Another roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Hat tip: AesopFan.

The wheels of justice keep up their extremely slow grind:

A Politico report this week confirmed that investigations are underway after researcher Mark Glaeser began crossing-checking Florida voter lists against lists of the state’s convicted sex offenders and felons still in the Alachua County, Florida, jail.

In one such case, an election official in Alachua County is accused of registering felons to vote at the county jail despite their being ineligible…

Aside from felons, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has been uncovering records showing foreign nationals on state voter rolls in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, New Jersey, and California.

Most recently, PILF reached a settlement with North Carolina election officials to disclose the number of foreign nationals on the state’s voter rolls.

As of 2018, there were nearly 250 counties across the United States with more registered voters on the voter rolls than eligible American citizen voters. There were also nearly three million individuals who are registered to vote in more than one state.

(2) The Taliban prohibit girls attending school beyond sixth grade. And some supposedly intelligent people seem “baffled” by this?:

Aid groups and many others remained baffled.

The Taliban have so far refused to explain their sudden decision to renege on the pledge to allow girls to go to school beyond sixth grade. Schools were supposed to reopen to older girls on Wednesday, the start of the new school year.

The ban caught even the Taliban-appointed Education Ministry unprepared. In many places across Afghanistan, some girls in higher grades returned to schools, only to be told to go home.

I’m baffled as to why anyone would be baffled.

(3) Joe Manchin announces he will be voting to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson for SCOTUS justice. This is also not a surprise; Manchin will go only so far to the right and no further.

(4) A Maryland court rules against some recent Democrat gerrymandering in Maryland. Maryland is a very blue state anyway, but:

The 30,000-foot view of this ruling is that the judge said the legislature’s map violated the state constitution, which has some provisions in it requiring districts to be compact, while giving some eye toward political subdivisions (i.e. if 35 percent of voters are Republicans, they shouldn’t be getting only 12 percent of the districts). From there, the judge then ruled the map, because it violated the state’s constitution, also violated the free speech and equal protection clauses.

There is no doubt the ruling will be appealed, but because of Gov. Larry Hogan’s judicial appointments over the last several years, the chance this ruling is overturned is slim. Maryland’s appeals court and supreme court lean heavily Republican at this point.

(5) Some “cautious optimism” from Ukraine on negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. Accent on the “cautious”:

The first sticky point is the definition of Ukraine’s position with the West. This seems to be steadily gravitating towards a neutral Ukraine that can be an economic member of the European Union, but not an alliance member of NATO. Think Casablanca the size of Texas. This is probably something that everyone will soon buy into.

The second sticky point is the withdrawal of Russian forces: where’s the line?… It may require both sides to agree to make disputed territories like Crimea and Donbas the world’s next security guarantee protectorate, where neither party takes claim for some time…

This brings up the third sticky point in the negotiations. Wherever the lines are drawn, who guarantees that both parties honor the line after the shooting stops?

Is the Russian military somewhat of a Potemkin village?

The New Neo Posted on by

Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine we’ve been arguing in the comments here about his motives and goals. Putting that aside, this post is about something else: the state of the Russian military.

And by “military” I mean army, navy, air force, that sort of thing – and not nuclear weapons, which are a separate (although perhaps related) matter. Nuclear weapons are an important matter indeed, however, because if it weren’t for Putin’s nuclear weapons, NATO and the US would almost certainly be defending Ukraine far more vigorously, if only to send them better weapons with which to repel the Russian attack. Putin’s nuclear arsenal, and his willingness to threaten it and leave the world guessing as to what he would actually do with it, deters them.

But at the moment, Russia’s war is being fought with more conventional means. For the first few weeks, many of the reports about Russian failures or stalls or the Russian military being “bogged down” were considered to be possible or probable Ukrainian propaganda and exaggerations. There’s probably still some of that. And it’s certainly possible that through sheer numbers and willingness to take and inflict heavy casualties that Russia will win militarily in the end. But over time I think it’s become more clear that the Russian military actually does have grave problems.

Some people were well aware of that already, as the video I posted yesterday makes clear. And last night commenter “J.J.” posted the following comment here:

After I read “Mig Pilot: The Final Escape of Lieutenant Belenko,” I knew the Soviet military was as corrupt as any military can be. Since the end of the USSR and the transition of Russia to a corrupt autocracy, I doubt that much has changed. I’m sure they have some well-trained elite units, but any army that has to draft soldiers will have morale problems. Especially if it is as unfair and corrupt as MP Nevzorov implies.

Soldiers and sailors will go through h**l, if they are well trained, well led, and treated fairly. I get the picture that the Russian military are busy protecting their little fiefdoms and privileges – as they were back in the USSR days. In other words, you use your rank to get extra perks and privileges – no fair treatment of underlings. Then there’s the problem of vodka. It is regularly abused by Russian men and the military reflects the society. So, I’m not surprised at this man’s predictions.

Indeed, what I saw of the poor maintenance of facilities in Russia when we visited in 2006, probably hasn’t changed all that much in 16 years because, while Russia has made some economic progress during that time, it has not had the amazing progress seen in China.

Thus far, MP Nevzorov’s insight has been pretty spot on. They seem to be poorly lead, poorly trained, and not well motivated.

So, is the Russian military at least somewhat of a Potemkin village? That doesn’t mean they can’t inflict great damage – they can – but it certainly hampers them in that effort. And the deleterious effects may be even greater in Ukraine, because reports are that mud season has been a problem (we know about mud season in New England), and troops were not even told they would be fighting in Ukraine and they don’t consider Ukrainians the enemy. So there may be a lot of increased internal psychological conflict and morale may be even lower than usual.

About Potemkin villages:

In politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village built by Grigory Potemkin, former lover of Empress Catherine II, solely to impress the Empress during her journey to Crimea in 1787.

The term seems especially apropos because the story was about a Russian, and the Crimea was involved. The story may not be true – which would also be apropos, wouldn’t it? – and of course the Russian military is hardly wholly a facade. But still, maybe somewhat of a facade, at least in terms of its fighting power.

If so, why is this the case, and why has it persisted? I’m not even remotely an expert on this, but from what I’ve read it seems some of the factors are money problems (cutting corners), graft and corruption, maintenance problems, design problems, morale problems, and drinking problems. That’s not meant to be any kind of exclusive list. I’ll add possible motivation problems, not a meritocracy, even maybe sabotage, reliance on conscripts, and a top-down too-rigid command structure.

Believe this or don’t believe it, as you wish. It’s from an Australian news site:

There’s also this report about big problems with Russia’s precision-guided munitions.

And to return to the question of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, I wonder how well-maintained that is. Of course, we don’t want to have to find out for real.

I also wonder how our military is doing in these woker-than-woke days. As I said in a previous post, our exit from Afghanistan wasn’t the least bit reassuring.

[NOTE: Here’s another interesting video. This one’s from 2019, and it is an interview with Oleksiy Arestovych, who is a Ukrainian military advisor (among other things). His analysis of what Putin is after conforms quite closely to the views of Angela Stent discussed yesterday in this post:

If this guy’s been helping to prepare the Ukrainian forces for this war, I think it explains some of their relative effectiveness.]

Clarence Thomas has been discharged from the hospital

The New Neo Posted on by

Good news:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was released from the hospital Friday morning following a weeklong stay related to an infection, a court spokesperson said.

Thomas, 73, was hospitalized last Friday night with “flu-like symptoms”…

Seventy-three isn’t so very old, but it’s not young and when Thomas was in the hospital it was a scare. In fact, I was going to write a post today about how worried I was, but he was released before I got the chance.

It’s a big relief for the right, and a tremendous sorrow for the left – but of course they’ve got other things in store for Justice Thomas, who as a black conservative has been a thorn in their sides since the day he was nominated:

Word of Thomas’ discharge from the hospital also came as he faced intense attention in the media over reports that his wife, Virginia, exchanged texts with then-President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows as Trump battled to reverse his loss in the 2020 presidential race. Virginia Thomas urged Meadows to keep fighting against the reported election results and sent the White House official details on a bizarre conspiracy theory suggesting that blockchain internet technology had produced President Joe Biden’s victory. Virginia Thomas also said in the messages that she’d discussed aspects of the fight with her “best friend,” which some reports said might be her husband.

The Putin Doctrine

The New Neo Posted on by

Zelenskyy recently made a speech right before the NATO summit in which he said this (in English):

The War of Russia is not only the war against Ukraine. Its meaning is much wider. Russian started the war against freedom as it is, this is only the beginning for Russia on the Ukrainian land. Russia is trying to defeat the freedom of all people in Europe; of all the people in the world. It tries to show that only crude and cruel force matters. It tries to show that people do not matter as well as everything else that make us people. That’s the reason we all must stop Russia.

Some of you may think this to be hyperbolic rhetoric. But I think he is referring to these concepts and plans of Putin. It’s an excerpt from an article written in late January, about a month before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, by a woman who has previously written a book on Putin:

The current crisis between Russia and Ukraine is a reckoning that has been 30 years in the making. It is about much more than Ukraine and its possible NATO membership. It is about the future of the European order crafted after the Soviet Union’s collapse…

…[T]he Russian president’s behavior is being driven by an interlocking set of foreign policy principles that suggest Moscow will be disruptive in the years to come. Call it “the Putin doctrine.” The core element of this doctrine is getting the West to treat Russia as if it were the Soviet Union, a power to be respected and feared, with special rights in its neighborhood and a voice in every serious international matter. The doctrine holds that only a few states should have this kind of authority, along with complete sovereignty, and that others must bow to their wishes. It entails defending incumbent authoritarian regimes and undermining democracies. And the doctrine is tied together by Putin’s overarching aim: reversing the consequences of the Soviet collapse, splitting the transatlantic alliance, and renegotiating the geographic settlement that ended the Cold War.

Here is Stent’s book on Putin. It was published three years ago and is entitled Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest.

You may scoff at this; I do not. In my opinion the real question is not whether Putin wants this; he does. The real question is whether he has any hope of achieving it. His armies may not be doing very well, but he has two advantages. The first is his willingness to threaten nuclear war to get his way, and the second is the weakness of the West and in particular the current US administration (as well as its treachery regarding our own interests as a nation).

This video was made in April of 2021

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a guy who gets to say a few “I told you so”s:

Hat tip: commenter Barry Meislin.

Unfortunately, with all the woke business that Obama and Biden have pushed in our military, I fear we’re going in a similar incompetent direction. Our performance during our recent leave-taking from Afghanistan was not the least bit reassuring.

I also hope that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is in even worse shape than its military. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know in advance.

Victor Davis Hanson says a real reset is coming

The New Neo Posted on by

Some excerpts:

In truth, we are about to see a radical reset — of the current reset. It will be a different sort of transformation than the elites are expecting and one that they should greatly fear…

In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic “No!” to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility — as well as arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies.

What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.

Closed and secure borders with only legal and measured immigration will return. Americans will demand tough police enforcement and deterrent sentencing, and a return to integration and the primacy of individual character rather than separatist fixations on the “color our skin.”

The public will continue to tune out of the partisan and mediocre “mainstream” media. We will see greater increased production of oil and natural gas to transition us slowly to a wider variety of energy, strong national defense, and deterrent foreign policies.

The prophets of the new world order sowed the wind and they will soon reap the whirlwind of an angry public worn out by elite incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance.

I don’t doubt that there is a widespread backlash of the sort Hanson describes. But for me, the watershed moment in his essay is when he writes “What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.” The problem as I see it is that, despite the overwhelming backlash against the original Great Reset, unless elections are non-fraudulent the results may not reflect that backlash sufficiently to kick out the current holders of power. What’s more, even if they are kicked out, look what they did to the administration of the first resetter of the Great Reset, Donald Trump.

I think Hanson is ignoring the depth and breadth of the left’s presence in virtually all of our cultural, legal, financial, and bureaucratic institutions, plus their determination to undermine the will of the people if it goes against their will. This is the problem as I see it. But I sincerely hope Victor Davis Hanson is correct and that my pessimism proves unwarranted.

It takes a biologist to define “woman”…

The New Neo Posted on by

…according to Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Duly noted.

Of course, you might say that’s at least a somewhat more conservative point of view than the usual leftist “you’re a woman if you merely call yourself one” standard.

Quite a while ago we reached the point of the left redefining common words that have had an accepted definition for however long those words have existed, and coming up with new “woke” definitions that deny both common sense and even the idea that there is an objective truth to things.

Unknown factor: the Russian public and the Russian military

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Kate” writes:

I don’t think anyone on our side of the fence knows what’s really going on in Russia, or whether public opinion there makes any difference. Some military observers are now estimating Russian military deaths so far at 15,000; I had previously seen an estimate near 10,000, and numbers of injured are much higher. Russian leadership may not care about casualties; can they hide the numbers from the families of the dead and injured?

First let’s take the question of how many Russians have died fighting this war. The western military says it’s a lot, and there was also a brief Russian report to that effect

A Pro-Kremlin tabloid on Monday reported that nearly 10,000 Russian troops have been killed in the war in Ukraine — before the publication removed the figure and claimed it had been hacked.

The Putin-friendly Komsomolskaya Pravda, citing the Russian Ministry of Defense, reported that 9,861 Russian troops had died and 16,153 had been wounded in Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion on Feb. 24. It’s unclear whether the tolls were accurate.

Russia hasn’t released any figures since March 2, and even if they had there’s no way to trust their figures. So we just don’t know, but one thing that seems reasonable to conclude is that the figures were higher than expected and will get higher over time.

Russian propaganda has been prepping the Russian people for years with the idea that Greater Russia is a goal, that Ukraine is part of Russia and that it should be part of Russia (in order to rescue the Russians and good Ukrainians there from the bad Ukrainian Nazis), that NATO is trying to destroy Russia, and the like.

How many Russians believe these things? And how many will continue to believe them if and when they discover how many young Russian soldiers have already been sacrificed to this dream? Will they shrug the deaths off as in a noble and worthy cause? Will they think the deaths only prove what Nazis the Ukrainians are?

Or will they blame Putin? And if they blame Putin, will it even matter in terms of his hold on power?

I wish I had the answers, but I only have the questions and the gut feeling that Putin will keep his grip as leader of Russia.

However, I also think that comparisons to the Russian acceptance of the enormous Russian losses in World War II aren’t especially relevant. For one thing, that was a long long time ago and present Russian generations are not the same as those ancestors. For another, during World War II – at least for the phrase of it when the USSR was Germany’s enemy rather than its ally as in the beginning – Russians were defending their homeland from a truly frightening and predatory opponent. They knew without question that it was do or die, and that gives people the will to endure a lot of death and hardship.

That’s more like Ukraine’s position right now than it is like Russia’s today.

And what of the members of the Russian military themselves? If most reports are correct – and I don’t know whether they are, but I certainly think they might be – many of them are conscripts who also were not even told they were going to Ukraine to fight an actual war. They might feel betrayed and confused, which doesn’t add to a military’s fighting spirit. I’m not sure whether there’s been any actual laying down of arms by Russian military – and what is done to those who might do that, which can include being shot by those in charge. But even without outright quitting, there can be more subtle effects on the morale of the military and the vigor with which they pursue a battle. Is this part of the reason the Russian offensive isn’t going quite as smoothly as many think the Russian command expected it to go?

There’s a potential contradiction and confusion when Russian military are asked to kill so many civilians in a country they’ve been assured is populated by people who are their brothers and who will for the most part welcome them – but who are also Nazis. It’s a rather strange argument, if you think about it. And if these young military men were actually not told they were going there to a war of that nature, what then?

I suppose they can tell themselves all the dead are Nazis. I suppose the Russian fighters might be using weapons that distance them from viewing the dead and realizing what’s been going on. I suppose they can tell themselves it’s collateral damage anyway, inevitable in war. Or that the Ukrainians killed other Ukrainians for PR reasons (I’ve heard there’s Russian propaganda to that effect).

But these men are not the Russians of eighty years ago nor are they in a similar fight. Who they are I don’t know, and I don’t know what effect their perceptions have already had – and will continue to have – on the conduct and outcome of this war.

[NOTE: Some of the perception that Russian fighters feel lied to and betrayed comes from the statements given by many Russian POWs on video. I happen to think they sound sincere for the most part, but I also know that it’s a bad idea to rely on statements of prisoners of war because it’s not clear that they are made freely.]

How to format comments like a pro

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday commenter “Turtler” asked this question: “How do I format my posts, such as bolding, making quotes, etc?”

It occurred to me that a lot of people might be interested in the answer to that question. The answer is to use HTML code. You can find tons of websites with instructions, but most of them list all sorts of code that you’ll never need to comment on a blog. So here are just the basics.

To bold something, enclose it between two bracketed codes. The first one would be left bracket, then a b, then a right bracket. Then you write the words you want bolded. Then you write the closing bracketed code: first a left bracket, than /b and then a right bracket. If I were to write it out here properly instead of describing it, the code would disappear and you’d just see the bolded words like this.

[ADDENDUM: by the word “bracket” I mean this symbol for the left/opening one < and this symbol for the right/closing one > .]

For italics, same thing only with an i between the brackets in the first code and a /i between the brackets in the second code, with the word or words you want italicized in between the two bracketed codes.

For quotes you have the same thing, only blockquote is the word in the first set of brackets and then /blockquote is in the second set of brackets, with the words of the quote in-between.

For links, it’s much the same thing only a bit more complex. Before the link you put a left bracket and then a href=”. Make sure there’s a space between that a and the href or it won’t work properly. Then cut and paste the link. Then on the right of the link you put a left bracket and then /a and then a right bracket to close it out.

That’s all most people will ever need.