Obama was president for 8 years, dawg

But the invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia happened halfway into Obama's 2nd term.

We don't want people to enable him by letting him use their cars.

Maybe we could put his name in a registry, so people will know not to lend him their car(s).

The idea isn't to punish him as much as to keep him from driving.

If he drives without a license, he goes to jail; and that car is impounded for a long time (maybe at lower rates if a far cheaper lot or garage is found) regardless who owns it (and if he stole it, the owner gets to keep the car, but he goes to jail longer).

How many joules?

Might be just as well, as the MAGAts seem to be pro-coal—and thus better/less bad fossil fuels that are less carbon-based than coal, I suppose.

I said Russia has been hitting targets further and further West via ballistic missile. You asked me how much territory they gained. I said that these two things (long range strikes and territorial capture) are unrelated.

Okay;

but they been hitting Kyiv for years, it's just that their drones/missiles are now faster, and like the Shaheds, will take Ukrainians awhile before they again come up with better ways to counter them.

I know little of what's going on in Ukraine, be it rural or urban, but I figure that the population has been taking measures to better cope with Putin attacking civilian targets and civilians. I'm sure the per capita ownership of batteries (both lithium, lead-acid, and others), PVCs, wood stoves, maybe a few portable steam engines and small wind turbines—might as well make use of the winter gales—water storage, increased stores of necessities, potassium iodide (because Russia might use tactical nukes and we don't want a repeat of Hiroshima or Nagasaki were there were presumably fewer sandbags, no protection for thyroids, white shadows, etc), have increased.

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Russia has clearly been focused on the border between Russia and Ukraine - multi-layered defense, political ambiguity through referenda, international humanitarian justification, etc. Russian territorial gains and losses are almost entirely confined to the Donbas region.

I agree that their occupation of Crimea and Donbas have been fortified, and probably like Ulster/Northern Ireland, will remain separated for years if not decades (no reason for diplomatic concessions, though).

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But also, Ukraine has industrial capabilities in the West that they are using to fight the war. Russia doesn’t need to gain territory to hit those targets with ballistics. It’s a different conversation.

Russia tried to invade much, if not most (maybe all) of Ukraine in 2022. They failed, but in for a penny and all of that.

It seems that Putin has hunkered down for the long term. Maintain control of Crimea and Donbas, maybe expand a little, and try to fight a war of attrition with air strikes minus traditional air superiority. Where the US failed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and Vietnam, with actual airplanes as well as with missiles, rockets, and shells, so will Russia fail even more with at least most of Ukraine.

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Where they might be related is where those capabilities that Russia is targeting are capabilities that Ukraine is using on the front lines in the Donbas. But the effectiveness of launching a missile barrage at Kiev is not measured in territory gains or losses in the Donbas.

Again, it looks like a war of attrition: attempt to weaken the tax/industrial base of Ukraine to defend itself, be it in Donbas or Kyiv, mixed with psychology, i.e. try to weary Ukrainians—somewhat like Israel against Gaza, though Israel's attacks are far more intense and brutal, and their case, probably (but not certainly) will be more successful.

Obama literally took the position that sending weapons was too provacative and might cause a violent Russian reaction. Oh wow. Look what happened.

Russia took Crimea, and once they got away with it, started trouble in Donbas, meanwhile, IIRC, Obama was busy with the Middle East (the Neverending war continues). I suppose Russia is like a python that swallowed a sizable animal: it needed some time to digest it, so no overt land grabs from Ukraine for a while, not even recognition for the puppet republics of Donetsk or Luhansk.

Meanwhile Trump came along, inviting Russia to dig dirt on Clinton, praising Putin as better than Obama, and getting friendly with other dictators such as the Kim gang in North Korea.

Then Biden got elected and Trump lead a putsch. It failed, but it rattled a lot of people. Then there was the fall of Kabul—at least South Vietnam held on for about 2 years after the US pulled out. This was a bit after covid-19, and was soon after an entertainer got elected president of Ukraine.

I guess Putin thought the could take advantage of the situation and invade.

Like Hitler and Trump, some people just don't know when to stop.

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Again, Trump very clearly and concretely put the maximal pressure on countering Russia in at least 12 if not 20 years.

(Not that it really needs saying, but Trump's been President for only 6 years.)

Russia was a bit different 20 years ago.

Twenty years ago, people hated the US—and that was somewhat warranted—because Dubya invaded and occupied, or attempted to occupy, Iraq—win one for daddy, I suppose. I took a dislike to Putin after Kursk, but to many, he was still the cool one. This was 2 years before Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

There was even talk of Russia joining NATO around that time or before.

So there really wasn't a need, real or perceived, to get tougher with Russia.

Kind of like Hitler, though in this, Putin played/plays the role of Hitler (though admittedly less brutal with other Eastern Slavs), Ukraine is Czechoslovakia, and Crimea and Donbas are Sudetenland. Many let it happen for peace (kind of like when Ukraine gave up its nukes for peace back when Clinton and Yeltsin were presidents). Then Putin invaded the rest of Ukraine, and as after Hitler invaded Poland, the West gulped and figured they better take things more seriously.

As for being tough on Russia, Trump was/is no tougher on Russia than Chamberlain was on Germany in WWI.

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not Dmitry Peskov

orthogonal

This is a (mostly) new word for me.

wt:orthogonal

Adjective

orthogonal (not comparable)

(geometry) .1. Of two objects, at right angles; perpendicular to each other.

A chord and the radius that bisects it are orthogonal.

(mathematics) .2. Of a pair of vectors: having a zero inner product; perpendicular.

.1. The normal vector and tangent vector at a given point are orthogonal.

.2. Of a square matrix: such that its transpose is equal to its inverse.

.3. Of a linear transformation: preserving its angles.

.4. Of grid graphs, board games and polyominoes: vertical or horizontal but not diagonal.

.5. Of a pair of elements in an ortholattice: each less than or equal to the orthocomplement of the other.

.3. (statistics) Statistically independent, with reference to variates.

.4. (software engineering) Of two or more aspects of a problem, able to be treated separately; of a design, exhibiting consistency and composability.

The content of the message should be orthogonal to the means of its delivery.

.5. Of two or more problems or subjects, independent of or irrelevant to each other.

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I still don't get what you're saying.

Are you saying that if they made a straight line to Kyiv, Lviv, or Warsaw, that gains in area is "independent of or irrelevant"?

wp:The Beaches, wp:Toronto Islands, and wp:Colonel Samuel Smith Park might still be good this weekend.

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Have a good one. 🙂

Earlier, a Russian glide bomb killed Olha Kuzemnko, an animal rescue volunteer, in the city of Drizhkivka in the Donetsk region.

Russia thought they could win in three days

They did seem pretty confident of a quick war—as many invaders have.

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Russia is using old Soviet tanks

I guess many of them were destroyed.

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Russia is forced to press people into service against their will because their losses are unsustainable

That's fair, though when Hitler invaded the USSR, the Soviets might have press-ganged a few conscripts.

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Russian military is rebelling

"Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where the fuck is the ammunition?! Look at them, bitches"

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Russian people are anti-war and being oppressed and will rise up against Putin

I didn't see that much about it in r/Ukraine.

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Russia can barely hold any of the land it’s gained

They lost Kharkiv after losing that long line of tanks.

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If you genuinely think the narrative has been “Russian victory is inevitable” for three years, you are delusional

Putin seems to think so.

Russia expanding its targeting further and further West through ballistic missiles is just a sure sign that any day now they’re going to collapse.

How much Ukrainian territory have they conquered? 5%? 2%?