Washington Post making a distinction between what a “public square” truly is and whatever it is that Elon Musk plans to do with Twitter.

True public squares may be places where words can flow unobstructed to a vast audience, but speaking in these open-air venues means navigating unavoidable considerations and complexities. In a true public square, you face your neighbors. Whatever you might have a hankering to get off your chest has to be unloaded with the full knowledge that those standing nearby can see precisely who’s doing the talking.

Audiences in the public square are more demanding. A lone man hawking misinformation on the street corner is more easily denounced or even ignored than some unseen face behind a Twitter account that spews hearsay and make-believe. Gullibility is abundant on Twitter. In real life, skepticism thrives. We dodge census takers, petition drives and panhandlers because we doubt their spiel or we simply don’t want to be bothered.

In real life, we try to suss out the truth of people by taking note of their body language. We make eye contact. We use all our senses to assess folks and make judgments. Those judgments aren’t free of stereotypes or prejudices, but still, they’re rooted in something, in some sort of evidence, some shred of humanity. Twitter isn’t a public square as much as it’s a sensory deprivation chamber in which we’re trying to figure out who to trust, who to believe, with little more to go on than a little blue check.

A “public square”, in other words, has rules and norms which, of course, conservatives don’t seem to like to apply to themselves.

Adam Serwer of The Atlantic says that when it comes to a battle between Musk’s notion of free speech and his bottom line, you can be sure what will win out.

For those who are not terminally online, a little explanation is in order. Compared to the big social media giants, Twitter is a relatively small but influential social network because it is used by many people who are relatively important to political discourse. Although the moderation policies of a private company don’t implicate traditional questions of free speech—that is, state restriction of speech—Twitter’s policies have played a prominent role in arguments about “free speech” online, that is, how platforms decide what they want to host.

When people talk about free speech in this more colloquial context, what they mean is that certain entities may be so powerful that their coercive potential mimics or approaches that of the state. The problem is that when private actors are involved, there’s no clear line between one person’s free speech and another: A private platform can also decide not to host you if it wants, and that is also an exercise of speech. Right-wing demands for a political purge of Twitter employees indicate just how sincerely conservatives take this secondary understanding as a matter of principle rather than rhetoric.

The fight over Twitter’s future is not really about free speech, but the political agenda the platform may end up serving. As Americans are more and more reliant on a shrinking number of wealthy individuals and companies for services, conservatives believe having a sympathetic billionaire acquire Twitter means one less large or influential corporation the Republican Party needs to strongarm into serving its purposes. Whatever Musk ends up doing, this possibility is what the right is actually celebrating. “Free speech” is a disingenuous attempt to frame what is ultimately a political conflict over Twitter’s usage as a neutral question about civil liberties, but the outcome conservatives are hoping for is one in which conservative speech on the platform is favored and liberal speech disfavored.

Qian Julie Wang of The New York Times writes about life on the New York subway and how she fears losing it.

I feel more connected with myself and my community on the subway than I do anywhere else. But as the tunnels have endured several high-profile assaults recently, culminating in a shooting on the same line my mother used to take to work in Sunset Park, I feel that connection fading and a piece of me withering. The subway defines home for a city of people united — above distance, race, class and labels — in relentless pursuit of dreams. And I am more scared of losing that home now than ever before.

In hopeful reclamation, I turned to Twitter, calling for subway memories. As the many responses came in, I reeled from laughter to tears and back. In poured absurd stories of navigating the trains in impossibly elaborate costumes; of dodging urine streams, cockroaches and rats; of in-car concerts, break dancing, and a cappella. Of course there were accounts of violence, of children followed and women groped. But more than anything else, there were stories of community: good Samaritans assisting the lost, the sick, the drunk; passengers jumping to help others with luggage; readers bonding over books; dance parties sparking on platforms; and lifelong friendships forming from chance encounters. And time and again came a seemingly unanimous conclusion: The subway is the best, most cathartic public place to cry.

A little too romantic of a view about life on the subway? Maybe. Maybe not.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr of The Boston Globe wonders just how Harvard University is going to implement its proposed reparations program.

A massive report, years in the making, was released this week detailing the institution’s ties to and enrichment from the enslavement of Black people. It’s full of gut-wrenching details, from the more than 70 human beings who were owned by faculty, staff, and even presidents of the university, to the remains of 15 Black people from the antebellum era found among the holdings of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, to the fact that a third of the university’s endowment from the first half of the 19th century came from donors whose fortunes were fueled by the slave trade.

It also comes with a major pledge: a $100 million commitment to implement a set of recommendations designed, in the words of Harvard President Lawrence Bacow, “to approach the future in ways that properly reckon with our past.”

But if the recent efforts by other colleges and universities in the Ivy League and elsewhere to atone for the ways they benefited from human enslavement are any guide, the hard part for Harvard is just beginning. These schools are learning just how difficult, 150 years after abolition, it is to figure out what reparations should look like.

Gustavo Arellano of the Los Angeles Times writes about all of the utter pettiness of Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, including the sheriff’s recent threats to a reporter for the Times.

He spent most of an hourlong conversation with me last month railing against unflattering photos of him published by this paper and the supposedly excessive number of Black division chiefs in the Sheriff’s Department’s past. He then claimed in a social media post that he was refusing to meet with the L.A. Times editorial board to seek their endorsement … right around the time he was meeting with them. (The board didn’t endorse him).

None of those moves put a single criminal behind bars or improved public safety — you know, the job that a majority of L.A. County voters asked Villanueva to do when they elected him in 2018. Instead, we’ve seen an administration of tantrums unworthy of a preschooler denied their “Peppa Pig.” And he just went through his worst one yet. […]

On Tuesday, he held a press conference to allege that my Times colleague Alene Tchekmedyian had received “stolen property” and was now a subject in a criminal investigation by his department. The supposed contraband she possessed was courthouse video that showed a deputy kneeling on the head of an inmate for three minutes after the inmate assaulted him. Sources told Tchekmedyian that the footage was suppressed for months because of Villanueva’s concern that it might bring “negative light” on his embattled department.

Allison Hope writes for CNN on the possible deadly consequences of the anti-LGBTQ backlash now underway

Take the three people who were attacked as they were leaving a drag show in Old Town Pasadena, or the gay club in Brooklyn that was set on fire, or the deaths of two Black, transgender women in Chicago, at least one of which was ruled a murder (the other is still under investigation). This was all in the past month, and it doesn’t capture the full scope of heinous acts.

While attacks on our community are sadly nothing new, this current environment, in which public officials use dangerous rhetoric while peddling bills that discriminate against us, feels ever more fraught. It doesn’t help that some Republicans are increasingly perpetuating the harmful myth that liberals and members of the LGBTQ community are grooming children – a move that shatters any illusions that the US has become fully understanding and accepting of our LGBTQ lives and experiences. {…]

…In all, more than 250 bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year with the aim of stripping away the rights of LGBTQ Americans, including in sports, libraries, schools and other facets of civic life. There was even a recent attempt in Tennessee to define common law marriage as one between one man and one woman. Thankfully, the bill died before it made it out of the general assembly, but I fear the fight to undo marriage equality may only be beginning.

Heather Digby Parton of Digby’s Hullaballoo writes that the right is losing the culture war— at least according to multiple polls—  but that you wouldn’t know that from the media coverage.

I know the only people who matter in America are Real American Trump voters, but this is ridiculous. On half those questions even a majority of them don’t agree. There is some contention on the trans bathroom issues and renaming schools between the two parties but not really that much. These are new issues that people are sorting through. But overall I think these issues are way overplayed.

Americans writ large aren’t calling for the fainting couch over teaching Black history and they don’t want to ban books in school. And although it isn’t asked I highly doubt that a majority of Americans think that gay teachers are “grooming” kids to become transgender. This is yet another ginned up culture war issue that the media always try to turn into a Big national Concern because they just can’t not take the bait.

Megan Moltini of STATnews writes about President Joe Biden’s attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at a time when COVID-19 cases are on the rise in D.C. and nationwide.

In late March, White House press secretary Jen Psaki tested positive for the virus, her second breakthrough infection. A few weeks later, an outbreak at the annual Gridiron Club dinner seeded infections among House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and three members of President Biden’s cabinet. And on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive at the White House and had to cancel a meeting with Biden.

Yet on Saturday, Biden is planning to step into a tuxedo and into a cavernous underground ballroom for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the first time a sitting president has attended since 2016. Despite rising coronavirus cases in the D.C. region, up to 2,600 guests are expected to attend in full pre-pandemic “Nerd Prom” regalia — satin lapels, glittering gowns, and mask-free faces — albeit with proof of vaccination and a same-day negative Covid test. […]

At least one other American weighing similar risks reached a different conclusion. Late Tuesday night CNN reported that Anthony Fauci, the 81-year-old infectious disease expert and Biden’s chief medical adviser, would no longer attend the dinner amid concerns for his own health and worries it could turn into another superspreading event.

David Ignatius of The Washington Post notes the escalation of the war of words between Russia and NATO but wonders what the ultimate cost will be to both sides.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a man careful with his words, stated it plainly Monday after a trip to Kyiv to bolster Ukraine’s resistance: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” Austin repeated that message Tuesday after talks with NATO allies in Germany.

This is a high-stakes strategy — efforts to degrade another country’s power by military and economic means usually don’t end well — and I asked the White House to elaborate on the comments. “We want Ukraine to win,” a National Security Council spokesman responded. “We intend to make this invasion a strategic failure for Russia. One of our goals has been to limit Russia’s ability to do something like this again.”

The West’s assessment as it tightens the screws was bluntly stated Monday by Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “Russia is failing; Ukraine is succeeding.” That’s certainly true after the first two months of war, but the bloodiest days of this campaign might lie ahead. The questions going forward are whether the pressure strategy will succeed in crippling Putin, and at what cost.

Alice Tidey of Euronews thinks that Poland and Bulgaria will be OK with the shutoff of Russian gas—for now.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), coal supplied a little over 40% of Poland’s energy mix in 2020, followed by oil (about 30%) and natural gas (about 18%), with the rest coming from biofuels and waste as well as other sources of renewables including wind and solar.

Yet, Poland generates less than half — 46% — of its energy need, producing about 80% of the coal it consumes, but just 20% of gas and 3% of oil. The rest is thus met by imports. About half of the gas and nearly two-thirds of the oil Poland imports come from Russia, according to Forum Energii, a think tank.

These figures are high but still much lower than a few years ago when about 80% of Poland’s gas imports came from Russia.

When the Gazprom decision came through, Moskwa claimed the country had been preparing for just such a scenario and that “thanks to infrastructure investments, such as the Baltic Pipe or connections with other Member States, the Polish gas system, as one of the few in the European Union, is able to completely abandon supplies from Russia.”

She added that gas reserves were at 76% capacity.

Rachel Ashcroft of The Article writes about some notions (primarily the United Kingdom’s) of the concept of patriotism.

Ukrainian patriotism has drawn admiration from people around the world. But for some in the UK, such outward displays of patriotism can seem alien. The majority of Britons are uncomfortable with declaring love for their country. Patriotism is largely a Right-wing sentiment: according to 2020 data, only 17% of those on the British Left are proud of Britain, compared to 58% of people on the Right.

However, patriotism is arguably a misunderstood concept. It is too often confused with nationalism, or dismissed as foolish. But patriotism has plenty of advantages. It can neutralise sinister nationalistic tendencies, as George Orwell — a lifelong man of the Left — once argued. And as we see daily on the news, drawing on a wellspring of patriotism can benefit a country in wartime, when morale needs to be at its strongest.

Historically, philosophy has shown little interest in patriotism. Instead, it’s been left to literature’s most famous names to come up with a definition. In the late 19th century, Leo Tolstoy stated that patriotism “is merely the preference of one’s own country or nation above the country or nation of anyone else”. But if everyone thinks their country is “the best”, then who is actually right? That line of reasoning led Tolstoy to dismiss patriots as fools.

Ms. Ashcroft is right about Orwell and while she’s mostly correct that philosophy has tended to show little interest in notions of patriotism, the greatest statements ever made about what we have come to call “patriotism” are in Plato’s Apology and Crito, IMO.

Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker writes that with all of the naysayers writing about an underwhelming victory for Emmanuel Macron in last week’s French presidential election, Macron is the first French president to win reelection in 20 years.

Successful pragmatists in power will never have the glamour of even unsuccessful ideologues. The British journalist Helen Lewis satirized the grudging reluctance to recognize the significance of Macron’s first election, in 2017, writing, “We must now confront an uncomfortable question. Why did so many French people vote for Emmanuel Macron? Was it a lack of economic anxiety, or a lack of racism?” Insisting that Le Pen’s predictably increased result since her last standoff with Macron, five years ago, was the real story misses the point. Macron is the first sitting French President to have been reëlected in twenty years. He also now becomes the first President of the Fifth Republic, which was instituted in 1958, since de Gaulle to be returned to office by a direct popular vote, while still holding a parliamentary majority. (Jacques Chirac was in “cohabitation” with a left-wing government when he was reëlected in 2002, and François Mitterrand was with a right-wing one in 1988.) Most elections in democracies are close; this one is notable for how close it wasn’t. Nor did Macron tilt right. On the easy material, for instance, of Muslim women wearing hijab, he was forthrightly protective of a religious minority in a climate in which Zemmour proposed a law that children only be given “French” first names.

It will be an ugly second term: there will be demonstrations, and the President will be called an even worse failure than he had been before. Loud declarations of the death of democracy will be shouted from the rooftops, and the next unanswerable crisis that France confronts will be once again confronted. In other words, French political life will carry on as it has since 1958—or really, since 1789. But the worst have been kept out of power, and didn’t come near winning it. There is much work to be done, and the coming legislative elections will be significant. Macron will not have an easy time, but what French President ever has?

Patrick Roger of Le Monde in English writes about some of the possible reasons that Marine Le Pen won the French non-Pacific overseas territories.

“Of course, the Le Pen vote shocks me,” said the president of the executive council of Martinique, Serge Letchimy (Parti Progressiste Martiniquais). “This is not what Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon and Edouard Glissant taught us. However, it is also a sign, an indicator of deep discontent, which the crises experienced during this last five-year period have exacerbated, and disagreement with governmental policy that has been done this way for decades. But we must be careful to make sure that this current atmosphere of dissent does not then turn into support for unacceptable ideas.”

There are several diverse reasons for this general dissent. Mayotte does not have the same reasons for anger as French Guiana, nor in Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion or New Caledonia. Nevertheless, there is a lingering feeling that overseas territories, with their idiosyncrasies and their own structural difficulties, are not taken into account in all their complexity and are even “ignored,” “abandoned” and “disdained” – terms that frequently come up.

“There is a general sense of unease in West Indian societies, with no vision for the future, which is not specific to the overseas territories but is particularly pronounced there,” said Emmanuel Gordien, a virologist at Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny in Seine-Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. Dr. Gordien is Guadeloupean and is active in efforts to promote the remembrance of slavery. He recently went to the West Indies to advocate for the Covid-19 vaccination policy, which is rejected by a large part of the population. “It is first of all an unease linked to identity, but it is also linked to an economic, social and societal malaise,” he said. “And, above all, there is no prospect of an end to this malaise. Local politicians don’t do anything. Many of them have no credibility – people only see them as a kind of social worker. But on the big issues, they provide no solutions.”

Finally today, Jeffrey Barg, The Grammarian writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer writes about the faulty grammar of U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in her ruling overturning mask mandates nationwide.

The word sanitation, which is what masks help do, is key. The plaintiffs, who wanted to get rid of the mask mandate, claimed that “of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated” applied to each noun that preceded it, including sanitation. In other words, according to the plaintiffs, unless a person is already “infected or contaminated” — that is, COVID positive — the CDC has no authority to enact sanitation measures: i.e., forcing them to wear a mask. That led Mizelle to conclude that, in mandating masks, the CDC was out of bounds.

The problem with this reading, as the government points out, is that for it to make grammatical sense, the word or would have to appear before destruction. If someone were to be “infected or contaminated,” then sure, the government could go to town inspecting, fumigating, disinfecting, and sanitizing them. (This week’s news that the youngest detainee at Guantánamo was cleared for release is a good reminder of how much our government likes inspecting and fumigating people.)

But that conjunction isn’t there. Without that tiny or, every word from destruction to human beings is part of one isolated noun phrase that functions the same as the nouns that precede it: inspection, fumigation, and so on. Because sanitation doesn’t rely on “infected or contaminated” for its meaning, sanitation itself should be a legitimate function of the CDC — which would mean that mandating masks is well within the agency’s purview.

Everyone have a great day!

This post was originally published on this site

Russia continued making slow, grinding progress on Wednesday, taking five settlements, repulsed on six other approaches, and pushing into some of the larger towns. Ukrainian resistance is stiff. 

I won’t belabor the point I’ve made repeatedly—how Russia guilty once again of spreading its forces thin across way too many lines of attack. Yes, they’ve had some tactical victories, taking a town here or there, but they are still failing their strategic goal of taking the entire Donbas region and building a land bridge that extends all the way across Ukraine’s south, through Odesa, and on to Moldova’s Transnistria region. 

Remember, Russia had loads of tactical victories around Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv. How’d that turn out for them strategically? 

Now, Russia is having trouble finishing the job in Mariupol, much less take Donbas. It’s been two weeks since Russia announced their big Donbas offensive, yet Russia has managed to push only ~22 kilometers (14 miles) to the south and west. That leaves just  another 240-320 kilometers (~150-200 miles) of roads to go to close the gap to the south (depending on the route), not to mention all the territory in the middle, which at around 5,000 square miles, would entirely fit the state of Connecticut. 

Russia has taken just a sliver of all that territory, and it is already distracted, pushing in all sorts of different directions that aren’t Donbas. As the Institute for the Study of War reported today, their advances today to the west of Izyum “takes Russian forces away from their main objective of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.” So great, congrats Russia on your small tactical gains! But strategically, they remain a mess, and what meager progress they’ve made has come at a horrifying cost. Don’t take it from me, take it from Igor Girkin, the Russian nationalist who ran the separatists’ 2014 war effort. He posts regular video updates on Telegram, where is is losing his mind over Russia’s current progress.

Main battles are taking place south of Izyum, and between Uhledar and Huliapole. Can the Russian army destroy the Donetsk group of the enemy using the existing forces? For me there is no obvious answer. I don’t know what forces are concentrated, what is their moral spirit, how are they equipped and trained, what aviation and artillery support is available. 

But in the last three days there was practically zero advancement of the Russian forces north of Izyum, only tactical successes in some places. In the south, we took a few localities but the enemy frontline is not broken through. Witnesses say the artillery and aviation work tremendously, destroying resistance as soon as it emerges. This is WW1 tactic which any way doesn’t lead to any quick results. 

As I said earlier time is of the essence for a quick victory of the Ukraine which finishes its 3rd mobilization stage, in total around 300,000 people […] If Ukraine manages to create 10 divisions, 100,000 troops, or 50 BTGs, then this […] force will be capable of of cardinally reversing the course of the combat action […]

So I believe if the operations drags down, if the Ukrainian forces are not destroyed in 1-1.5 months, then the battle could change dramatically, and the enemy will be able to seize the advantage, and it’s possible they will do it. 

Everyone points to Russia’s “tactical successes,” but one must only look at a map, at the Oryx list of confirmed casualties, and at the pace of the campaign to know that taking a village here or there is of little value if it’s not working toward the broader strategic goal.  A week ago, Girkin was even more pessimistic. 

In conditions were Russian troops will have to storm one city agglomeration after another, number of troops comes to the foreground. And in this regard, neither [Russian] nor [separatist forces] have a serious advantage, unfortunately.

Let’s imagine that the first line of defense of [Ukrainian armed forces] south of Izyum and near Hulliapole is broken and our forces begin offensive in convergent directions, can they quickly link up in deep Ukrainian rears, creating two encirclement  rings (inner and outer)? With a guarantee that the enemy won’t break them immediately and won’t create their own ‘salients’ for the advancing forces? […]

I doubt it. Why? Because for that you need A LOT of detachments aimed not only for breaking through but also for firmly establishing in the territories […]

So, after a certain time, in this area, the same situation will repeat as in Rubezhnoe-Severodonetsk, Popasnaya, Avdeevka and Maryanka, where united forces are advancing extremely slowly and with huge losses (especially among the infantry), or not moving at all (Avdeevka). 

The separatist’s former top commander has taken stock of the current battlefield situation, and concludes that their manpower losses are unsustainable. Pretending that Russia has 180,000 troops in the region, which they don’t, and ignoring that most would be logistical support, that would still only be 30 soldiers (a platoon!) for every square mile of that Donbas region that remains to be conquered. Yeah, that’s a simplistic argument, but it points to how few forces they have for that Connecticut-sized region. Meanwhile, they don’t even take care of the soldiers they have, treating them as expendable cannon fodder:

Here is another Russian soldier’s account of the Donbas front lines in late March and early April. Follow the link and read the whole thing (same with the Girkin links above). It’s breathtaking. 

By mid-April there were a couple of men left of our “pre-war” company [150 troops in an infantry company] . Volunteers and reservists were already being sent to the battle. Volunteers in masses were with experience of 2014-2015, but here it is absolutely other war and their experience does not help anything. And the reservists are miners caught on the streets without the slightest experience. Nobody cares. Put your submachine gun in your hands and go forward under the mortars. There was a catastrophic shortage of men, fighters were not allowed to leave the front line for a month or more. Many went nuts from such loads. Some began to drink heavily, fortunately there was no problem with booze at the front. Mathematically there was almost no chance of getting out alive and uninjured. The longer you stay there, the less chance you have. Of those I was friends with or shared bread with, eight people died in a fortnight. The rest were wounded or shell-shocked. Within a week, three company officers had changed – two were killed. There were no company-platoon level officers left at all.

Igor Girkin says the separatist-held territories of Donbas are tapped out, no more troops to give. Indeed, they’ve conscripted men up to the age of 60. There are only so many more Chechens to send, and they don’t seem too excited to be bearing the brunt of Russia’s war. 

The May 9 Victory Parade should prove an inflection point: does Vladimir Putin use the occasion to call for a mass mobilization to bolster the war effort, or will he keep pretending that it’s merely a “limited military operation” that remains splendidly on track, dooming the entire effort? Ukraine’s regular army and Territorial Defense Forces have bought time for those 300,000 reservists out west to train and get equipped. A couple more months, and they’ll be riding into battle in Polish T-72s, American and European armored personnel carriers, and lots of sweet, sweet, modern artillery. How will Russia respond, even as it attrits its existing forces on the daily?

Ukraine’s recent raids in Belgorod and Kursk would’ve been great fodder to gin up war fervor amongst the Russian populace. Instead, Russian state propaganda passively stated that the facilities merely “caught fire.” Curious, isn’t it? Stunningly, Putin is afraid to call for shared sacrifice, even as state propaganda ramps up the hysteria on the nightly. Apparently, it’s easier to support war when it’s the poor regions and foreigners doing the dying, rather than Moscow and St. Petersburg.