I'm getting the impression that while the Tories are absolutely united that they need to pick a new PM internally rather than allow a general election which would turn them all out, they might not actually be functional enough to rally around someone new, even with plenty of time given?
Although I guess Sunak was the close runner-up, so presumably he has a leg up.
Johnson is definitely going to run in this contest. And I wouldn't underestimate his chances of winning. He can provably win elections, after all, and the memory of the British public is short.
In two years, post-COVID, with Russia defeated and humbled, inflation falling, the economy picking up, the Press on side again... he might have a good chance of winning again.
For all Johnson's horribleness, it would be something if he could use his sway among other horrible people to keep a Republican-controlled House from forcing the abandonment of Ukraine.
I don't think a Republican House would have time. They won't be seated until late January, correct? I don't think this war's lasting beyond spring.
Without Biden to stop them, I wouldn't exclude a Republican House supplying arms to Russia.
I suspect that any MM to the Russian occupation of Kherson will have to be done within the next month.
3: How about Ian Duncan-Smith then? Hardly able to win elections, but if they're going to engage in do-overs, they might as well.
I remember reading that when winter really sets the fronts might freeze for a while.
7: Rand Paul will argue for arming Russia to defend Crimea.
To be fair to House Republicans, Paul is a senator.
I remember reading that when winter really sets the fronts might freeze for a while.
I just don't know where people get that sort of thing.
Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Uranus was November 1942. Little Saturn was launched in December 1942. Korsun-Cherkassy was January-February 1944.
Winter in Ukraine and southern Russia is demonstrably no obstacle to mounting major offensives. What stops them is mud - the thaw in March-April, which added to the Russians' logistic problems during the advance on Kyiv this year, and the rather milder autumn mud season which is going on right now.
(Winter's going to hurt the Russians this time round because their logistics are still shot and they don't have much in the way of winter uniforms, but that's different.)
Good reasons for Ukraine to mount winter offensives:
1. Winter puts additional strain on morale and logistics, which are existing Russian weaknesses
2. Russia's theory of victory involves waiting for Europe to get so cold that they cut off aid to Ukraine, and for the US to get so Republican that it does the same thing. If this happens, it's probably not going to happen before end of January - coldest time in Europe, and the US elections. So get as much done before the cutoff as possible.
3. If March is going to impose a four-week standstill, that's four weeks for the Russians to dig in, train their troops, sort out logistics etc after which they might potentially be in better shape. Better to get as much winning done before that as possible.
4. Sense of urgency around continuing atrocities in occupied territory.
Russia will probably try to speed up the atrocities.
I don't think this war's lasting beyond spring.
Huh. Explain it to me like I'm an idiot? but still kindly?
Maybe I should have read past the 5th comment before posting.
15 implies that you are mean to idiots.
Personally, I don't see peace happening that fast. Ukraine probably can't take Crimea quickly. Any settlement without that requires Russia to agree it lost everything but Crimea and Ukraine to agree it lost Crimea. Maybe a ceasefire that eventually congeals into peace.
Ukraine declares they won't make a settlement without Crimea, but if they can get back all the rest of Ukraine (including D+L) they'll be over the moon and I'd guess let it stand, even if it's not full formal peace. (A lot of mineral resources in the occupied territories.)
Yes, but even then Putin would have to stop trying to attack D&L.
Johnson is definitely going to run in this contest.
I am disappoint
13.2 Russia's theory of victory involves waiting for the GOP to win the House and cut off all further aid to Ukraine.
Your Johnson is supposed to come out through the Truss.
I think that Israel should buy out the Russian claim on Crimea and give it to the Palestinians. Thinking outside the box here.
For some reason the 60% characteric concordance between Truss and Trump never occurred to me. I wonder if that helped her up in the party member election.
11. Why do you want to be fair to House Republicans? When were they ever fair to you?
26. And buy Greenland while they're about it?
There are plenty of odious House Republicans. No need to also bring odious Senate Republicans into it as well.
15: sure. I don't think Russia can handle another six months of the kind of losses they've been taking this summer. And in winter, if the tempo of operations keeps up, their losses will be higher - with poorer troops, cold weather, less artillery, less armour, and ever worsening supply problems. Not sustainable into summer. They've lost 60k dead already. By March that's another 40k dead. Half their regular army dead and the other half irrecoverable wounded, and no capacity to train an effective conscript army to replace them.
Second, I think that by spring - by the March mud season - Ukraine will have retaken everything except Crimea, and I'm not sure Crimea is tenable if they've lost the Kerch bridge and the Ukrainians can put Neptune batteries all along the Azov coast. I don't think they'll settle for a frozen conflict this time.
Third, materiel. They'll have lost the skies by March - not just a neutral sky like this summer, a Ukrainian sky all the way up to the Donets, for fixed wing as well as drones. Not a good situation and makes an advance in spring virtually impossible.
19: As long as Russia holds Crimea they can strangle Ukraines foreign trade with seapower and airport, like they did this summer, and hold the whole south at risk of air attack or even another invasion. I can't see Ukraine letting that happen.
https://www.brasilwire.com/bolsonaro-pedophilia-crisis-engulfs-re-election-bid/
He's going to far to secure the Republican vote.
30 largely makes sense to me*, but I'm a bit confused by 30.last. Is there any particular reason to think that the Russian Air Force is going to be unable to project even weak control over UKR skies? I didn't think they were attriting that aggressively/catastrophically.
*I mean, it seems optimistic, but not implausibly so. What's not clear to me is whether Ukraine will be able to exploit collapse that rapid/extensive. They've done it so far, but the land area under consideration is vastly more than what's been retaken to date.
Russia has had a lot of time in Crimea. I think it's foolish to assume they used the time wisely, but they must have done something.
I guess the big thing I learned is that British lettuce keeps better than American lettuce.
I'm just catching up on the elections in Israel via Haaretz (mostly paywalled). Bleak shit.
36: Just imagine how much graft has been achieved!
I just found out the lettuce didn't last 44 days. Nevermind.
15 implies that you are mean to idiots.
WRONG! IT INFERS IT.
Sorry. I keep saying inference is dangerous.
35: let's be clear here: the Russian Air Force has never had even weak control over Ukraine's skies at any point in the war. That's why they are attacking Ukr cities by firing missiles from deep inside Russian airspace rather than flying over them and dropping bombs.
What we have had is contested airspace in which both sides can operate some aircraft but only at risk, because both sides have a lot of AAA.
This balance has been shifting as Ukraine destroys more irreplaceable Russian AAA and it will continue to shift as Ukraine acquires more western AAA.
See here: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/russian-military-air-force-failure-ukraine/629803/
44, 45: thanks for clarifying.
One thing I wonder about is what's going to happen as more and more of D&L get rolled back to the Russian border, what does that cross-border condition look like? There's a weird situation where UKR can't/won't cross the border, which leaves it a safe haven like the old trope about escaping a sheriff once you cross the county line. Like, the border east of Kharkiv is back to where it should be, but it's a militarized border. I know Russia doesn't have extra troops with which to invade from there, but surely it's a flank UKR needs to protect?
Or are we in a situation where satellite/UAV surveillance is so good that you barely need any border control because any movement of any size whatsoever would get spotted before it could do anything?
46: Ukraine has on occasion sent some sorts of bombardment over the border. And it might be even more feasible now for them to physically cross it if need be, as Russia has purported to annex the two republics and two oblasts anyway.
"O'Blast" should have been what the IRA called car bombs.
46: it isn't a terribly defensible border iirc - no natural obstacles - and, yeah Ukraine will need to garrison it. The real question is what if Russia just sits back there on its own side and shells Ukraine, Hezbollah style.
What the fuck:
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/21/1130705453/student-loan-cancellation-blocked-lawsuit-appeal
Glad to have a circuit court endorse the theory that since I pay taxes I can sue the government to not spend that money on things I don't like.
I just read the theory that worrying about the size of Pete Davidson's penis leads to conservative extremism. So, we know what they've been thinking about.
50: Can they not just fucking ignore this since standing has not even been established to my understanding.
54 This isn't the taxpayer standing case -- that one already didn't get a stay from the 7th Circuit -- this is the state government standing case. The district court opinion is pretty good, but you can immediately see why the 8th Circuit would give the states a chance to brief the thing, in contrast to the 7th Circuit's look at taxpayer standing in that case.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.moed.198213/gov.uscourts.moed.198213.44.0_2.pdf
NMM to Boris Johnson's second government.
Not exactly, NMM to him running in this particular leadership election...
The arc of history is long and bends toward stupid, rich fucks failing upwardly.
57: I am gloomily confident that he will spend the next six months sniping from the back benches at Sunak, whom he loathes for (as he sees it) betraying him back in the summer. Then another challenge in the spring.
The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, the third time as panto.
Is that when the puppets punch each other?
That's when Tucker Carlson gets his panties in a twist
Very entertaining to watch people trying to say "this is an important moment because Sunak is our first brown PM" but not wanting to say "brown" because it sounds bad, so they say things like "first ethnic minority" (he isn't, that was Disraeli) or "first non-Christian" (he isn't, that was Callaghan) or "first of Asian descent" (he isn't, that was Johnson, though Sunak is the first who isn't mixed-race).
But of course we all know what they are trying to say.
64: they don't just say "first person of color"? Not that this description would stand up to your level of hair-splitting either
Yeah, "the first Prime Minister who would not be perceived by most people in the UK as white" is true, meaningful, and inoffensive, just awkwardly phrased. "Brown" only sounds bad because it's in that colloquial space where you can't tell if the speaker is being racist or not without more context.
65: not really, as far as I've seen. "Person of colour" isn't as standard in the UK as in the US. "Brown" is pretty widely used - the Guardian has an article on Sunak that uses it repeatedly.
You guys just had a prime minister who was Brown.