Althouse: Sunrise

July 13, 2023

Sunrise — 5:28.

33 comments:

farmgirl said...: The living frame.; 7/13/23, 7:38 PM
Dave Begley said...: Talked to a military guy who just got back from Ukraine. The Russian losses of men and equipment are horrific. Much more than we have been told.; 7/13/23, 7:56 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: This may have been mentioned already and I just haven't picked it up.

Trans Ideology could be a white supremacy stalking horse.

If we already can change everything about ourselves without fear of ostracism, i.e., religion, political affiliation, gender, sex, name, partner, citizenship, pronouns, you can even change your children in fundamental ways... (true, we are arguing about that one)

Why can't African Americans, peoples of color change their race to (insert new ethnic name here)

#A question that would probably be banned on Threads; 7/13/23, 8:07 PM
Dave Begley said...: The Russian KIA number is much more than our KIA In Vietnam.; 7/13/23, 8:19 PM
Gerda Sprinchorn said...: Dave Begley said:

>> Talked to a military guy who just got back from Ukraine. The Russian losses of men and equipment are horrific. Much more than we have been told. <<

Detail?

What was he doing there? How does he know what he knows? What are Ukrainian losses?; 7/13/23, 8:32 PM
Narr said...: Miracle cocaine at the White House. Impossible to track down the owner.

MSNBCIALGBQ+ media reaction?

"These things happen. Whaddya gonna do? Now, new reports are emerging that in December of 2021 former president Trump talked about Something with Someone!"; 7/13/23, 8:43 PM
Gahrie said...: Why can't African Americans, peoples of color change their race...

According to Shaun King and Rachel Dolezal they can.; 7/13/23, 8:43 PM
Political Junkie said...: Did not realize until today (thanks Wikipedia) our hostess graduated first in her class at NYU School of Law. Bravo!!; 7/13/23, 10:34 PM
Candide said...: Dave Begley said...

"The Russian losses of men and equipment are horrific. Much more than we have been told."

- How much more?

- More than you can imagine!

- I don't know, I can imagine quite a bit!; 7/13/23, 11:39 PM
hawkeyedjb said...: Following up on yesterday's discussion of hot and cold: I am in Donji Milanovac (Serbia) where it was 108 in the afternoon. We went out for a walk and survived. It was certainly worse than Phoenix because of the humidity, but all survived. Not much a/c here; the church was the only place we found it. A cold beer on a patio in front of a fan was a good solution.

This is the future envisioned for us by Our Betters, except the a/c won't be in the church. It will be reserved for the offices from which the bureaucracy issues its lectures.; 7/14/23, 12:57 AM
gadfly said...: Dave Begley said:

Talked to a military guy who just got back from Ukraine. The Russian losses of men and equipment are horrific. Much more than we have been told.

According to the Ukraine War Ministry:

The total combat losses of the enemy from 02/24/22 to 07/10/23 were approximately:

Personnel ‒ about 234480 liquidated
Tanks ‒ 4085
APV ‒ 7966
Artillery systems – 4371
Rocket Launchers – 668
Anti-aircraft systems ‒ 414
Aircraft – 315
Helicopters – 309
Drones – 3686
Cruise Missiles ‒ 1271
Warships/Boats ‒ 18
Armored vehicles and fuel tanks – 6937
Special equipment ‒ 632

Based on Russian death records registered since the war began. independent Russian estimates come in at about 50,000 according to WAPO and US Military estimates are in at 200,000 Russian casualties (dead or wounded). Western experts say Ukraine has suffered perhaps 100,000 military casualties. Known Ukrainian civilian casualties number 6,884 killed and 10,947 wounded, but this information is incomplete.; 7/14/23, 2:11 AM
Drago said...: Dave Begley: "The Russian KIA number is much more than our KIA In Vietnam."

The Ghost of Kiev lives!; 7/14/23, 2:19 AM
Drago said...: Friendly reminder to Inga, LLR-democratical Chuck, gadfly and the rest of Team Left/Groomer: children cannot consent to bodily mutilation and sterilization.; 7/14/23, 2:21 AM
Dave Begley said...: Gera:

It said the info was classified so I don’t feel comfortable in sharing it. But he is legit.; 7/14/23, 5:41 AM
Dave Begley said...: BRUSSELS (AP) — Nearly 50,000 Russian men have died in the war in Ukraine, according to the first independent statistical analysis of Russia’s war dead.

I told this guy about this report and how that number was calculated. One thing he said is that the Russians just leave their dead in the field. He said the smell is horrible.; 7/14/23, 5:44 AM
tim maguire said...: Dave Begley said...Talked to a military guy who just got back from Ukraine.

We’re not getting good information on casualties (maybe nobody has good information on casualties), which matters because so long as the West is supplying Ukraine with arms, this will be a war of attrition. The winner is whoever can take the punishment longest. You can’t tell much (at least not yet) by the movement of the front lines on a map.; 7/14/23, 5:47 AM
Humperdink said...: Interest payments on US debt set to exceed $1 trillion. What can't our beloved self-proclaimed leaders do?

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/endgame-us-debt-interest-payments-about-hit-1-trillion; 7/14/23, 5:56 AM
Humperdink said...: A few a days ago I posted a comment from a lib that "there is no child trafficking problem".

CBS headline: "Nearly 130,000 unaccompanied migrant children entered the U.S. shelter system in 2022, a record."

Where are they now and the hundreds of thousands before them? (Aided and abetted by the Bidet administration.)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-unaccompanied-migrant-children-record-numbers-us-shelter-system/; 7/14/23, 6:14 AM
Gerda Sprinchorn said...: Dave Begley said:

>> It said the info was classified so I don’t feel comfortable in sharing it. But he is legit. <<

What I would be most interested in knowing is the extent to which Americans are involved in the war effort.

Was the source there in an official American capacity? What was he doing? You say he had access to classified info, so can we assume he had a US security clearance and was there in some official capacity? How many other Americans are there? What are they doing?

Sounds like this is the sort of thing voters might want to know.; 7/14/23, 8:03 AM
Gerda Sprinchorn said...: Dave Begley said:

>> One thing he said is that the Russians just leave their dead in the field. He said the smell is horrible. <<

So the source is at the front lines, has access to classified info, and is close enough to smell rotting corpses. What was he doing there? He sounds like he is a military guy. Is he? So we have US military at the front lines? Any idea how many? What are they doing? Are any Americans dying in the war? Are any US military personnel involved in any way in killing Russians?; 7/14/23, 8:10 AM
farmgirl said...: Herds- quite sure it’s heaps more involvement than ever admitted to.
The money/artillery alone…; 7/14/23, 8:52 AM
wendybar said...: Dictator Biden is ignoring the Supreme Court ruling and paying off the Student loan debts of 804,000 deadbeat people who will gladly vote for him now.

Why are we still paying taxes?? Why bother??

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12299325/Biden-forgives-39-BILLION-student-debt-804-000-Americans.html; 7/14/23, 9:26 AM
lonejustice said...: PBS aired a Frontline documentary this week called "Putin's Crisis." It’s 60 minutes long and covers the rise of Putin from his beginnings up to the armed rebellion on June 23, led by the Russian mercenary Wagner Group and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. I think it is one of the better Frontline documentaries I've seen. You can watch in for free on YouTube if you missed it on your local PBS station.; 7/14/23, 9:37 AM
Dave Begley said...: Gerta:

Retired military. I won't say any more. Very credible.; 7/14/23, 10:26 AM
Temp Blog said...: "Dictator Biden is ignoring the Supreme Court ruling and paying off the Student loan debts of 804,000 deadbeat people who will gladly vote for him now."

Can the Supremes hold the Chief Executive in contempt?

If they could, could they do anything about it?; 7/14/23, 1:39 PM
Dr Weevil said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/14/23, 4:20 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Gerda Sprinchorn:
No, we do not have active-duty US military, or anyone officially representing the US, at the front lines in Ukraine. The only active-duty US military in Ukraine are Marines guarding the embassy and probably some military accountants keeping track of weapons and ordnance delivered, way behind the front lines.

There is an International Legion of foreign volunteers fighting for Ukraine, and it includes Americans among the ~60 nationalities represented. Like the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, they are volunteers who risk their lives to fight Fascism, though in this case they are not fighting for Communism or Anarcho-syndicalism, but for Liberal Democracy, and most of them are veterans. (I believe the IL rejects non-veterans.)

I assume Dave's friend is one of them. How many are there? The Wikipedia article "International Legion (Ukraine)" gives estimates between 1,500 and 20,000. They also list how many have been killed, with 26 Americans the fourth-largest number.

The countries that have lost more killed are Georgia, Belarus, and Azerbaijan. There's a whole Georgian Legion getting practice killing Russians so they can go back home and retake Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Belarusians are practicing so they can liberate their country from Putin's lapdog Lukashenko. The Azeris are pissed off because Russia has been supporting Armenia in their long and violent border war.

Prominent members of the International Legion include the former Defense Minister of Georgia and former parliamentarians from Georgia, Latvia, Sweden, and the Sumi nation (=Laplanders).

Russian propagandists like to claim that active-duty Polish and American troops are fighting in Ukraine, but they're lying. They especially like to claim that they're fighting hordes of black Americans, a racist lie, and that they've killed 1,000 Polish troops. The number of Poles killed fighting in the International Legion is actually 10. Ukrainians explain that the average Russian can't tell the difference between spoken Polish and spoken Ukrainian, because he thinks Ukrainian is Russian spoken with a Ukrainian accent, when it's actually a whole different language closer to Polish and Belarusian. That's like thinking that the language of Pepe Le Pew is what French people speak in France.

In short, the answers to your 8:10am questions (which you really should have looked up yourself) are: Probably fighting, yes (Dave says retired), no, none whatsoever, nothing (they don't exist), yes (26 so far, but all volunteers, and none active-duty), and no.; 7/14/23, 4:25 PM
tim in vermont said...: Considering how many casualties the Russians are reputed to be taking, it's kind of odd that the Ukrainians have had so little success moving them off their positions, and are starting to lose ground. It's almost like they are trying to reassure us that this will be a nice short war, and everybody will be home by Christmas.

This is really just more "Ghost of Kiev" nonsense, and the US military simply repeats the numbers given to them by Ukrainian officials, as does the press. If you want to watch a video from a Pulitzer Prize winning war correspondent, and former New York Times bureau chief about how the New York Times simply acts as stenographers for Ukrainian officials, and does no checking of the numbers, here you go:

https://youtu.be/N0H7PIJcEP0

It's like the Patriot batteries intercepting 100% of the hypersonic missiles, except that one time when video got out, and oh, btw, if you release video now, you get a call from the secret police, and then in the afternoon, Zelensky plays a round of golf and shoots an 18.

This is not our war, it's none of our business, but they are lying to us to suck us into it, like they did with Iraq, Syria, and Libya, etc,; 7/14/23, 5:06 PM
tim in vermont said...: Dr Weevil, who claimed that there are no ethnic Russians in Ukraine, a county that has been part of Russia for centuries. That sounds to me like prep-work for more ethnic cleansing. Only this time, the genociders are on our side, so it's cool! They are only orcs.

This is not our war, and the blood feud between the Ukrainian nationalist who carried out the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles during WWII, and who still revere the leader responsible for those atrocities, are not the kinds of people we should be climbing into bed with.; 7/14/23, 5:10 PM
Dr Weevil said...: 'tim in vermont' just can't stop lying about me and (more important) about Ukraine:

1. Have the Ukrainians "had so little success" pushing the Russians back? They've recaptured almost as much area in 5 weeks as the Russians captured in the previous 6 months (link). They've also killed two Russian generals, and another has been fired and arrested for trying to tell Putin how badly things are going at the front. That's above and beyond the dozens of officers arrested for sympathy with Prigozhin's coup attempt. They've committed all their reserves, while the Ukrainians have committed only a small part of theirs. Their front-line will collapse at some point, and they know it. Watch Russian news on Julia Davis's Twitter feed to see how desperate they are.

2. The Patriot battery did in fact intercept 100% of the supposedly hypersonic missiles. (The designers were arrested for telling Putin the missiles are hypersonic, when they obviously aren't.) One launcher was damaged by falling debris, and repaired within 48 hours with duct tape. (I've seen no evidence that 'tim' even understands the difference between a battery and a launcher.)

3. Does the New York Times lie? Who cares? The only time I ever read anything they say is when Ann quotes it.

4. I never "claimed that there are no ethnic Russians in Ukraine". That is a damned lie. I pointed out that 'tim' and his allies like to pretend that Russian-speakers are the same as Russians. There are a lot more Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Ukraine than ethnic Russians, and even many of the latter support Ukrainian independence. All provinces voted for it when they had the chance, and the Donbas provinces did so by a very large margin. The independence movement is a fraud orchestrated by Russians, and the organizer (Igor Girkin) admits it.

5. Russia is right now ethnically cleansing Ukraine, murdering civilians every night by bombing civilian targets, keeping thousands of Ukrainians in a network of prison camps and torture chambers in both countries, deporting hundreds of thousands to Russia, refusing to allow Ukrainians to fill prescriptions without a Russian passport, and drafting them or shipping them to Russia if they take one, and blowing up the Nova Kakhovka dam to destroy a huge part of the Ukrainian economy. All that is in fact genocide.

6. This is our war. Bill Clinton signed a solemn agreement to guarantee Ukraine's 1991 borders in return for giving up their nukes. We are bound by that. We are also morally bound by the principle of "Never again". The Russians are behaving like Nazis, and anyone who says we shouldn't help them is like the people who called Czechoslovakia in 1938 "a far-away country of which we know nothing": beneath contempt. Ukraine doesn't need or want troops, just equipment, and what we're sending them is mostly what we weren't even using, since it's obsolete, though still better than anything the Russians have. It would cost more to dispose of than it costs to send to Ukraine.

7. 'tim' is still harping on Stephan Bandera. He is indeed revered in his home area in far western Ukraine, but unknown or despised in the other 80-90% of the country. But 'tim' wants the Russians to destroy eastern Ukraine for the the stupid opinions of some in the western part. That would be like asking Canada to invade and destroy Vermont and Ohio and North Dakota because "Americans" still love Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Utterly stupid.; 7/14/23, 8:23 PM
Dave Begley said...: The guy I met was delivering equipment and supplies to the Ukrainians. Retired US military. I couldn’t figure out why he risked his life on the front lines, but he did it. Very credible.; 7/14/23, 9:24 PM
Candide said...: For all the talk about massive casualties that each side claims to be inflicting on the other, this war in Ukraine looks much more like a chess match than an all-out slaughter. Each side maneuvers endlessly to find opponent's weak spot and strike there for maximum advantage.

Right now each side is claiming killing about 10 times more than the other. When the war will end and talks about reparations begin, expect to see a complete reversal with each side maximizing its losses and minimizing the losses on the other side. Unless, of course, things will get completely out of control and we all die in a nuclear inferno, but let's hope not.

I talk to people living in Moscow, Kiev and Odessa, and all of them say that you would never guess there is a real war going on somewhere close. Restaurants are crowded, beaches are over-crowded, stores are full of food, parties going on everywhere. Sometime they hear distant explosions, that's about all.; 7/14/23, 11:51 PM
Dr Weevil said...: Candide claims that he talks to "people living in Moscow, Kiev and Odessa", but somehow the ones in Ukraine never mention the missiles and drones that hit civilian neighborhoods several times a week, forcing the people to hide in bomb shelters and subway stations for hours. Either they're lying to him about their location or what's happening there, or he's lying to us: I suspect they don't exist. Of course, Moscow is as he says: there was one (1!) night when several drones flew over and were shot down without harming a single human being. I don't doubt that he has connections in Moscow, maybe even in high places. But Russian missiles and drones kill people in Ukraine every night, sometimes dozens at a time.

Of course, his other two paragraphs are equally far from the truth.; 7/15/23, 8:00 PM