(a) Lots of updates at Battleswarm Blog on the situation in Ukraine. This looks like a complete rout. An Ukrainian[-Jewish] friend of mine, who recently brought her family to Israel, was worried this was all a feint to distract from a major offensive in the South. While massive sacrifices of cannon fodder for strategic deception did occur on the Eastern Front in WW II, this looks like something else.
Two new phenomena:
- the Kremlin openly admitting a setback in Kharkiv, though of course it is blamed on the military leadership rather than on the low-rent vozhd who got them into this fustercluck in the first place
- hardcore Russian nationalists questioning the handling of the “special military operation” and indeed the operation itself?
(b) The Biden clown show keeps bumbling from one disaster to the next. Now it’s the freight railway workers threatening a general strike. (For those unfamiliar: while passenger rail isn’t anywhere as big a thing in the US as in European countries, cargo rail is massive — about 30% of all commercial goods transportation in the US.)
A bipartisan effort to stop it was blocked by “Wicked Uncle Bernie” Sanders. If it takes place starting Friday, it is expected to cost the US economy US$2 billion/day, Tim Pool points out. Sadly, that’s almost a rounding error compared to the economic damage wreaked by the puppet at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and and his puppeteers.
And need I ask where in the world is the failed mayor of a midsize town who fell upward to “Transportation Secretary”? I have my theories, but they are not suitable for a somewhat family-friendly blog.
Senate minority leader Mitch “Murder Turtle” McConnell predictably is having a field day. But I agree with Insty that
Brutal swipes are nice, but something more . . . lasting is essential. These morons are doing serious lasting harm to America, and need to be stopped.
(c) Meanwhile in Sweden, a rising crime wave and the unwillingness of the Brahmandarinate to deal with it, for fear of ruffling some feathers, caused an upheaval at the polls: the left-wing PM conceded defeat, and the “far right” Sweden Democrats are now the second party in parliament.
The story is that a Swedish prosecutor successfully convicted a migrant (hailing from the Third World) for raping a Swedish twelve year old. A sentence of confinement was imposed by the court. The judge asked the prosecutor to make a recommendation in regard to whether the defendant should be deported after the period of confinement ends.
The prosecutor made a recommendation against deportation.
The prosecutor reasoned that the defendant was unlikely to be rehabilitated by confinement, and therefore, the defendant was likely to commit the same crime again. The prosecutor’s position was that whether the defendant goes on to rape a Swede (or a non-Swede in Sweden) or someone in the defendant’s own home country should not be considered because the health, safety, and lives of all potential future victims should be valued equally. And equality is a value upon which we all do or should agree.
Did the prosecutor act rightly or wrongly?
Wrongly, of course, because the prosecutor owes a special duty to protect his/her own constituents. But our Western ruling class doesn’t like that idea, because owing duties limits its freedom to do what it wants.
Emphasis mine. Two relevant quotes from chaza”l [the Jewish sages of blessed memory]:
- ani’ei irekha kodmim — the poor of your [own] city take precedence [over those of others]
- kol ha-merakhem
al ha-akhzarim, sofo le-hitakhzeral ha-rakhmanim — whoever is merciful to the cruel will end up being cruel to the merciful
(d) Today is September 15, or Battle of Britain Day. In honor of the day, here are the final three minutes of the eponymous movie.
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” (Winston Churchill, in a speech to the House of Commons, August 20, 1940)
Spin, strangeness, and charm 
The only likely development in Southern Ukraine is the Russian forces on the Kherson side of the Dnipro throwing in the towel and either running (swimming?) away or surrendering (or both).
I am absolutely convinced that Russia has no more deployable troops and very little deployable hardware for any new troops it manages to scrape up. It also probably has no more than a few dozen (if that) of each type of its modern missiles, rockets and so on and is heavily reliant on the old stuff from the soviet union.
There’s a discussion thread on tw*tter where the general consensus is that, if it weren’t for the threat of Nuclear retaliation, most of it’s neighbors would feel emboldened to invade a seize chunks of the country.
There is of course the question of how many of Russia’s nukes actually work, but playing Russian roulette with Nuclear ICBMs seems like a bad political choice
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