Fog of war.

Small actions over the eastern and southern (Kerson) fronts. Vlad’s 13 minute special operation continues, because, “squirrel,” and his fear of open windows, You may be rooting for the wrong horse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE-tKh7mxUI

Pull your willful blindness out of your feint and consider an analysis six months into Vlad’s little adventure (posted yesterday, you seem slow):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ce5TR-qWCk4

I don’t know if Ukraine is winning. Fog of war, you know.

I know the 13 minutes was BS from the get go and your man Vlad is no friend to the US much less the west. Europe is preparing for winter, restarting coal plants, restarting nukes, tightening their belts as it were.

You have already surrendered, faintly now bleating “NATO, Davos, and Schwab, Oh my.”

So put your willfull blindness where the feints don’t shine.

Ukraine is still fighting your man Vlad.

Russia is using up stocks they’ll have to replace, both human and material, with an economy described as a gas station with nukes. Right not, the gas station thing is going well for them.

Their preparation and the performance of their equipment have been shown to be pretty crappy.

Even if they eventually win on the battlefield, the result will be worse than if they’d stayed home–that happens a lot–and done things the civilized way.
They will be shown to be a threat to a much weaker neighbor who may not have the same connections to the west’s sympathies as Ukraine does. And nothing else, saving their nukes.

Such organization of the oligarchy–those who’ve managed to avoid windows–as remains will likely not be as efficient until some time passes and the survivors figure out a new way of operating which includes increased security which cannot be infiltrated by the FSB. Luck with that. And there goes part of their economy.

Meantime, those claiming Russia was not a threat and defensive preparations are sinful–they’ve never gotten over the end of the communists–have a harder row to hoe.

It’s hard to tell what proportion of Russian unity in WW II was emotional due mostly to yet another invasion and what part to coercion. But the former was likely not inconsequential. De-nazifying Ukraine isn’t coming up with enough actual nazis to get people fired up, and Ukraine’s only actual crime against Mother Russia was preparing not to be easily invaded. Harder to gin up a spirit of sacrifice than in earlier efforts.

It’s important to remember that, in the Pyrrhic victory, Pyrrhus actually won. For Putin, that would be a best-case In the current struggle….is there such a thing as a Pyrrhic defeat?

Pshrinking Putin is difficult. He was willing to kill 200 Russians in a false-flag to generate support for an invasion of Chechnya. Yet, after the Beslan massacre…can’t find he did anything notable.

As Sowell said, in his “Intellectuals and War”, presuming the opposition is rational and sees things as you do and would necessarily act rationally as you see rationality is stupid.

Elections tell you, in a rough way, what people will put up with, and what they put up with is regrettable. The thing is, the social dynamics on the supply side are more consequential. What sort of people are attracted to the political world and remain within it? Well, have a gander at Jen Psaki.

I don’t think if Mr. ‘om’ elects to assemble a compendium of statements you’ve made on this subject over the last seven months that you’re going to look perspicacious.

No need for a dedicated understudy who has no administrative responsibilities. If you’re not going to have a corps of VPs supervising federal agencies, one of the president’s cabinet secretaries can take over for a period sufficient in duration for the state legislatures to elect a new president. The same procedure can be followed at the state level.

Instead, VP selection is typically decided upon their political usefulness to the ticket. But then we rarely, if ever choose Presidents based upon merit either.

See Wm. Schneider on public opinion research and the VP selection. Per Schneider, they’ve estimated that the VP candidate will net you 2% of the vote in the VP candidate’s home state, so their isn’t much point in old-school ticket balancing from the perspective of electoral mobilization. Tim Kaine would have been useful for Hellary to secure a purple state, but he wasn’t a bad candidate for VP for the purposes you have in mind. Neither was Pence or Cheney, both of whom were experienced executives. Bad selections were Kamala Harris, Biden, Dan Quayle, and Geraldine Ferraro. In re Harris and Ferraro, the presidential nominee was placating influentials (Judy Goldsmith and Tip O’Neill in the case of Ferraro, James Clyburn in the case of Harris). Biden’s selection one can surmise was a function of Obama’s avoidance of people whose presence underlines his superficiality and weightlessness. The selection of Quayle was a function of Bush the Elder’s indifference to the exercise; he picked someone a couple of his aides had been touting, not realizing the man had some embarrassing shortcomings.

Physician, heal thyself.

By the way, I don’t think anyone here has said that Ukraine is winning, just that the war is going on in its murky way with no clear outcome, but that Russia certainly hasn’t won either – except in the sense of being able to sell its fossil fuels to the highest bidder, and the sanctions against Russia having no effect in that regard.

Europe should have heeded Trump’s warning about dependence on Russian fuel, instead of chortling at him.

What’s of greater import is whether, should events disprove long held assumptions, an admitted acknowledgement of error will ever be forthcoming.

The irony is Shakespearean, a prideful refusal to admit to error ensures the continuance of their self-imposed mental imprisonment.