Russia's Dying Dreams

As the year (2022) ends, people get into the mood to make predictions for how the coming year (2023) will go.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, one of Putin's more loyal lackeys, laid out a bunch of doozies on Twitter a few days ago. If I can refer to the Reuters article that reported on it:

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, an arch loyalist of Vladimir Putin given a new job this week, predicted war between Germany and France next year and a civil war in the United States that would lead to Elon Musk becoming president.

That noise you hear in the distance is me headdesking into infinity. Just on those two predictions alone, I'm asking the universe "who the FUCK spiked Dmitry's vodka with LSD?"

Okay. Okay. Taking a step back. Let's just see what else Medvedev predicted for the coming year:

In his list of predictions for 2023, published on his personal Telegram and Twitter accounts, he also foresaw Britain rejoining the EU, which would in turn collapse.

Musk, the Tesla boss who now owns Twitter, responded to the suggestion he would emerge as U.S. president by tweeting back "Epic thread!!", although he also criticised some of Medvedev's predictions. Medvedev has praised Musk in the past for proposing Ukraine cede territory to Russia in a peace deal...

Musk, it should be noted, needs all the ego-stroking in the universe right now because his mismanagement of both Twitter and Tesla has tanked Tesla stock to where Musk has officially lost $200 billion of value in 2022, the most a billionaire has ever lost in that timeframe.

Other things Medvedev predicted:

• The cost of oil will go up to $150.00 a barrel, which would reverse Russia's pending economic collapse.
• Russia will win its war against Ukraine, seizing the eastern regions that Putin's tried to annex.
• Poland and Hungary will join forces to partition western Ukraine.
• Germany will react to Poland and Hungary's annexation of western Ukraine by annexing Poland and Hungary, forming a Fourth Reich. This will essentially shatter NATO.
• France will go to war against the German Fourth Reich.
• Northern Ireland - even with Britain rejoining the EU, causing its collapse (yeah, go ahead and figure that one out) - will quit the UK and reunite with Ireland. Even though their border issues with Ireland were likely resolved with the Rejoin in the first place. (This is the point where I went cross-eyed)
• That US Civil War will lead to Texas and California forming their independent states, with Texas forming an alliance with Mexico. THIS is the point where I couldn't stop laughing for fifteen minutes straight.

Okay, that's as far as I'll go - he also predicted the end of the Bretton Woods economic agreements and the collapse of the US Dollar - before breaking down how EACH one of Medvedev's predictions are batshit crazy.

Medvedev's prediction of oil prices going up is a likely reaction to how global sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine are crimping their economy now and for the foreseeable future. He's hoping that demand for oil goes up so high that other nations will quit their sanctions to get some of that sweet Russian crude.

His prediction that England will drop their Brexit stance and rejoin the European Union ignores the political dynamics in the UK, where the Conservatives still in charge of government have no intention of quitting their Brexit agenda. There would have to be a massive schism in Tory ranks to force an emergency election, and for the Labour party to win out. Even then, if the UK does rejoin the EU, there's no sign it will force the EU to split apart: After all, it would signal the EU's power to bring a nation that broke with them back into its ranks. It's not like Spain or Italy will quit if Britain reclaims a seat at the table.

There's not even any reason for the EU to let the UK back into their organization: Why trust a nation that would re-exit the minute the Tories got back in control? At best, the EU would compromise on a trade agreement that would turn the current No-Deal Brexit into a Soft Brexit that could alleviate England's current economic woes. And it'll be a deal that won't break the EU.

His follow-up suggestion that Northern Ireland will break with the UK to merge with the Irish Republic seems based on the current woes Northern Ireland has with the Irish border, which is a conflict born from Brexit. If Brexit ends, the border crisis ends: the Protestant half of Ireland would then stay with the UK. There's too much socio-political separation between Ireland and N. Ireland for any other issue to bring them together.

Medvedev gets crazier when he starts predicting how NATO will blow itself apart. He's convinced that when Russia defeats Ukraine, they'll take full control of the eastern provinces that they illegally annexed - including the Crimea - leaving the western sections vulnerable to the likes of Poland. Never mind that Poland would rather provide more military aid to Ukraine to ensure Ukraine never falls to Russia. Because the last thing Poland wants is a return of a Russian/Soviet empire at their own border. He's also ignoring the reality that Poland - having been divided itself between invading armies in World War II - is not about to inflict the same destructive annexation on another European nation. This is mostly Russian projection that other nations will be empire-building like they are.

This is leading into the fearmongering that Medvedev promotes when he claims Germany will forge a new Reich to dominate Eastern Europe as soon as Poland and Hungary move against Ukraine. Just invoking the Reich as a concept is his way to play to the dark memories of the Third Reich, when the Nazis blitzed in World War II and killed millions of Russians. 

One, Germany itself has been aggressive in shutting down ANY sign of Far Right fascist behavior, suffering through two straight world wars have been enough for them. Rebuilding a Reich is a pipe dream even for them: Just look at how the German government held mass arrests of extremists plotting to bring back the Kaiser and start a Far Right regime (a coup plot which was, by the by, backed by Russia).

Two, Germany is more likely to support Poland against Russia - which is supporting Ukraine - than annex it if Russia ever succeeded invading Ukraine. The thing about NATO, one of its key positive effects has been the treaty's ability to unite European nations to defend each other rather than split into competing factions the way it was when both world wars broke out. I can't speak for Hungary, which is under the control of a Russia-friendly regime: However, Hungary is still strongly tied to the EU and NATO, and they can't really go against either organization the way Russia wants to. 

This is the biggest reason why Putin and the other Russian elites want NATO gone: NATO's very existence prevents Russia from rebuilding its glory years of empire. This is why Medvedev predicts half of Europe turning on itself, with a German Reich triggering a French military response like it was 1877 (or 1914) all over again.

It's also feeding Medvedev's fantasy that the United States will break apart in Civil War. Granted, I'm a little worried that the U.S. already is in a low-grade civil war thanks to donald trump's insurrection attempt on January 6th, and thanks to the ongoing threats of violence coming from the likes of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. But I've reviewed this situation before and there's little reason for even Texas - a Far Right state in opposition to a Democratic-held federal government - to break away from the Union. The hassles of nation-building - with few other nations to aid them, loss of supply chains with the rest of America, economic disruption, what have you - just aren't worth it to make the libruls look bad.

There's currently no reason for California to secede at all: a solid Blue State that would likely do everything to support Biden and the Democrats in DC. Most other states don't have the resources to actively secede, even with all the Far Right fantasies of pulling it off (most wingnut militias will fall quickly to even the National Guard units before the US military even steps in).

And Medvedev's idea that an independent Texas would ally itself to Mexico goes against everything we know about Texas' racist rage towards Mexico. The Republicans controlling Texas - hi, evildoer Abbott! - are livid about Mexican migrants, and screaming about "defending the border" by building a useless wall. These are not people who would suddenly want to work WITH Mexico in any way. Hell, that border becomes a flashpoint with Mexico declaring the border with Texas isn't the Rio Grande anymore (because that was a treaty made with the US at the end of the Mexican-American War). There's a whole Trope for it - Mexico Called They Want Texas Back - to where if Texas does secede their biggest problem will be an angry Mexican army marching to the Nueces River.

Oh, and that stuff about Elon Musk becoming President? Under the US Constitution, Musk can't qualify, he's not a natural-born citizen. If Medvedev thinks a divided United States is going to find the time to rewrite a brand new constitution that would grant Musk the chance to get elected, and that either Texas or California would be that idiotic to elect him, he's really drunk off his ass.

So with all that said, did you notice the common thread between every single one of Medvedev's predictions?

Every single prediction is a Russian elitist's wish fulfillment. Every prediction is about how the rest of the world - especially the United States and Europe - has to fall apart in order for Russia to succeed.

In particular, Medvedev's fantasy that the US will collapse into civil war with different states forming their own nations echoes similar predictions I saw Russians make back in 2009. It's a recurring dream apparently of the Russian mindset, having endured their own breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 that has them wishing their rival the United States would do the same.

Russia - having lost its global standing when the USSR fell apart - is both angry and terrified about the NATO treaty that encompasses most of a European continent allied against outside forces (of which Russia is one). It's a self-defeating situation for Russia: The Russians need NATO out of the way to achieve Putin's dreams of rebuilding their imperial glory days of Peter the Great; but NATO stuck together partly because they feared in a post-Soviet world the rise of a Russian dictator (like Putin) who would conquer and divide Eastern Europe, in ways that led to two destructive world wars that Europe never wants to endure again. It's a Russian dream that - to nations like Germany and France and England and Poland - dare not come true.

Russia as a nation/people suffers from either a weird case of Imposter Syndrome or a self-punishing inferiority complex. Putin and other high-ranking Russians on the one hand see Western Civilization as weak and corrupt (and in Putin's homophobic world-view, sexually deviant). On the other hand, they are absolutely terrified that these weak nations will attack and destroy Russia. It doesn't help their psyche that they've been this way for centuries - Peter the Great himself was envious of European improvements and sought to emulate them - both coveting a dominant role in Europe and dismissing European cultural norms and political beliefs.

Russia has always been an outsider force in Western politics, even when they were allies to the remaining democracies during World War II. It's both rankled their pride and left them wondering what they've done wrong to be so slighted. It has a lot to do with how corrupt the ruling forces in Russia have been - either under the Tsars, or under the Soviets, now under Putin - to where the other major powers have been and still are wary of dealing with Russia in any way.

Thing is, Russia's corruption - not just economic greed but political brutality - has been so constant, so prevalent that they've failed repeatedly to reform themselves to where the Western nations can ever feel safe. Hence the ongoing existence of NATO and the EU, both of which enrage Russia into staying violent and corrupt, and nothing improves.

It's that same corruption now eating away at Russia as 2022 rolls into 2023. The political elites - the oligarchs that own everything to Russia's ruin - dare not turn against or reject the violent dictatorship of Putin that has pushed the nation into an unwinnable ground war in Ukraine.

The only way to end their nightmare is to dream of a world that collapses before Russia does.

But that dream is a lie, just like every self-delusion Russians have been feeding themselves for ages.

It's more of a nightmare for Ukraine and Europe and the United States and the world, that's not going to end until Putin is gone.

Gods help us.

May the new year see an end to this corrupt Russian madness.

One Sentence Statement about the Passing of Pope Benedict XVI

There is a Circle of Hell dedicated to those who betrayed their position of office, there is a Circle of Hell for priests and bishops and Popes who allowed pedophiles and rapists to attack the children and families of their own parishes, there is a Circle of Hell for those who lied against the victims, there is a Circle of Hell for those who covered up crimes for the sake of power and money, and so there is a Circle of Hell tonight for Pope Benedict XVI who died knowing full well that thousands of young women and men of his own Catholic Church had their lives broken or destroyed all so he could be Pope.

Where the Grifting Takes the GOP

You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you.
-- Lester Freamon, The Wire

In a followup to last week's bombshell that a New York Republican Representative-Elect was a gaslighting fraud, I need to note that the authorities are finally paying attention to George Santos and opening criminal investigations on him. O the irony of grifting your way into elected office letting prosecutors find out you were grifting in the first place.

While the mainstream media is busy assigning blame on who's responsible for Santos getting as far as he has - blaming Democrats for not doing enough Oppo Research, blaming local press for not digging into Santos' bogus resume - the most blame should be aimed at Santos himself for setting himself up for this exposure and ridicule (if not future jail time). After that, most of the blame should be aimed at a Republican Party that is not only vulnerable to con artists buying their way into their ranks, but happily defending the grifters even when their scandals threatens to expose all the other corrupt sins hiding in the GOP closets.

As Jill Dennison notes at her blog:

I could point to so many, such as Marge Greene who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives despite being a follower of QAnon, despite believing that Jewish space lasers (hint, in case any Republicans are reading this, there ain’t no such thing as Jewish space lasers) started the California wildfires.  Or the pistol-totin’ barhop, Lauren Boebert who proudly put a photo of all her children holding big guns on her Christmas cards.  And then, there’s Kevin McCarthy, vying to be the next Speaker of the House, whose only platform is revenge against any and all liberal democratic policies and those of us who support those policies.  But for now, I want to focus on one incoming member of the House, a person who will be seated in the House of Representatives next Tuesday, a person who has broken the boundaries of dishonesty:  George Santos...

This is a new low even for the Republican Party and if, in fact, they allow him to be seated in the House on Tuesday, it will be the most definitive statement yet that there is no conscience, no morals, no values, and no integrity within the Republican Party.  One lie of any substance would have disqualified any Democratic candidate, but Mr. Santos told lies about every single aspect of his entire 34 years!!!  I imagine there are some Republicans who are wishing they could crawl under a rock right about now – Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney – but the rest seem to be scratching their heads and wondering how to get this out of the news, how to make it disappear.  Not a single word from the otherwise garrulous Kevin McCarthy… funny that.

This is, for the Republicans, as bad a nightmare as the former guy, an egomaniac, planning to run for the Oval Office again.  I would pity the Republicans, but … they brought this mess on themselves when they first began letting unqualified circus clowns run for office.  It seems to me that a person who cannot even be relied upon to tell the truth about where he went to college (he didn’t), property he claims to own (but doesn’t), where he has worked, his ancestry, his criminal past, where he lives, cannot possibly be trusted to be an honest lawmaker!  I thought Herschel Walker told some mighty big lies, but Santos even makes him look like an amateur.  Santos is right up there with the former guy, who wouldn’t recognize the truth if it smacked him upside the head!  This is NOT what this nation needs … lawmakers who cannot ever be trusted, whose words and actions must always, always be fact-checked!  But alas, this is the new GOP – which, by the way, no longer stands for “Grand Old Party”, but rather for “Gaslight Or Perjure...”

Dennison - and others - are calling on the Republican leadership to do the right thing, the ethical thing, but the likes of Kevin McCarthy cannot afford to kick Santos to the curb because their control of the US House is on a precarious - 5-seat margin - footing already. McCarthy himself is facing an unheard-of fight of his life for the Speakership, and he needs all the grifters he can find to save his own ass in this moment. Even though Santos will condemn McCarthy - and the rest of the GOP - down the road.

This scandal with Santos is exposing the reality that the Republican Party for all historic purposes is no longer a political party, it's an ongoing criminal conspiracy. As Amanda Marcotte points out at Salon, entire decades of lusting after power has turned a once-proud Party into a haven for grifters: 

One thing was dead certain within moments of the New York Times publishing its exposé on the many lies of George Santos: There was zero chance that this brand new Republican congressman-elect from New York would be shamed into giving up his seat. Perhaps that didn't seem obvious to everyone at first, especially those with lingering memories of the pre-Trump era, when we all pretended to believe that Republican voters cared about hypocrisy, lying, overt racism, sexual abuse or any of the other personal or professional scandals that used to take politicians down routinely. But I never doubted for a moment that Santos would move onward toward being seated and that the incoming Republican House majority would allow it...

Despite all this, the only way he doesn't join Congress as an esteemed member of the Republican caucus is if New York prosecutors can nail him for something first. I believe this in the way I believe that chocolate is delicious and cats are cute. After all, what is the modern GOP, if not a holding station for every two-bit criminal and grifter who wants the job security that can only come with exploiting the endlessly credulous Republican base? The party can no more start kicking out the fraudsters than it can stop trying to cut taxes for the rich. This is just who they are and what they do. George Santos is in no sense an anomaly. He is the Republican present and, even more to the point, the Republican future...

This is what gets delicately described as "negative partisanship" in mainstream media and political science textbooks, and all too often treated as an equal problem on both sides. Of course it's true that both parties include some voters who are more motivated by dislike of the opposing party than by support for their own. But with Democrats, that at least has some basis in real-world concerns, given that Republicans are the party of abortion bans and the Jan. 6 insurrection. But on the other side, Republican voters mostly coast on hyperbolic vitriol about the evils of Democrats, which are at best vague insinuations of corruption, and at worst outright lies and QAnon-style conspiracy theories. 

Convincing Republican voters to believe that Democrats are literally the worst people imaginable certainly helps Republicans win elections. But it's also destabilizing the party from within, because shady characters of all flavors now understand that no sin or crime is so great that it cannot be wiped away by running for office as a Republican. The result is a party full of cranks, chronic liars and petty criminals, a situation that gets worse every election cycle, as demonstrated by the Santos fiasco...

We still don't know where George Santos got the money that allowed him to run and win a congressional election in a pivotal swing district. But he's still likely to be seated next week with no serious impediment, offering America's swindler class another reason to believe that going into Republican politics is like getting a license to commit fraud. There's no real chance of political backlash in a situation like this, with the GOP voter base heavily dosed up on Fox News hate. Worse yet, it seems increasingly clear that federal law enforcement is too afraid of looking "partisan" to prosecute Republican politicians over anything, so there are no serious legal consequences either. Sam Bankman-Fried may be kicking himself for getting into cryptocurrency instead of GOP politics, if what he wanted was the ability to defraud whoever you like with impunity...

I wrote in 2015 that the Republican Party was dead in spirit, with only a decaying body shambling about going through the motions of politics in order to keep all the money and power in their undead uncaring hands. With the 2016 election of donald trump, the Republicans were stuck with the reality that he paved the way for all the other grifters to yell and scream enough on Far Right media outlets to win offices in safe gerrymandered districts (or safe Red states full of Culture War angst). 

With these political offices in their hands, they can con their way to put more government funds in their own pockets. They can then campaign and fundraise to their hearts' desires, sucking up every last penny from the suckers who buy their vitriol and eat it like caviar. This is the new con game, where the liars can make money even if they lose by declaring themselves victims and fundraising off of that.

This is where the modern GOP is. A party filling up with George Santos and a hundred other grifters. Now literally "trumps all the way down." 

trump can't go to jail for his crimes fast enough. Here's hoping he shares a cell block with Santos sooner rather than later. Along with the other Republican grifters thriving off of fear and hate and greed.

The Document of trump's Atrocities

Here's some light reading for this Christmas weekend, everybody.

The Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

At a whopping 845 pages in PDF format.

Dunno if the Republicans will keep it up after they take control of the House in January, so download it while you can!

Don't worry, I made sure my library ordered a print copy for checkout!

If only the professor who taught me Government Documents Librarianship could see me now!

I'm already seeing photos of Giuliani's failed press conference at the Four Seasons Landscaping store front. It's now a matter of official public record. BWHAHAHAHAHA.

'Course, the rest of it is not as funny...

Who IS This Guy?

So a rather bizarre scandal reared its head this week - in a month, nay a life cycle of utter madness ever since 2016 Gods help us, so this being cray-cray is saying something - when the New York Times started looking at the newly elected people from this midterms cycle, and discovered this George Santos who won a US Congressional seat in the Long Island part of New York was, well, lying about his entire goddamn resume and parts of his personal biography.

Since the Times is definitely behind a firewall for me, I'm pilfering much of the info from Raw Story so do help a blog out and donate or subscribe to Raw Story please and thanks. Oh, the report via Travis Gettys (I can't see who the Times reporters are, my bad):

George Santos, a son of Brazilian immigrants who presented himself as a "seasoned Wall Street financier and investor" who owned 13 properties and operated an animal rescue charity, became the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent, but a New York Times review of public documents and court filings called into question his résumé.

Both Citigroup and Goldman Sachs told the newspaper they had no record of Santos working there, as he had claimed, and Baruch College found no record that he had graduated in 2010, also as he claimed.

The Internal Revenue Service also found little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friend of Pets United, was a tax-exempt organization.

It gets crazier.

Santos loaned more than $700,000 to his campaign and donated thousands of dollars to other candidates in the past two years, but his company, the Devolder Organization, has virtually no online presence and his financial disclosures don't reveal any clients -- which election law experts say could be a problem if those clients actually exist.

The Times also could not find any records of the properties his family allegedly owns.

This part of the story quickly raises a ton of red flags. If Santos doesn't have a verified source of employment or income (if he's not earning money from the properties he claims to have, for example), then where the hell did that $700,000 he "loaned" to his own campaign come from? This reeks of money laundering. I mean, for all of the fakery surrounding trump's questionable finances, at least he actually owns stuff he can use as collateral to get loans. 

All anyone can confirm at the moment is that George Santos was caught committing checking fraud in Brazil back in 2010, and that Santos had been evicted from residences several times for missing rent payments. 

With a hot scandal to follow, there's been denials and recriminations and further exposure of Santos' falsehoods. He claimed he lost employees in the tragic Orlando Pulse mass shooting, but nobody can tie any of the fallen to his alleged businesses.  The latest report is that Santos may be lying about his family's Jewish background that they fled due to the coming Second World War and Holocaust. 

There's open questions now if Santos is really gay. After all, he's lied about everything else about himself. (Update: Santos was married to a woman before divorcing in 2019. It could just mean he was bi/closeted and came out afterward. It happens. But he never mentioned the marriage when he campaigned, so... Lie of Omission.)

This story is exposing a lot of sins right now, and not just Santos'. 

The Republican Party at the New York level has to deal with the reality one of their bright new stars is a goddamn fake, not to mention the thousands of campaign dollars they've gotten from this guy puts everyone's ledgers under scrutiny. The entire GOP party in that state has a lot of answering to do.

The Democratic Party at the New York level is also getting yelled at. In this day and age of extreme partisan politics, Oppo Research should be Campaigning 101. This wasn't Santos' first attempt at elected office, and one thing you're supposed to do is go through your opponent's work history and background to find ANY questionable acts and weak spots in their narratives to exploit. While Santos' opponent reportedly did some digging, and then tried to get the papers to follow up, nobody really paid attention until he'd actually won (and ironically getting the attention as a "future GOP star" in a mostly-Dem state). There's a growing push to remove the current party head in New York - who's floundered at keeping the party organized already, this is one more faux pas on him - and this could get ugly.

This is also a massive indictment of our electoral process, especially for the Congressional and state legislative offices. I've complained about this before, that our choices for candidates are barely - if ever - vetted for qualifications to the jobs we're supposed to elect them to. The parties are so desperate to draft celeb candidates - or too beholden to the religious and cultural extremists to allow the more unhinged and vulgar - that they don't care about actual QUALITY of that candidate until it's too late. You would think a stronger background check would be run on these candidates - especially to make sure you don't get anyone like Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott embezzling from your own party's funds - to guarantee you're presenting the Best and the Brightest to reflect your party's ethos. Guess what Republicans, someone like Santos - and so many others - are proving your party has no ethics at all.

It does not help that the only ones who can even put their names on the ballots for consideration are the only ones who can AFFORD - by clean money or laundered - to run in the first place. It costs money to file for an election primary, it costs thousands of dollars to run any kind of campaign. You can see it with Santos working to buy a win with $700,000 that nobody can confirm came from honest business. Elections have turned into a racket, a billion dollar industry that buys you a lot of political influence that can siphon even more taxpayer money into your own pockets later on. Gods help us with that open scandal.

Everything about Santos demands a full criminal investigation.

Hell, we need to run a criminal investigation to find out who George Santos really IS.

Putin's Mistakes

The New York Times published a massive report on the failures and destruction of Putin's ill-advised invasion of Ukraine. The article itself may disappear soon behind a firewall, so there's not much time to read it all at leisure. So here's some of the highlights written by Michael Schwirtz, Anton Troianovski, Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak, Adam Entous and Thomas Gibbons-Neff:

President Vladimir V. Putin’s war was never supposed to be like this. When the head of the C.I.A. traveled to Moscow last year to warn against invading Ukraine, he found a supremely confident Kremlin, with Mr. Putin’s national security adviser boasting that Russia’s cutting-edge armed forces were strong enough to stand up even to the Americans.

Russian invasion plans, obtained by The New York Times, show that the military expected to sprint hundreds of miles across Ukraine and triumph within days. Officers were told to pack their dress uniforms and medals in anticipation of military parades in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

But instead of that resounding victory, with tens of thousands of his troops killed and parts of his army in shambles after nearly 10 months of war, Mr. Putin faces something else entirely: his nation’s greatest human and strategic calamity since the collapse of the Soviet Union...

The Times investigation found a stunning cascade of mistakes that started with Mr. Putin — profoundly isolated in the pandemic, obsessed with his legacy, convinced of his own brilliance — and continued long after drafted soldiers like Mikhail were sent to the slaughter.

At every turn, the failures ran deeper than previously known:

In interviews, Putin associates said he spiraled into self-aggrandizement and anti-Western zeal, leading him to make the fateful decision to invade Ukraine in near total isolation, without consulting experts who saw the war as pure folly. Aides and hangers-on fueled his many grudges and suspicions, a feedback loop that one former confidant likened to the radicalizing effect of a social-media algorithm. Even some of the president’s closest advisers were left in the dark until the tanks began to move. As another longtime confidant put it, “Putin decided that his own thinking would be enough.”

The Russian military, despite Western assumptions about its prowess, was severely compromised, gutted by years of theft. Hundreds of billions of dollars had been devoted to modernizing the armed forces under Mr. Putin, but corruption scandals ensnared thousands of officers. One military contractor described frantically hanging enormous patriotic banners to hide the decrepit conditions at a major Russian tank base, hoping to fool a delegation of top brass. The visitors were even prevented from going inside to use the bathroom, he said, lest they discover the ruse.

Once the invasion began, Russia squandered its dominance over Ukraine through a parade of blunders. It relied on old maps and bad intelligence to fire its missiles, leaving Ukrainian air defenses surprisingly intact, ready to defend the country. Russia’s vaunted hacking squads tried, and failed, to win in what some officials call the first big test of cyberweapons in actual warfare. Russian soldiers, many shocked they were going to war, used their cellphones to call home, allowing the Ukrainians to track them and pick them off in large numbers. And Russia’s armed forces were so stodgy and sclerotic that they did not adapt, even after enduring huge losses on the battlefield. While their planes were being shot down, many Russian pilots flew as if they faced no danger, almost like they were at an air show.

Stretched thin by its grand ambitions, Russia seized more territory than it could defend, leaving thousands of square miles in the hands of skeleton crews of underfed, undertrained and poorly equipped fighters. Many were conscripts or ragtag separatists from Ukraine’s divided east, with gear from the 1940s or little more than printouts from the internet describing how to use a sniper rifle, suggesting soldiers learned how to fight on the fly. With new weapons from the West in hand, the Ukrainians beat them back, yet Russian commanders kept sending waves of ground troops into pointless assaults, again and again. “Nobody is going to stay alive,” one Russian soldier said he realized after being ordered into a fifth march directly in the sights of Ukrainian artillery. Finally, he and his demoralized comrades refused to go.

Mr. Putin divided his war into fiefs, leaving no one powerful enough to challenge him. Many of his fighters are commanded by people who are not even part of the military, like his former bodyguard, the leader of Chechnya and a mercenary boss who has provided catering for Kremlin events. As the initial invasion failed, the atomized approach only deepened, chipping away at an already disjointed war effort. Now, Mr. Putin’s fractured armies often function like rivals, competing for weapons and, at times, viciously turning on one another...

People who know Mr. Putin say he is ready to sacrifice untold lives and treasure for as long as it takes, and in a rare face-to-face meeting with the Americans last month the Russians wanted to deliver a stark message to President Biden: No matter how many Russian soldiers are killed or wounded on the battlefield, Russia will not give up.

One NATO member is warning allies that Mr. Putin is ready to accept the deaths or injuries of as many as 300,000 Russian troops — roughly three times his estimated losses so far...

The more setbacks Mr. Putin endures on the battlefield, the more fears grow over how far he is willing to go. He has killed tens of thousands in Ukraine, leveled cities and targeted civilians for maximum pain — obliterating hospitals, schools and apartment buildings, while cutting off power and water to millions before winter. Each time Ukrainian forces score a major blow against Russia, the bombing of their country intensifies. And Mr. Putin has repeatedly reminded the world that he can use anything at his disposal, including nuclear arms, to pursue his notion of victory...

The article goes into greater detail about how Russian folly, under-planning, lack of flexible battlefield command, and straight-up hubris exposed both Putin and his military for the empty shells they are. Putin in particular gets raked over the coals regarding his disgust of Western nations as "weak and broken" alongside his paranoia those same Western nations were plotting Russia's utter ruin. Well, congratulations to Mr. Putin: It's not the West that's ruining Russia, it's himself.

Mr. Putin rose to power as a deft politician. He could flash charm, humility and a smile, painting himself as a reasonable leader to Russians and foreigners. He knew how to control his facial muscles in tense conversations, leaving his eyes as the only guide to his emotions, people who know him said.

But during his presidency, he increasingly wallowed in a swirl of grievances and obsessions: the West’s supposed disregard for the Soviet Union’s role in defeating Nazi Germany; the fear that NATO would base nuclear missiles in Ukraine to strike Moscow; modern-day gender politics in which, Mr. Putin often says, Mom and Dad are being replaced by “Parent No. 1 and Parent No. 2.”

There is well-known quote, misattributed to Abraham Lincoln but was really by Robert Ignersoll (who was talking about Lincoln at a speech in 1883), that goes "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." Putin was given power, and held onto it for thirty years, and it exposed his character as misogynist, mistrustful, and corrupt.

Once again, Mr. Putin seemed convinced that future generations of Russians could be threatened by the West. He had spent years preparing for precisely such a clash, devoting hundreds of billions of dollars to Russia’s military, supposedly to modernize it and strip out the corruption that had sapped it in the 1990s.

But while Russia made significant headway, Western officials said, a culture of graft and fraud persisted under Mr. Putin that emphasized loyalty above honesty, or even skill. The result was a hodgepodge of elite troops and bedraggled conscripts, advanced tanks and battalions that were powerful only on paper.

“Everyone was stealing and lying. This was a Soviet, and now Russian, tradition,” said Col. Vaidotas Malinionis, a retired Lithuanian commander who served in the Soviet military in the 1980s. Looking at satellite images of the army camp where he served, he said the old barracks and mess hall were still there, with no sign of modernization, and a few buildings had fallen down. “There has been no evolution at all, only regression,” he said.

European, American and Ukrainian officials warned against underestimating Russia, saying it had improved after its muddled invasion of Georgia in 2008. The defense minister overhauled the armed forces, forcibly retired about 40,000 officers and tried to impose more transparency on where money went...

Then, in 2012, that minister — in charge of dragging the military out of its post-Soviet dysfunction — became embroiled in a corruption scandal himself. Mr. Putin replaced him with Sergei K. Shoigu, who had no military experience but was seen as someone who could smooth ruffled feathers.

“Russia drew a lot of lessons from the Georgia war and started to rebuild their armed forces, but they built a new Potemkin village,” said Gintaras Bagdonas, the former head of Lithuania’s military intelligence. Much of the modernization drive was “just pokazukha,” he said, using a Russian term for window-dressing...

Potemkin Village is an old meme regarding things under both Tsarist and then Soviet (and now Putin) rule: A fake, pretty village built in a pretty part of Russia to show off to foreign dignitaries - and oft-times to Russian leaders who like to think everything under their rule is working - and to hide the reality of poor, rotting villages just out of sight. This manufactured self-delusion is such a part of the Russian psyche that they believe other nations do it as well. My dad - a Navy pilot for 20 years - would tell of a Soviet pilot who defected to the U.S. in the 1960s who ended up stationed at his base, and how that pilot visited the base commissary (grocery store) and couldn't believe it was really stocked with so many goods all the time. Dad would tell how that pilot would sneak back during the night to make sure it was real. I know I digress, but it's an anecdote I needed to share. 

Also hark back to the infamous 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, where the Russians were primed to host a glorious event, only to get caught with unfinished buildings, poorly designed rooms, unsafe water, and other logistical nightmares. That's what it's been like under Putin's rule as his oligarchical cronies pilfered and overbilled and underdelivered.

Here's a more relevant anecdote from Putin's deluded empire, how that corruption affected their own military preparedness:

Contractors like Sergei Khrabrykh, a former Russian Army captain, were recruited into the stagecraft. He said he got a panicked call in 2016 from a deputy defense minister. A delegation of officials was scheduled to tour a training base of one of Russia’s premier tank units, the Kantemirovskaya Tank Division, whose history dates to the victories of World War II.

Billions of rubles had been allocated for the base, Mr. Khrabrykh said, but most of the money was gone and virtually none of the work had been done. He said the minister begged him to transform it into a modern-looking facility before the delegation arrived.

“They needed to be guided around the territory and shown that the Kantemirovskaya Division was the coolest,” Mr. Khrabrykh said. He was given about $1.2 million and a month to do the job.

As he toured the base, Mr. Khrabrykh was stunned by the dilapidation. The Ministry of Defense had hailed the tank division as a unit that would defend Moscow in case of a NATO invasion. But the barracks were unfinished, with debris strewn across the floors, large holes in the ceiling and half-built cinder-block walls, according to photos Mr. Khrabrykh and his colleagues took. A tangle of electrical wires hung from a skinny pole.

“Just about everything was destroyed,” he said.

Before the delegation arrived, Mr. Khrabrykh said, he quickly constructed cheap facades and hung banners, covered in pictures of tanks and boasting the army was “stronger and sturdier year by year,” to disguise the worst of the decay. On the tour, he said, the visitors were guided along a careful route through the best-looking part of the base — and kept away from the bathrooms, which had not been repaired.

The punchline?

After the invasion started, the Kantemirovskaya Division pressed into northeastern Ukraine, only to be ravaged by Ukrainian forces. Crews limped away with many of their tanks abandoned or destroyed...

After the invasion, American officials noticed that much of Russia’s equipment was poorly manufactured or in short supply. Tires on wheeled vehicles fell apart, stalling convoys, while soldiers resorted to crowdfunding for clothes, crutches and other basic supplies as the war wore on...

Anybody with a basic understanding of military history will tell you that logistics matter. Your supply chain for your armies better be well-managed and well-stocked, otherwise you're screwed. It's a fact of warfare back to the days of Ancient Sparta well through the World Wars and into modern conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a lesson the Russians apparently failed to learn (again, because they had the same problems in World War I and their Afghanistan conflict of the 1980s) as their leadership's greed got the better of them.

Under Putin, the Russians had no other plan other than "March on Kyiv and claim victory" as their objective:

Unlike its more limited campaigns in places like Syria — or the big hypothetical war with NATO it had long planned for — the invasion of Ukraine was simply “not what the Russian military was designed to do,” putting it in a position it was probably “least prepared” to deal with, said Clint Reach, a researcher at RAND.

In other words, the Kremlin picked the “stupidest” of all potential military options by rushing forward and trying to take over Ukraine, said General Budanov, the Ukrainian military intelligence chief.

Russia had not trained its infantry, air and artillery forces to work in concert, move quickly and then do it all again from a new location, officials said. It did not have a clear Plan B after the march on Kyiv failed, and commanders had long been afraid to report bad news to their bosses...

The Russian Army - feared by Western powers for its size and mechanized armor - wasn't trained or prepped for any kind of occupation. The same kind of problem happened with American forces in the Iraq/Afghanistan wars of the 2000-10s, but in the U.S. case we at least had better trained troops, guys who had been drilled and prepped for anything and were able to adjust to battlefield conditions at a moment's notice. 

As a result, the American forces suffered fewer disasters and fewer casualties over a long period of time: About 15,000 troops lost over roughly 19 years.

Russia's forces, in nine months of fighting in Ukraine, have lost over 100,000 troops (the number can be even higher than that). 

I swear to God. If the United States had seen those kind of losses in the first nine months of fighting in Afghanistan in 2002 or in Iraq in 2003, not only would the anti-war protests in our streets continued non-stop, Congress itself - even with Republicans in control of both houses - would have started bipartisan impeachment hearings on Bush and Cheney. There's no way Americans would have accepted such bloody losses through such incompetence and disregard for our troops' lives.

When one Russian unit arrived in eastern Ukraine, it was quickly whittled down to a haggard few, according to one of its soldiers.

During fighting in the spring, he said, his commanders ordered an offensive, promising artillery to support the attack. It never came, he said, and his unit was devastated.

Yet commanders sent them right back into the melee all the same.

“How much time has passed now? Nine months, I think?” he said. “In this whole time, nothing has changed. They have not learned. They have not drawn any conclusions from their mistakes.”

He recounted another battle in which commanders sent soldiers down the same path to the front, over and over. On each trip, he said, bodies fell around him. Finally, after being ordered to go a fifth time, he and his unit refused to go, he said.

In all, he said, his unit lost about 70 percent of its soldiers to death and injury, ruining any faith he had in his commanders...

The low morale is commonplace across Russia nowadays.

The resignation exists in Moscow, too, where opposition to the war is common, but rarely expressed above whispers.

“We’re giving each other looks, but to say something is impossible,” one former Putin confidant in Moscow said, describing the atmosphere in the halls of power.

Putin's autocratic grip on Russia seems unbreakable even as his people suffer. His delusions and hatred prevent him from admitting any truth that he's the one who screwed up.

In late November, at his suburban Moscow residence, Mr. Putin met with mothers of Russian soldiers. It was a distant echo of one of the lowest moments of his tenure: his encounter with the families of sailors aboard a sunken submarine in 2000, when a crying woman in a remote Arctic town demanded, “Where is my son?”

Twenty-two years later, the Kremlin was careful to prevent such outpourings of grief. Around a long table with individual teapots for the handpicked women — some of them state employees and pro-Kremlin activists — Mr. Putin showed no remorse for sending Russians to their deaths.

After all, he told one woman who said her son was killed in Ukraine, tens of thousands of Russians die each year from car accidents and alcohol abuse. Rather than drinking himself to death, he told her, her son died with a purpose.

“Some people, are they even living or not living? It’s unclear. And how they die, from vodka or something else, it’s also unclear,” Mr. Putin said. “But your son lived, you understand? He reached his goal.”

He told another mother that her son was not only fighting “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine, but also correcting the mistakes after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Russia “enthusiastically indulged in the fact” that the West was “trying to control us.”

“They have a different cultural code,” he told her. “They count the genders there by the dozens...”

Those words are not coming from a rational man. Putin is indulging in the fear-mongering common among Far Right apologists who view their Culture War bullshit as real, and are willing to sacrifice the lives of others to justify that fear. Look at how Putin rationalizes that the soldiers he sent to die in Ukraine "would have died some other way" like drinking themselves to death (which, by the way, is a serious problem in Russia already). The cruelty towards his own Russian people can't stay hidden.

The world has been debating Mr. Putin’s willingness to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. People who know him don’t discount the possibility, but they also believe he expects to defeat the West and Ukraine in a long-term, non-nuclear test of wills.

As one senior NATO intelligence official put it, Russian generals “acknowledge the incompetence, lack of coordination, lack of training. They all recognize these problems.” Still, they seem confident of an “eventual victory” because, the official said, “Putin believes this is a game of chicken between him and the West, and he believes the West will blink first.”

Personally, I doubt it. Too many Eastern European nations are willing to keep Ukraine supplied to ensure a revived Russian Empire doesn't come knocking at their borders. The fact that Russian's military might was never that mighty to begin with - and the reality that sooner or later Russia's gonna run out of missiles and tanks even with the equipment they're getting from their few allies in Iran and China - points to an eventual collapse.

Putin is behaving like he can outlive his enemies, but he's 70 years old and rumors abound he's suffering in poor health. Putin is behaving like he's got enough allies surrounding him to keep him propped up, but he really doesn't: Allies like Belarus, Iran, and China are facing their own problems at home.

Putin keeps making mistakes, trapped by the illusions every dictator suffers from: He believes he is the chosen Great Man of History, that he is the indispensable hero of his nation's story, that he will achieve glory through the sacrifices of others, and that he is never ever wrong.

Everyone else is dying for his mistakes. But it would be an even greater mistake to let him walk away unharmed from the suffering he's caused. Putin needs to answer for his sins, either in a war crimes tribunal or in a Ukrainian jail cell, or in a Russian hospital bed dying from the rot eating at his own body.

Upcoming Projects for 2023

Couple of personal notes intermixed with the blogging: 

Driven by the need to have a printed book to apply Royal Palm Literary Award stickers on the covers, I will be putting together key articles from this blog for publication. I did it before with Surviving the Age of Obstruction back in 2016, and I figure a good follow-up to that would be articles about the rise of trump and the destruction he wrought upon the world for 6-plus years.

...

I shall not use the obvious title "Surviving the Eternal Shitgibbon" since I don't own the trademark on "Shitgibbon," so I DO need a better title to market the damn thing. The subtitle "A Diary of the Trump Years" I think is unavoidable.

I may pull the first book from print, though. It never sold - it had to be the weak title I gave it, and publishing through a bad POD service didn't help - and I want to start fresh.

The other project on my mind is writing a book on American -Isms. Having blogged a bit about libertarianism and pragmatism, I figure I need to define the other major -isms - liberalism, conservatism, socialism, fascism, populism, racism - in our nation's political forums. I want to do this for my niece and nephews, all of whom are in their early 20s and I worry about the disinformation floating out there threatening to suck their brains dry.

So I may be busy this Saturnalian weekend as well as the early months of 2023 getting projects done.

I do know I need to keep blogging here. After all, tomorrow Monday promises to be a busy day.

Thoughts About the 2022 Midterms

A lot of post-midterms articles are out there on the Intertubes, a number of wry observations and urgent recriminations towards Republicans, and I would recommend glancing at Rude Pundit's to get a taste of the schadenfreude getting served over the GOP's historic failures.

I say "failure" even as the Republicans claimed (slim) control of the U.S. House of Representatives - and retained control of a number of Red states - because it's been traditional in the modern era of partisan politics that the party in opposition to the White House - this year the Republicans in opposition to the Democratic President Biden - wins big in the following midterms. This year, the Republicans were expecting a "Red Wave" to counter the 2018 "Blue Wave" that gave Democrats control of the House vs. donald trump.

The polling - mostly from conservative-leaning providers like RCP - were all pointing to a huge 30-seat flip of the House. There were a number of projections Republicans could regain a tightly fought Senate, even in spite of the crazed candidates running in various campaigns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and Arizona (and several others).

Republicans were beating the war drums hard on the economy, railing against signs of a recession as inflation (re: gas prices) soared to levels that hurt any President's standing with voters.

This was also all happening with the 2022 district realignments for the House, where the updated Census numbers required new maps and allowed the parties - yes, Democrats did it too - to aggressively gerrymander those districts to give them advantages. Republicans held the gerrymander advantage due to controlling enough battleground states to outduel the Dems (who also shot themselves in the foot by not gerrymandering New York to their advantage, screw you Andrew Cuomo).

Throw in the Republicans attempts at voter suppression - far greater than what they had in 2018 and 2020 - and there was every likelihood that turnout would drop, hurting Democratic chances.

And with all of that going the Republicans' way... they STILL failed to retake the Senate - which added an extra Democratic seat meaning the 50-50 power-sharing is no longer working and Mitch McConnell can suck it - and their win in the House was by a meager five seats, causing headaches for party leadership they weren't expecting.

It is, according to historians, the worst midterm performance for an opposition party since 1962. There was a similar situation for Democrats in 2002 failing against Dubya, but the 9/11 attacks and the patriotic fervor clearly skewed the situation. There were the Republicans failing against FDR in 1934, but the Great Depression was still happening and a lot of Americans still hated them and Hoover for screwing them over.

The Republicans ought to be rejoicing in that they control the House, which they can use to investigate Biden's administration family for scandals every day they meet on the Hill, and file every impeachment complaint until all they do is vote on embarrassing Biden and Harris for the 2024 campaign (lacking control of the Senate, no impeachment will go their way: For the Republicans it's all about making the Democrats look corrupt and weak to their own voting base). They are openly planning repeated hearings over Russia's planted evidence Hunter Biden's laptop, as it's the only thing they can do other than force federal shutdowns to break the entire government.

Instead, the Republicans are in-fighting over the poor results. They were expecting a wave and all they got was a trickle. The My Pillow guy Mike Lindell - who is constantly shilling conspiracy theories for trump's Big Lie about "stolen votes" - is challenging for control of the RNC, arguing the current head - Mitt Romney's daughter Ronna McDaniel - failed to inspire better turnout. There were a number of reports of GOP leaders railing against trump's involvement, pushing on them unstable and unpopular candidates like Hershel Walker in Georgia who hurt turnout among needed independent voters.

There are going to be post-mortems, autopsies, follow-up reports, what have you, which the Republicans will ignore like they did after they were stunned in 2012, when they expected four years of Tea Party fauxrage would turn America against Obama. The GOP's response after that loss was to double-down on the Far Right fearmongering to encourage their voting base to stay faithful, and they've been spiraling downward ever since thanks to trump's takeover in 2016.

If the midterms are showing me anything, these are the observations I've made:

Like Bob Burnett points out at Common Dreams, the American electorate is polarized to the point of frozen stasis. In previous eras before the Culture War shifted all of the Conservative votes to the Republicans after 1994, there was an expectation of centrist/moderate party voters crossing the aisle to vote for candidates or issues regardless of party. By 2014, branding won out: Republicans (tm) can no longer find themselves voting for ANY Democrat (tm) (and the same goes for Dems refusing to vote for any GOPer) even when the issues should compel them to vote for the other party that's in favor of those issues.

While this means you can rely on your party base, it means you can't expect any more voters to flip your way. Whatever independent/No Party Affiliate voters are out there, you find yourself praying for them to show up for you to overcome any demographic limitations you've already set for your party with the gerrymandering and suppression. And voter turnout for NPAs is unreliable at best.

The results are also telling me that for the Republicans this is the best they can do for turnout, and they STILL screwed up. This is as far as they can get for voter turnout and numbers going their way. Even WITH the extreme gerrymandering favoring them, even WITH the voter suppression laws they put in place to reduce turnout numbers... the Republicans STILL couldn't pull off a Red Wave of their own.

For every voter the GOP had on their side showing up angry over inflation, the Democrats had voters showing up angry over the loss of abortion rights. For every Red state they held onto, the Republicans lost control of a couple of state legislatures they could not afford to lose.

And this was the midterms. Voter turnout for Presidential election cycles are higher, and 2024 could well be a repeat of 2020 in that regard.

This is also something hurting Republicans in the long run: The inevitable demographic shift of older (Boomer) voters to younger (Gen Z/Millennial) voters is starting to happen. One of the things the Republicans realized in 2012 was that by 2028, simple dying off of the older generations that make up the Conservative voting base will increase just as the kids who grew up watching Republicans burn everything down will get old enough to vote. (The divided Generation X sitting between the two generations is too small a voter bloc - they're the ones not showing up to vote at all - to help Republicans) We are looking at a one-two punch for Liberal-leaning younger voters that could flip even Red states Blue in ways that suppression and gerrymandering can't stop. 

It's one big reason why the Republicans doubled-down anyway: They figured that the 2028 demographic shift was unstoppable, so they worked in the short-term to dominate Congress and the White House to ensure the one thing that could counter that Blue shift - a Far Right Supreme Court - would be in place to prevent the full liberalization of America that would undo everything they've done since Reagan's tenure.

In the short term, the Far Right won. In the long term, the bill for all the damage they've done - the racism, the deficits, the corruption made worse by trump's rise to power - is coming due. This middling, frustrating midterm fiasco for the Republicans is the beginning of the end of the control they've had on the public discourse since 1980.

And it terrifies them. The Far Right Republican base have a pretty good idea what these midterms mean, and the panic showing through their ongoing performative outrage is going to get worse.

The Wingnuts are about to double-down on the previous double-down to turn crazier than they've ever been. Stay safe, people.

And Io Saturnalia!

A Major Grift

So yesterday, donald "Prep Me For a Perp Walk" trump got on his social media app claiming "A MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT" happening today (Dec. 15th).

Speculation went rampant. Some were pondering him making a media attack on the various criminal and civil cases he was facing in New York City, with this weird artwork of him posing in a superhero outfit outside his Trump Tower.

Bill Kristol went as far as suggesting this was trump making a move for the Speakership of the U.S. House (fun fact, anybody can serve as Speaker, you don't have to be an elected Representative).

I have to admit I saw Kristol's tweeting on the matter as well as a few others repeating the same thing, and I have to admit I panicked. The possibility of trump forcing himself upon the Congressional Republicans in a do-or-die decision carried the possibility of party breakdown and open civil war.

So what DID happen when trump made his MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT this morning?

Trading cards.

The goddamn Shitgibbon is shilling trading cards of his likeness - drawn as 'manly' figures like cowboys, astronauts, and superheroes - for his followers to gobble up like collectibles, all at the low low price of $99.00 a card. And they're not even physical cards: They're NFTs, fully digital, not even real at all.

The tension went from "What the fuck will happen" to "WHAT THE FUCK HE DOING NOW?"

I had to go to Kotaku's Sisi Jiang for more detail:

A new line of, expensive Non-Fungible Tokens is apparently the “major announcement” Trump first teased yesterday, in a Truth Social post declaring that “AMERICA NEEDS A SUPERHERO!” The accompanying teaser video showed a brief glimpse of a muscled, Trump-like figure adorned like Superman, complete with animated lasers beaming from its eyes. And now we know: That “major announcement” is just a new line of NFTs.

Aside from Trump shooting flaming lasers out of both of his eyes, other NFTs in the range feature him photoshopped awkwardly in gaudy outfits. But wait, there’s more! If you buy one of these “digital collectibles,” you could win the opportunity to meet him over dinner, play a round of golf, or speak to the ex-president over a Zoom call.

I don’t know what’s more depressing: the sheer insecurity that oozes from these NFT trading cards, or the plausibility that his cult of Republican goons might actually purchase these in droves...

If he manages to sell 40 of these “trading cards,” then he’d be able to pay off the $4,000 he owes for being found in contempt of court on Tuesday. I wish him all the best.

All of this storm and fury coming out of trump, and it all ends up yet another grift from him, another attempt to squeeze as much money from the TRUMP (tm) brand he possibly can before the courts take whatever real money he has left from his crumbling empire.

I should have known. We all should have known. Everything about trump is about him making money. Even the Presidency, and the ongoing campaigning he does to try and get back into high office so he can avoid criminal accountability for every con job he's been running all these years.

If the results of last week's jury decision is any indication, trump is quickly losing revenue streams he used to rely on. he's going back to the "Trump Steaks" scheme of old where he took someone else's product and slapped his name on it to sell it at a higher price. Here he's taking other people's artwork of him and shilling them as collectibles even as everyone else can visit the website and copy the images for themselves without giving a rat's ass what the NFT status will be.

It's a joke of a con game. Damn me - and everybody else - for getting suckered by it.

In the meantime, you don't need to waste any $99 on something that's not even worth a wooden nickel. You ought to spend that $99 on coming up with a collectible card game that people can actually play, and getting a gaming company to buy it/market it for you. Make something useful and real, America. Gods help us if anybody buys trump's junk.

The Crimes Clearly Defined

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.
-- Albert Camus

Following up on the local aspects of the January 6th Insurrection here among the Tampa Bay denizens. A jury convicted a man involved with the riot on charges related to his involvement on Capitol Hill (via Dan Sullivan at the Tampa Bay Times (paywall)): 

Jeremy Brown, a former U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant linked to the Jan. 6 insurrection, was found guilty Monday on six of 10 federal criminal charges related to weapons and classified information that authorities found in his Tampa home.

After a weeklong trial, a jury of six men and six women deliberated about five hours Monday afternoon before deciding that Brown was guilty of illegally possessing two guns, a pair of hand grenades and a single classified document related to the search for a formerly missing soldier in Afghanistan.

But the panel also found Brown not guilty of possessing four other documents related to national defense, which federal agents found on a CD inside his girlfriend’s recreational vehicle...

I do wonder if the federal prosecutors will now go after the girlfriend for those classified docs in her RV, or did she turn state's evidence already...? Anywho:

Federal agents found the illegal items last year during a search of Brown’s property amid a probe into his connection to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.

He’s accused in a separate case in Washington, D.C., of being among the rioters who disrupted certification of the 2020 election results, though Brown is not accused of actually entering the Capitol building.

Brown didn’t deny that the sawed-off shotgun and the short-barreled rifle that agents found at his home were his. The guns were not registered in a federal database, as required by law.

But his attorney, Roger Futerman, argued to the jury that most of the other items — including the grenades and a CD with a red label marked “secret” which contained documents detailing military activities in Afghanistan — were planted by federal agents.

The defense lawyer pointed to forensic evidence that showed DNA on the hand grenades came from someone other than Brown. He also highlighted a number of peculiarities in the way agents conducted and documented the search. Most notably: they turned off Brown’s home security cameras upon entering.

“The evidence was manipulated and planted,” Futerman said. “I can’t tell you when it was planted or who planted it. But the forensics don’t lie.”

Futerman also asserted that for Brown to be guilty of possessing classified material related to national defense, there would have to be proof that he had a “bad purpose” for the material...

Having followed the classified documents scandal involving trump at Mar-A-Lago (and now arguably other unsecured places), I've seen that argument Futerman makes, and that it's already been debunked. The government doesn't have to prove "bad purpose" regarding classified documents, all they have to prove is that you SHOULD NOT HAVE THOSE DOCS IN THE FIRST PLACE, and it's looking like the jury understood that.

Arguing that the feds planted evidence is always a legal defense, but without actual proof of the frame-up what the hell else could Futerman claim? Brown confessed to having illegal firearms anyway, why would the feds throw in (metaphorically) a bunch of illegal grenades and (not-so-metaphorically) classified documents? If they were trying to frame Brown with relation to his January 6th actions, why didn't the feds set up more "fake evidence" tying him to that in order to create a "stronger case" on the insurrection charges Brown will face later in DC?

The jury had to consider the conspiracy angles that Futerman was selling them, and refused to buy what he was offering. The simplest explanation after all - that Brown was caught red-handed by the people investigating him for crimes elsewhere - is usually the correct one.

Brown is, by the by, one of hundreds - as of this week, there are 465 rioters who've already plead guilty, out of 960 charged (so far), and by my count about 12 convicted by juries - tied into trump's insurrection effort that have faced the music (also known as "fucked around, found out"). There were roughly 2000 people present at the break-in to the Capitol building, although not all of them have faced legal consequences so far. The Justice Department seems to be focusing on the more violent ones, the rioters who actively attempted to interfere with the Electoral College count and the confirmation of Joe Biden's Presidential win.

trump's insurrectionists can whine and claim they're being framed all they want. But we all witnessed what happened that January 6th. Their crimes are clearly defined. It's now a question of them paying for what they've broken.

Suspicions About A DeSantis Ally

This was something unsettling happening this weekend in Jacksonville, Florida: A DeSantis political ally and fundraising supporter found dead of a suspected suicide (via Ryan Dailey for news channel WCJB): 

Kent Stermon, a Jacksonville-area businessman and member of the state university system’s Board of Governors, was found dead in an apparent suicide Thursday night, law enforcement officials confirmed on Friday.

Stermon was found “deceased, alone in a locked vehicle” in the parking lot of a post office in Atlantic Beach by a post-office employee, an Atlantic Beach Police Department report said.

“There is no suspected foul play. The investigation is being worked as a suicide,” a news release from the police department said.

According to the report, Stermon had been sought as a missing person by the sheriff’s office shortly before he was found deceased. Stermon apparently took his own life amid an ongoing probe by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office...

Stermon was president and chief operating officer of Total Military Management, a logistics company that enables “Department of Defense qualified transportation service providers to better serve the military marketplace,” according to its website.

A politically connected figure in Northeast Florida, Stermon --- who was named “citizen of the year” by the sheriff’s office in 2016 --- was part of the host committee for the 2020 Republican National Convention in Jacksonville.

Stermon also was a donor to Gov. Ron DeSantis and served on his transition team in 2018. Stermon contributed a combined $53,250 to DeSantis and his political committee Friends of Ron DeSantis between 2018 and 2022, including a $25,000 contribution to DeSantis’ committee on Nov. 30, 2021.

DeSantis appointed Stermon to the Board of Governors in March 2019. Stermon served as chairman of the board’s Audit and Compliance Committee.

This was a connected guy making money off of government contracts, with his hands in a lot of Republican activities. Notice the quid pro quo of DeSantis putting Stermon on the Board of Governors overseeing our state university system.

Just what exactly were the law enforcement investigating Stermon for?

The Politico website has something to note, not official of course (reported by Matt Dixon):

Waters said that because the investigation remains active, there is “limited information available to release at this time.” The Florida Times-Union reported, citing unidentified law enforcement sources, that authorities were examining allegations of sexual misconduct.

When I heard the news about Stermon, my first thought was "Is any of this tied to the Joel Greenberg/Matt Gaetz matter we've been waiting years on for resolution?"

Last we heard anything major about that ongoing scandal was back in 2021, when Greenberg agreed to plead to six major charges the feds had out of THIRTY-THREE (!) possible, in exchange for Greenberg giving more details about any other illegal activities tied to his county and state-level work with other politicians (hint: Republicans) and business figures (hint: also Republicans).

It's been almost 18 months waiting, but this December the feds finally put Greenberg away, with the judge sentencing him to 11 years in prison. Prosecutors argued for a relatively lighter sentence on Greenberg because he had given them useful information about other state-level figures - the numbers bounce between eight to twenty-five other suspects - involved in the sex trafficking investigation.

With Stermon under similar investigation when he took his own life, I am pondering if there's a link here.

I'm also wondering about this week's other state scandal of the "Don't Say Gay" hypocrite State Rep. Harding getting charged with acts of wire fraud involving COVID-19 bailout funds that Greenberg was also committing.

I'm still waiting for Matt Gaetz to face these moments. Gaetz was tied to so many of Greenberg's antics - and Gaetz has shown so much bad behavior on his own related to these matters - it's impossible to believe he will walk away from any justice here.

Give us that wonderful Saturnalia gift of Gaetz in a perp walk, people.

Ukrainian Spirit for 2022

Just making a quick note about this, as I haven't written about Ukraine for some time: Russia is getting it's collective ass kicked, Putin is desperately lobbing rockets at civilian targets committing war crimes because he can't do anything else to win, and the world is heading into a long winter waiting for Putin to admit defeat before his own army freezes to death.

As we're getting to the end of the year, media outlets tend to start doling out honors: Few rank higher than TIME magazine's Person of the Year award, although to be honest there's been a lot of years they get it wrong (Elon Musk?! YOU FOOLS).

This year, however, was a no-brainer: The minute Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky uttered "I need ammo, not a ride" on the eve of the Russian invasion into his country, he triggered every pro-Churchillian editor and pundit into fangirlish delight. It was obvious TIME was going to name Zelensky as Person of the Year:

slightly surprised TIME didn't redo their classic red border
with a blue and yellow pattern. Alas.

In recognition that all of Ukraine is fighting for their existence in the face of Russian imperialism, the magazine is sharing the honor with "Ukrainian people's fighting spirit." But yeah, it's the steel balls on Zelensky we're honoring here.

I can think of a couple of bastards - Putin and trump - fuming at the honor going to the guy humiliating their own broken identities. Good. Suck it, losers.

 

The Hypocrisy of Pickpockets in Florida

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.
-- Mark Twain

Some days, you got to remind yourself that the louder and pious the elected official behaves in public, the likelier it is that elected official is a hypocritical pickpocket.

Case in point: This morning the news let out that the Florida state legislator who authored the odious "Don't Say Gay" law that the Far Right Republicans shoved down our throats was charged by the feds for stealing from the federal COVID-19 bailout funds. Via Edwin Rios at the Guardian: 

A federal grand jury has indicted the Florida state representative Joe Harding, the Republican lawmaker who authored the “don’t say gay” bill, for Covid business relief fraud and money laundering, the justice department announced on Wednesday.

Between December 2020 and March 2021, Harding, 35, committed wire fraud when he took part in a “scheme to defraud” the Small Business Administration and obtained Covid-related relief funds for small businesses under false pretenses, according to a federal indictment.

Harding, whose biography lists him as a “home healthcare executive” and a member of the Chamber of Commerce, allegedly “fraudulently obtained” more than $150,000 in funds from the Small Business Administration...

Harding’s home health agency is located in Ocala. After state redistricting created a new electorate, Harding moved to Ocala to be closer to his job and ran for house district 24, according to Florida Politics. He authored the Parental Rights in Education Act, which prohibits educators from talking about matters of gender and sexual identity in schools, a move that advocates worried would “erase” LGBTQ+ students and their history...

It's not mentioned in the article, but I bet you a couple wooden nickels that Harding is one of those happy Christian warriors, the kind who love to claim they follow all of Jesus' teachings and live by every word they can quote from the Bible. The state-level Republicans are full of such Bible Thumpers who enjoy the sadism of thumping everybody else's heads with the thick Bibles in their hands.

Considering how Harding is openly crusading against Gays and Trans identities, he's likely one of those Christian warriors who'll quote the passages against homosexuality and any kind of gender identity they view as deviancy.

I guarantee you Harding will never quote the parts of the Bible where Jesus commanded us to love each other, the open act of Grace that defines acceptance regardless of race or gender or gender preference. 

Based on the federal charges leveled against Harding, he certainly never paid attention to God's Commandments like, oh:

You shall not steal (taking $150,000 that didn't belong to you).

You shall not covet thy neighbor's belongings (a thief in high office tends to covet the trappings of wealth, the cars, the big toys, the even bigger houses).

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (lying in general - such as falsely claiming workers you never hired - tends to be a violation of ethics as well as faith).

Harding is one of many Republicans who rail on religious grounds against the very existence of gay and trans people, and then hypocritically commit crimes against everyone else thinking that their political and religious status will shield them from accountability.

Well, guess what Harding? Your hypocrisy does not shield you. You are now about to answer to Man's Law with regards to your greed and envy.

Just wonder how you'll excuse all that greed away with the God's Law that you never held true.

P.S. KEEP SAYING "GAY", FLORIDA. Harding doesn't speak for us, that's for damn sure.

Update: That was quick. Harding resigns from his office. It won't change much - the Florida lege is so dominated by Republicans they could lose 20 of them and not blink an eye - but it does suggest he had no room to run.

Let the Guilty Verdicts Be Read: trump Is Toast December 2022 edition

Let the Schadenfreude be served. Let the people celebrate. Send some to the common pulpits, and cry out "Liberty, Freedom, and an End to trump franchises!"

I want to hug the army of the Potomac investigators into trump's tax schemes. I want to get the whole of the army of Vicksburg Manhattan District Attorney's office drunk at my own expense. I want to fight some small trump and thrash him.
-- paraphrasing/updating the celebratory words of Henry Adams

Ah, just in case you didn't hear the joyous cheers this afternoon, that New York City criminal trial on the Trump Organization's tax mischief had the jury verdict returned, and the jury found trump's corporate empire guilty on ALL counts (via Andrea Bernstein, Ilya Marritz, and Brian Mann at NPR):

A jury in Manhattan has found former President Donald Trump's company guilty of a long-running criminal tax fraud scheme that lasted into his presidency.

Though Trump and his company have repeatedly faced criminal investigations, this case marks the first time his company has been charged, tried, and convicted on criminal charges.

Trump built his political brand, in large part, on his claim that he was an aggressive and successful businessman...

Considering the number of bankruptcies trump filed over the decades, he was gaslighting about the "successful businessman" bit, and this court verdict confirms it. I digress, let's return to the report:

In all, the jury found two entities controlled by Trump guilty on 17 counts of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. The maximum penalty is $1.6 million.

"This was a case about lying and cheating, false documents to the aid of evading taxes for the benefit of individuals and the corporation," Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said, speaking with reporters after the verdict was delivered.

In a statement, the Trump Organization criticized the verdict and promised to appeal, arguing that blame should fall on the company's executives and not on the firm itself.

"The notion that a company could be held responsible for an employees' actions, to benefit themselves, on their own personal tax returns is simply preposterous," the statement read...

This is trump trying to shift the blame on his handlers, on the people who answered to him when it came to running his corporation. If that was true, then it undercuts any claim trump makes about being the guy who makes all the tough decisions, of being in control of anything. trump can't run from being held accountable here: the company getting convicted has his name on it.

At issue in this trial was whether Weisselberg and another top executive, Trump Organization comptroller Jeffrey McConney acted "in behalf of" the corporate entities when they compensated Weisselberg and other top executives by paying for the apartments and luxury benefits that did not get reported to the tax authorities.

Well, issue resolved. The jury believed that Weisselberg and McConney acted in behalf of and on orders from the company executives... which is pretty much trump and half his family.

If there's any damper on the festivities happening tonight, it's the reality that donald trump himself - nor his eldest sons and daughter who were part of these schemes - will not face direct punishment for these crimes. For reasons I still don't fathom, the Manhattan DA's office decided not to pursue trump himself, focusing on the corporate entity itself as though the evidence they had was sufficient only for that.

Thing is, the swiftness of this jury decision, and the fact the jurors convicted on ALL counts, underscores the possibility that even one criminal charge - say, the First Degree charge on Scheme to Defraud - could have been proven in court today. It seems a shame that the DA refused to risk that.

The good news: With the wrap-up on this case - even before the jury verdict was read - DA Bragg had decided to reconsider a criminal matter that should directly imperil trump. Remember the Stormy Daniels Hush Money payoff that sent trump's bagman lawyer Michael Cohen to the slammer? Bragg reportedly is looking into using the information revealed in the tax fraud convictions to reopen the Daniels affair. If you'll recall, trump squeaked out of that matter as "Unindicted Co-Conspirator Individual One." All things being equal, with Cohen and Daniels likely to testify against him, trump won't stay unindicted for long.

A more direct impact from this verdict is that trump's business empire faces dire financial disruptions from here on. Not just the fines - which honestly aren't that severe for even a middling operation like trump's - but the reality that banks, lenders, and other corporations may be restricted in doing any business with the Trump Organization at all. trump's ability to keep grifting is going to take a huge hit.

And this criminal trial has ties to an even bigger headache for trump: The New York State's civil case against trump and his corporation for tax fraud and other financial shenanigans on a grander scale than what the City Attorney could pursue. Not only facing $250 million in fines, the civil case headed by State AG Letitia James could impose harsh sanctions that could pretty much shut the Trump Org completely down. James had a strong case going before this verdict, she has a stronger case going forward.

The best possible thing we can see now is how this jury conviction hurts trump's political chances heading into 2024. Before all this, trump could brazenly strut about claiming he was a great businessman, the best, successful at everything, untouchable. This conviction is the first real dent into trump's illusory gaslighting. All his "success" came from cheating, from evading taxes. trump is not really a success at all.

trump may not be directly convicted, but his empire, the one with his name on it, is convicted. This becomes an albatross around trump's neck he cannot remove. Every political rival he'll face will be able to kick him on these jury rulings and he won't be able to bluff and lie his way out of it.

We can say it truthfully: trump is a tax fraud.

trump is vulnerable now.

trump is toast.

Revel in the Schadenfreude, America.