Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Monday, April 17, 2023
Public Says The Supreme Court Gets Too Mixed In Politics
This chart reflects the results of the newest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between April 8th and 11th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,322 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 3.1 points, and for registered voters is 2.9 points.
The Current Reality In The Ukrainian Fight For Freedom
How are the Ukrainians doing in their fight for independence? Can they win? Here is an assessment of the situation by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius:
Hope is not a strategy, as pragmatic military analysts often observe. But still, Ukraine’s will to win — its determination to expel Russian invaders from its territory at whatever cost — might be the X-factor in the decisive season of conflict ahead.
Nearly two months have passed since U.S. intelligence analysts assessed that the war in Ukraine was locked in a “grinding campaign of attrition” and was “likely heading toward a stalemate,” according to one of the scores of documents allegedly leaked by Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira.
So, what’s the order of battle, on the eve of Ukraine’s planned spring counteroffensive to break the impasse and drive back the Russians? Rather than depend on older assessments from the leaked documents, I spoke Thursday with several senior U.S. officials who follow the war closely. This account is based on their comments.
Little has changed to alter the basic picture, officials told me.
The good news for Ukraine is that Russia’s planned winter offensive has failed to take much ground. The Russians have lost thousands of soldiers in an attempt to seize Bakhmut and control the surrounding Donbas region. They have gained control of 70 to 80 percent of Bakhmut, but the Ukrainians have held on at a terrible cost, avoiding a symbolic defeat.
U.S. officials have argued for months that Ukrainian forces should retreat to higher ground west of Bakhmut, which they could defend more easily. But the Ukrainians, led by President Volodymyr Zelensky, chose to stand and fight. As in the first days of the war, a Ukrainian campaign buoyed more by hope than military logic did better than the Pentagon expected.
Bakhmut has been a “meat grinder,” according to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch who controls the Wagner Group militia, whose convict-troops have spilled rivers of blood there. Prigozhin wrote in a Telegram post on Friday: “Bakhmut is extremely beneficial for us, [as] we grind the Ukrainian army there and restrain their movement.” But a further Russian breakthrough remains, “to put it mildly, not very likely.”
The “special military operation,” as Russia calls its Ukraine invasion, “will solve many of [its] tasks” by holding current territory, “plus or minus a couple of tens of kilometers,” Prigozhin said. This continuing stalemate apparently would satisfy Russian hopes for a limited victory. Prigozhin’s dark salutation: “See you at Bakhmut.”
Russia keeps feeding the grinder. They resupply their lines around Bakhmut as fast as they lose people, one U.S. official said. But he cautioned that some members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle know that this protracted campaign is folly and that resistance to Putin inside Russia is slowly growing.
“Many of those who supported the special operation yesterday are now in doubt or categorically against what is happening,” Prigozhin noted.
An example of this internal dissent was in evidence on a phone call that was leaked last month, in which two prominent Russians denounced the country’s leaders as “stupid cockroaches” who are “dragging their country downwards” and “destroying its future.” According to Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “rage and despair” are increasingly widespread among the Russian elite.
A startling sign of this ferment was the defection in October of Gleb Karakulov, a member of Putin’s Kremlin palace guard known as the Federal Protective Service, or FSO. “Our president has become a war criminal. It is time to end this war and stop being silent,” Karakulov saidafter fleeing to Turkey from Kazakhstan, where he had accompanied Putin on a trip. Until he defected, Karakulov had been responsible for Putin’s communications security and had made more than 180 trips with him.
What’s the Ukrainian combat goal? To break out of the Donbas stalemate, Zelensky has been planning a counteroffensive that would use new tanks and other mobile vehicles, protected by air-defense equipment and backed by recently recruited and trained troops. The aim is a fast-moving combined-arms campaign that would punch through heavily fortified Russian lines in the east and south.
U.S. officials recognize the obstacles that Ukraine faces in this ambitious plan. Officials still concur with a February assessment: that “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive,” and that the most likely outcome remains only modest territorial gains.
But the Ukrainians have accomplished combat miracles before, and U.S. officials share the hope it can happen again. “Based on rehearsals and war games, they do have a chance of success,” says one senior Pentagon official.
As Ukraine steps toward the moment of decision, the United States must be certain it has given them all the tools they need to succeed. President Biden doesn’t want to start World War III, but he will look back with regret if the United States and its allies leave any weapons or ammunition on the sidelines that could responsibly be used in this conflict. Whatever Biden might wish later he had done if things go badly, he should do now.
Sunday, April 16, 2023
Most Say Thomas' Failure To Disclose Gifts Was Wrong
Trump Releases His FEC-Required Financial Report
Donald Trump has released is financial disclosure report (late, as usual). For masochists among you, you can go here to read the entire 101 page report. For the rest of us, CNN has provided a short synopsis. Here is what they say the report contains:
The filing includes the listing of hundreds of Trump’s assets, from properties like his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to royalties from his books.
Trump reported more than $5 million in income from speaking engagements, according to the financial disclosure report.
The former president also reported earning between $100,001 to $1 million in income from NFTs according to the filing.
Additionally, he reported that Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., an umbrella company connected to his social media venture, Truth Social, is valued between $5,000,001 and $25 million. But Trump, who owns 90% of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., reported little to no income from that asset.
The filing underscores the global reach of Trump’s business interests as he campaigns for president yet again. He reported, for instance, more than $5 million in royalties from what is described as “DT Marks Oman LLC.”
The New York Times reported in November that the Trump Organization had struck a deal with a Saudi real estate company to build a Trump hotel, villa and golf course in Oman as part of a $4 billion project.
A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to questions about the filing Friday evening.
Of the 16 books listed by Trump, “The Art of the Deal” – his 1987 memoir that dispensed business advice – was the biggest money-maker, netting royalties between $100,000 and $1 million, according to the disclosure. Most of the books drew royalties of less than $201.
According to the filing, the majority of former first lady Melania Trump’s income comes from royalties through MKT World LLC, which she lists between $1 million to $5 million, as well as rental income from a real estate deal in Slovenia, which provides between $1,000 to $15,000 in income.
Trump reported paying off six mortgages and taking on two more on his existing properties. Two of the mortgage payoffs, for Miami and Washington properties, were loaned by Deutsche Bank – which said it would refrain from future business with Trump in the wake of the January 6, 2021, insurrection. His Washington mortgage that was paid off was for the Old Post Office Building, which housed a Trump hotel near the White House. Trump’s company sold the lease on that property last year.
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