* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.
* THE WEEK THAT WAS: While resistance against measures to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic have been particularly strong in the USA, they aren't unknown elsewhere. North of the border, a big gang of truck drivers, objecting to Canadian vaccination mandates, has paralyzed Ottawa for a week.
Exactly what they really hope to accomplish is not clear. Their specific target is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau -- but though the blockade of Ottawa is clearly a headache, almost 80% of Canadians have been vaccinated, and there's little sympathy with COVIDiots. In addition, along with the inconvenience of paralyzing the city, the truck drivers have occasionally broken windows, made liberal use of racial slurs, and generally acted like MAGAmericans. Some members of the Canadian Conservative Party have suggested that the blockade could be used to embarrass Trudeau, but senior leadership went on to denounce it, knowing it could hurt the Conservatives more than Trudeau.
There were rumors that troops were going to be sent in, but Trudeau made it clear that wasn't going to happen. Ottawa police officials also made it clear that patience is running out. In the meantime, however, small demonstrations have popped up elsewhere in Canada.
* The House committee investigating the 6 January 2020 Capitol riot has been rolling along methodically, notably interviewing members of ex-Vice President Mike Pence's staff, who have been cooperative. Obviously, Pence was wavering himself; after Donald Trump released a statement saying that Pence could have "overturned" the election, in a speech to the Federalist Society -- a notoriously Right-wing legal association -- Pence said:
QUOTE:
President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.
END_QUOTE
Pence called 6 January a "dark day", rejecting the narrative that it was a peaceful demonstration. He had been following a strategy of trying to distance himself from Trump without rejecting him. That wasn't workable, and Pence finally realized it. Trump quickly came back with an incoherent and angry reply to Pence, concluding: "I was right and everyone knows it."
In the meantime, the Republican National Committee issued a denunciation of Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for working on the 1-6 Committee, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel saying: "They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with the violence at the Capitol."
This was such a howling fraud that it was denounced by a number of prominent Republicans, notably Senator Mitt Romney. The Trump Big Lie is becoming ever more tattered, but yet it persists. It will not end well for the Republicans, but it's hard to see the end just yet.
* Russian pressure on Ukraine has led to a rapid arms buildup there, with NATO powers providing the country with such advanced weapons as the Javelin and NLAW anti-tank missiles, as well as Stinger and Grom light anti-aircraft missiles. As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("Needy Ukrainian Reserve Units Could Be Armed With Pre-World War II DP-27 Machine Guns" by Joseph Trevithick, 26 January 2022), the Ukrainians are digging into stockpiled weapons as well -- with the antique DP-27 machine gun going into the hands of under-armed Territorial Defense Unit forces.
Soviet small arms designer Vasily Degtyaryov led the development team that generated the DP-27 in the late 1920s, with the design, as its name implies, being formally accepted for trials in 1927. It went into service in 1928. It is a classic Soviet weapons design, being simple, sturdy, reliable, and effective. It features a distinctive top-mounted pan-shaped magazine holding 47 7.76x54-millimeter rimmed cartridges and has a rate of fire of around 550 rounds per minute. Vehicle and aircraft-mounted versions were later developed, as was a belt-fed derivative, the RP-46. It was widely exported after World War 2.
An instructor in a recent Ukrainian training video said: "In my opinion, there are no old machine guns at all. And the main tactical and technical characteristic of any weapon is the head of its owner and what is invested in this head." Obviously, the instructor was attempting to reassure trainees that they could have confidence in an old, but that was the truth. It appears some Maxim 1910 machine guns are still in Ukrainian service; they predate World War I, but they also are effective weapons. They are similarly chambered for 7.76x54-mm ammunition, which is still in use. Ukrainian troops are also obtaining the WAC-47, an M-16-type automatic rifle firing Russian 7.62x39-mm ammunition.
Currently, Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces consist of around 80,000 volunteers, in total, organized in 25 separate brigades across the country.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Donald Trump had a particularly bad last week, focused on mishandling of documents. It appears there were boxes of official documents, including classified documents, at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. It is a serious crime to walk off with secret government documents. Compounding this were multiple reports of Trump tearing up documents, flushing them down the toilet, and even eating them.
The cry went out for Trump to be arrested immediately, but that wasn't going to happen -- the courts would order his immediate release. To be sure, after the way Trump abused Hillary over her home email server, taking him to task for gross mishandling of government secrets would only be just, but we'll have to wait. There are still questions to be answered anyway, the first one being: was Trump selling government secrets to America's enemies? That would seem preposterous, but with Trump, who can tell?
* As discussed an editorial from CNN.com ("Voters' Power Is Being Stripped Away" by David Daley, 8 February 2022), with the reshuffling of Congressional districts from the latest census, Democrats feared a debacle, with representation stacked towards Republicans by intense gerrymandering.
As it turns out, that's only sort of happening. Indeed, some believe that Democrats will come out ahead, gaining three seats going into the midterm elections. In fact, the Congressional map may end up being as balanced as it has been, since the Supreme Court began the reapportionment revolution in the 1960s. Not all the states have completed their reapportionments, and legal challenges are clouding the issue, so exactly how it all turns out is unclear.
* As discussed in earlier weekly installments, I've been working to properly establish my online ID, having acquired the MyColorado ID app, new phone numbers and a minimal phone contract, plus FIDO keys. The core issue was to get authorized through the ID.me online service so I could access my Federal government accounts.
One big obstacle was getting a new Social Security card, and simultaneously correcting a long-standing bug in my SS account -- wrong birthdate, an error going back a half-century. In the world of online validation, two different birth dates were certain to cause me trouble, so I had to fix that. I had to drop off a form for a new card, along with a letter explaining the birthday bug, plus my birth certificate and my driver's license; I was relying on the license in the MyColorado app in the meantime.
I got the new card and my documents back in the mail, but with no explanation if they updated the birthdate. I called up the SS office, and they said it was updated. I asked if the new birthdate would propagate through to Medicare and to the Internal Revenue Service; yes, but it could take some time. I was further told that Medicare doesn't fuss about minor errors in birthdates, assuming they're just typos, which left the IRS to worry about. I called them up as well, and was told it was updated. It wasn't a real strong reassurance, but nothing else to say. All that done, I called up my healthcare provider and gave them the right birthdate.
Now I was ready to get onto ID.me. I had to get onto a video call to confirm my ID -- which was a bit tricky, since I don't have a webcam. No problem, I found an Android app named "DroidCam" that allows a smartphone to be used as a webcam over wi-fi. I struggled with the free version for a time, but decided it was too braindead, and got the paid version for $5.50 USD. It works as well as I could wish. Incidentally, I was concerned that I wouldn't really be able to communicate with it, but fortunately it's easy to find "webcam test" sites online.
Anyway, appropriately armed, I tried to log in to ID.me for my video. It started out announcing a 2-hour wait period -- but when it went down to a few minutes, it effectively froze, all the day. I tried very early the next morning, same result. It finally dawned on me that the reason it was frozen was because the system was overloaded: the queue was so deep that it couldn't keep count any longer.
This was only like about a week after a political fuss over ID.me's use of face recognition hit the streets. The IRS and other government agencies had adopted a commercial ID service out of lack of money to build their own, with ID.me officials failing to realize they were biting off far more than they could chew. The system is reliant on face recognition, but it doesn't always work right -- it didn't with me -- and that meant video calls. With the flap over face recognition, the IRS and other agencies backed off of ID.me in confusion, with chaos following.
Given that ID.me's status is now entirely uncertain, I had no reason to proceed further. I'll have to wait for everything to settle out; I might end up trying to get onto ID.me again, but it won't be under the same rules, and I've got all the tools now anyway. I didn't have that much trouble getting onto the MyColorado app, and I suspect ID.me will relax its requirements to a similar level of difficulty. It won't be as bullet-proof, but even a moderate amount of hassle slows down scammers considerably. An AI system could be used to identify accounts that seem suspicious, and require more validation.
I'll try again at the end of summer. I don't think I'm going to make very much use of my new ID tools over the short run, but over the longer run, they'll buy me a lot. In ten years, we'll wonder how we could have put up with the insecure online environment we have now. Incidentally, the flak thrown at ID.me included tales of people still faking the system and defrauding the government of big bucks. That's no surprise; the only system that can't be gamed can't be used, and it requires substantial effort to game the system.
* As reported by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Cheap Material Converts Heat To Electricity" by Robert F. Service, 2 August 2021), there's nothing new about devices that convert heat to electricity -- but it's never been a particularly cost-effective thing. Researchers have now development a new thermoelectric scheme that is much cheaper than earlier technology.
Modern thermoelectrics are semiconductor devices made to be placed on a hot surface, like an internal-combustion car engine. Heat flowing from through such devices causes electrical charges to flow through them. One difficulty with them is that, once such a device becomes warm from bottom to top, of course electrons stop flowing. The ability of a thermoelectric device to maintain a temperature gradient, as well as its ability to conduct electrons, is indexed by a score known as the "figure of merit" or "ZT".
Over the past 2 decades, researchers have devised thermoelectric materials with increasing ZTs. The record was established in 2014 when Mercouri Kanatzidis, a materials scientist at Northwestern University, and his team came up with a single crystal of tin selenide with a ZT of 3.1. However, the material was difficult to work with, and fragile. Kanatzidis say: "For practical applications, it's a non-starter."
His team shifted towards thermoelectrics made with readily available tin and selenium powders that, once processed, become grains of polycrystalline tin selenide instead of the single crystals. The polycrystalline grains are cheap and can be heated and compressed into ingots that are 3 to 5 centimeters long (up to 2 inches), which can be made into devices. The polycrystalline ingots are also more robust, while Kanatzidis expected the boundaries between the individual grains should slow down the heat flow through the devices. However, the result was much the opposite, yielding ZT scores as low as 1.2.
In 2016, the Northwestern team identified the problem: an ultrathin skin of tin oxide was forming around individual grains of polycrystalline tin selenide before they were pressed into ingots. That skin had high thermal conductivity, allowing heat to rapidly flow through the material. The researchers then figured out a scheme in which they used heat to drive oxygen away from the powder precursors, to then obtain pristine polycrystalline tin selenide. They got a ZT of 3.1, and even had a thermal conductivity lower than single-crystal tin selenide. Kanatzidis says: "This opens the door for new devices to be built from polycrystalline tin selenide pellets and their applications to be explored."
There are still obstacles to be overcome before applications arrive. The polycrystalline tin selenide the team makes is spiked with sodium atoms, creating what is known as a "p-type" material that conducts, in effect, positive charges. Working devices will also need an "n-type" version to conduct negative charges. Work is now being conducted toward n-type tin selenide materials. Given thermoelectric converters that are cheap enough, they could be installed in everything from automobile exhaust pipes to water heaters and industrial furnaces to scavenge some of the 65% of fossil fuel energy that is lost as waste heat.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: We appear to be on the threshold of war between Russia and Ukraine, there being a stream of incidents on the front lines of the break-away Donbas region that appear to be provocations for war. Civilians are being evacuated from Donbas, clearly to get them out of the line of fire.
The US has been putting up a strong front against the Russians, with blunt warnings from President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris, who has tended to suffer from PR problems, has never looked better; she's tough-minded, and does well when she can play tough. In the meantime, the MAGA Right in the USA is cheering on Putin.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) put out an articulate brief video suggesting that Vladimir Putin's game demonstrates more much more weakness than strength. Russia has never really accepted Ukrainian independence; it was tolerable when the government in Kyiv was pro-Russian, but the Maidan Revolution of 2013:2014 overthrew that government, and installed one that was more responsive to the public will, less responsive to the Kremlin. Officials of the old regime were cleared out of government, and Kyiv grew closer to the EU.
It appears that Putin believed intimidation would result in the collapse of the Ukrainian government and create divisions in NATO. In reality, it's had the reverse effects, solidifying support for the government and causing NATO to close ranks. It does not seem like this will work out well for Putin, and indeed there may be some dissension in the Kremlin over the push for war.
The thought arises: what if Donald Trump had won the 2020 election? Trump was always friendly to Putin and noisily hostile to NATO, and Putin's game might have worked better. Of course, the idea of Trump being re-elected is the stuff of nightmares; as has been said, America could handily survive four years of Trump, but not eight years. Given that time, he would have installed his stooges all through government, and there would be no getting him out.
* Across the Pond, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been under fire for serial infractions of the rules. An editorial from ECONOMIST.com ("The Tories' Problems Go Deeper Than Just One Man", 19 February 2022) suggesting that Britain's Tories are suffering from problems much like those of America's Republicans:
QUOTE:
After 12 years in power, Conservative MPs have become careless of the law and addicted to protest and rebellion. Instead of governing, they posture and grandstand. Their party used to have a reputation for weaving disparate ideological strands together in order to gain and wield power. Today what was once a broad church is bedeviled by schisms.
The Conservative scofflaws go beyond breaching the COVID lockdowns that they themselves imposed. After fighting for a diamond-hard Brexit, the winners took victory as a mandate to ignore rules big and small. In 2019 Johnson suspended Parliament to avoid inconvenient scrutiny of his Brexit plans; the courts concluded this was unlawful. Under his leadership the ministerial code of conduct has become discretionary. His government's attitude towards the Northern Ireland protocol, a part of the exit deal it struck with the EU that it now finds troublesome, is to threaten to tear it up.
END_QUOTE
Once the Brexiters took power, they evicted Remainers from government, to then make the "shining ideal" of Brexit an exercise in posturing and muddle:
QUOTE:
Just as the government sees office not as a responsibility but as a licence to do as it pleases, so Tory backbenchers lack discipline, loyalty and common purpose. A taste for rebellion is indulged by parliamentarians ranging from grandees (Theresa May, Johnson's predecessor) to neophytes (an MP elected in December cast a vote against his own government's pandemic measures just two weeks later). The party has splintered into the sort of noisy infighting more familiar on the British Left.
END_QUOTE
There is no agreement among the Tories and no push for a consensus. They chose Boris Johnson as prime minister, one reason being that he lacked the strength to impose his will on the party:
QUOTE:
A two-party political system requires competence from both sides. One reason the Conservatives gained that thumping majority in 2019 was the spectre of Jeremy Corbyn, who came close to destroying Labour. It is a tragedy for Britain that the Conservatives, who pride themselves on being the natural party of government, are now so poor at running the country.
END_QUOTE
After the election defeat of 2019, it seemed as if Labour was so lost that it could never make up the lost ground. Under Keir Starmer, Labour has been making it up rapidly, first sidelining Corbyn and then challenging Johnson. Labour's prospects of regaining power are bright -- but we're not out of the woods yet. From 2016, both the UK and the US suffered an inversion of sensibilities, in which politicians rejected propriety to gain the approval of voters. This is not a stable situation, but isn't clear when it's going to go away.
* Heard on Twitter: Jimmy Kimmel commented on Trump's new social media platform: "Basically, they made Donald Trump a pretend Twitter to post on. See, that's what we should be doing: Build him a fake Oval Office, tell him he's president again, and everybody wins." Another Twitterer made a vaguely related comment:
QUOTE:
David Hogg @davidhogg111: If there was an asteroid coming toward Earth, the greatest threat wouldn't be if we could defend ourselves from it or not. In case the past 2 years haven't made it clear: the greatest threat would being able to agree if it's real or not. Truth has become a matter of opinion.
END_QUOTE
On a less global scale, one Moira Donegan (@MoiraDonegan) said: "I adore my dog, but I respect my cat. A dog is like a happy, dependent toddler. A cat is a tiny god that lives in your apartment."
Yes, despite my intent to get away from Twitter, I'm back there and posting again. It's not the same as it was, however, since I've become adept at dodging trolls. I've got particularly exasperated with the crowd that is demanding that Donald Trump be locked up yesterday, and denouncing Attorney General Merrick Garland for not doing so. I understand the frustration, but it can't happen quickly; Trump's 5-alarm-fire, 3-ring-circus, clown-car conspiracy is just too big of a wreck to unravel quickly. Cutting corners with someone as experienced with gaming the law as Trump is not a good idea. I don't argue with them, though. I usually just tell them GET A LIFE, and leave it at that.
* I've talked about Windows / Steam game PC in my living room in the past. For the last month or so, I've been stalled with it, because I couldn't get the bluetooth game controller to work consistently. Sometimes it would work fine, other times it would give anomalous results. With gradual tinkering, I finally figured it out.
First, I was using a little bluetooth keyboard to log in. I finally realized that could cause confusion with the bluetooth controller, and that I should use my Logitech wireless keyboard instead -- which has a dedicated wireless connection instead, via a USB plug module. That helped a lot, but I kept having problems with low batteries, so instead I plugged in an old USB keyboard I had stowed away. The USB keyboard, unlike the Logitech keyboard, didn't have a touchpad, but I found that I could use keyboard commands to navigate and modify Windows. [ED: Later, I got a USB touchpad, and everything worked fine then.]
Second, as Steam recommends, now I always run the Steam environment in full-screen mode before I start a game. I had been trying to run games from shortcuts on the Windows desktop, but that doesn't work reliably. I have to run the game from the Steam environment so it can make sure the controller configuration for the particular game is correct. I need to figure out how to boot the PC into the full-screen Steam environment.
Third, if the controller suddenly stops working right -- it appears, on some games, certain input combinations create confusion somewhere along the line -- all I have to do is bail out of the game, go back to the Steam environment, and start the game again to configure the controller once more. With some games, I start over from where I left off.
I just bought a new 8BitDo Pro 2 controller from Amazon; I currently have a Y-Team controller that's compatible with the Nintendo Switch, as is the 8BitDo Pro 2, but the 8BitDo Pro 2 controller supports pushbutton reconfiguration.
I'm hoping that means I can use motion control with it. I've already got an 8BitDo M30 controller that I used to play games on my Amazon Fire TV Cube; it's a simple controller, thumbpad and buttons only, compatible with the Sega Genesis controller. It seems 8BitDo tends to make retro or retro-style controllers. Sigh, I'm becoming a gaming nut without intending to. I'm thinking strongly about buying a Steam Deck handheld game machine later this year, probably in the summer. The Steam Deck can run my existing games library -- I'm wondering if I can watch videos on it, too. "Only difference between men and boys is the price of the toys."
* As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("Planets Similar To Those In Our Solar System Found Around Nearby Star" by Ashley Strickland, 5 August 2021), astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile have found a set of extrasolar planets that resembles our own Solar System to a degree. They orbit a star designated "L 98-59", which is 35 light-years from Earth.
There appears to be at least five planets in the system. Observations showed that three of the planets include some type of water content. The two planets closest to the star are likely dry and rocky with just small amounts of water. These planets, like Earth or Venus, are close enough to the star to be warmed by it. The third planet's mass could be 30% water -- hinting that it could be an ocean world, similar to some of the moons found across our solar system.
These three planets were first spotted in 2019 using NASA's planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which detected extrasolar planets from their transits across the face of a distant star. Another trick astronomers use is to detect subtle variations in the motion of an extrasolar planet as it moves towards or away from Earth, with the changes in "radial velocity" helping determine subtleties in its orbit. In this particular case, radial velocity measurements showed that the planet closest to the star is about half the mass of Venus -- making it the lightest exoplanet ever detected using radial velocity.
Through radial velocity analysis, the researchers also discovered a fourth planet and hints of a fifth planet that wasn't noticed in TESS data. That fifth planet may be at the right distance from the star to allow liquid water to form on the surface, meaning it's in the star's "habitable zone". Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio -- an astronomer at the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain, and the research leader -- commented: "The planet in the habitable zone may have an atmosphere that could protect and support life."
This planetary system is a likely target for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch into orbit around Earth in October, as well as the European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope, which will begin observations from Chile in 2027. These two instruments may be able to determine the compositions of the atmospheres of this set of planets, and spot "biosignatures", or traces of life activity.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Of course, the big news this week was the expected invasion of Ukraine by Russia. For the moment, everything's a fog, too much misinformation going around. A video was circulating of a Ukrainian MiG-29 shooting down a Russian Su-35; turned out it was a clip from a combat sim. Other bogus videos are at large.
What is known is that there's a lot of fighting, with large numbers of long-range missiles launched against Kyiv and other targets. It appears the Russians are not getting a free ride, with the Ukrainians fighting back furiously. There were mass protests against the war in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, with mass arrests. It also appears that Russian grunts have no enthusiasm for shooting at Ukrainians, much less for being shot at by them. A Ukrainian general said: "We have captured around 200 Russian soldiers, some around 19 years old. Not trained at all. Badly equipped. We allow them to call their parents. Parents completely surprised."
A video, apparently authentic, went viral of a woman berating an obviously uncomfortable Russian soldier:
QUOTE:
WOMAN: Who are you?!
SOLDIER: We have exercises here. Please go this way.
WOMAN: What kind of exercises? Are you Russian?
SOLDIER: Yes.
WOMAN: So what the fuck are you doing here?!
SOLDIER: Right now, our discussion will lead to nothing.
WOMAN: You're occupants, you fascists! What the fuck are you doing in our land with all these guns? Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers [Ukrainian national flower] will grow when you all lie down here.
SOLDIER: Right now, our discussion will lead to nowhere. Let's not escalate this situation. Please.
WOMAN: What situation? Boys, boys ... put the sunflower seeds in your pockets, please. You will lie down here with the seeds. You came to my land. You are occupiers, enemies.
SOLDIER: Yes.
WOMAN: And you are cursed, I'm telling you.
SOLDIER: Now listen to me --
WOMAN: I've heard you.
SOLDIER: Let's not escalate the situation. Please go this way.
WOMAN: How can it be further escalated? You came here uninvited. Pieces of shit!
END_QUOTE
Although Kyiv is being encircled, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is defiantly remaining, visiting the troops wearing combat helmet and flak vest. In response to a suggestion that he be evacuated, he said: "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."
He's become an international hero -- not bad for a stand-up comic who rose to fame by playing a Ukrainian president in a video series. Twitter has been playing him up:
QUOTE:
David Carroll @profcarroll: Putin's miscalculations included taking on some kind of real-life superhero who delivers lines as if written by a Marvel screenwriter.
END_QUOTE
Whether Zelenskiy survives or not is another question; Russian President Vladimir Putin has all but declared he wants him dead. Putin, of course, comes on like a real-life Marvel supervillain. He thinks he's another Stalin, but he's more like another Saddam Hussein.
The West is responding with escalating sanctions and funneling more arms to the Ukrainians. There's talk of a full-scale cyberwar breaking out, but for the moment the talk is muted. There's also talk of NATO enforcing a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine, but that seems unlikely, since it's too much like going to war with Russia. Certainly, a lot of thought and effort is being invested in the response, and it will be interesting to see what comes of that. The Russians will not like it.
In the USA, Trump originally sided with Putin -- but having seen the wave of public support for Ukraine, Trump and the GOP have taken to praising Ukraine, and blaming the situation on Joe Biden. Lame.
* Retired US Army General Mark Hertling commented on Twitter that the contest between Ukraine and Russia is not that unequal -- some editing added:
QUOTE:
After one of my CNN appearances, one of the anchors asked me off-air why I had confidence in Ukraine's army to push back against the Russian military onslaught. I used a bit of "battlefield math" to explain my rationale.
There are two major factors most military folks consider to evaluate combat power: the force's resources and the force's will to fight. There are more elements under each of these categories that contribute to military capabilities.
The force's resources: that's quantity (size of the force, number of different capabilities ... air, artillery, armor), quality of equipment, extent and specificity of their training, their logistics & ability to resupply, their intelligence, ETC.
The force's will: soldiers' morale, a belief in the cause for which they fight, support they receive from both their fellow citizens & their government's leadership, their unit leaders ... and especially, what they get from their comrades. Values are a big piece of this. There are historical examples where a force with superior morale can defeat a force with superior resources. Forces with an unshakable belief in what they are fighting for -- with enough support -- can overcome a force that appears to have superior resources.
The Russians currently have an advantage in resources. The quantity of their force provides a quality all its own, their equipment is relatively good (not great), their artillery and long range fires are devastating, and they have air superiority. But ...
Russian training sucks -- I say this having seen Russians train & seeing how they conduct "exercises". Their logistics and intelligence are clumsy. Their soldiers are mostly 1-year conscripts, not professionals, and they have a poor NCO corps. Their officers, for the most part, are terrible.
When I first served with Ukrainian soldiers, in 2004, they were also poorly led, trained, & disciplined -- but they have improved, significantly, because of revamped training, more battlefield experience, and good leaders. Since then, Ukraine's army has continued to evolve -- and now, they have an extremely supportive population, good officer & NCO leadership, they are a professional force with a good reserve, & their government is also supportive. Add to this, Ukraine now has allies, all over the world.
Putin has turned the Russian effort into one receiving scorn, because of the lies he has told and crimes he has committed. That will worsen as Russian forces continue to commit battlefield atrocities, which they will.
Combined Russian conventional, unconventional, cyber, air, arty & special ops tools are tough to counter -- but the Russians are on the offensive, which means they have to maintain the momentum, and suffer losses against an adversary that is fighting back stubbornly. By all evidence, Ukrainian resistance is stiffening. The Ukrainians will wear down an enemy that already has low morale & an even lower support from their population back in Mother Russia.
The Russian Army is not motivated to fight for Putin. They will see their cause as suspect, and will be discouraged by more battlefield casualties than expected. The casualties will lead to even more protests at home.
It will likely be a long fight. Putin will be increasingly portrayed as a loser who made a rash gamble and lost. He will go the way of Stalin, Hitler, Ceausescu, Saddam. Ukraine will prevail.
END_QUOTE
* Speaking of obnoxious Republicans, Texas Senator Ted Cruz shot a sneer at White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, referring her to "Peppermint Patty", the old PEANUTS comic-strip girl. All I could think was: Hey, she does kinda look like Peppermint Patty!
Psaki was hardly offended. She's looking forward to ending her stint as spokesperson; it appears that news outlets like MSNBC and CNN are in a bidding war to see who can enlist her. Hey, maybe she'll get a Hollywood deal, too.
In more bizarre news, a man in Salt Lake City drove to a McDonald's, and was given a wrong order. He started ranting and waving a pistol around; the staff went to fix the order, and called the cops. The cops arrived and told him to get out of the car -- but when he did so, one of the cops was shot at from the back seat. It turned out to be the man's four-year-old son, the man having handed him the pistol and told him to shoot at the cops. "Huh?"
* On 6 January 2021, American President Donald Trump made history. He had lost the 2021 election by a clear margin, but refused to admit it, claiming without persuasive evidence that Joe Biden had stolen the election from him. On the 6th, Congress was going to certify the vote; Trump called a protest rally in Washington DC for that day, to pump the people attended up to a fury and send them over to ransack the Capitol Building.
The protesters were dispersed, with many arrested, and Biden was certified. There was indignation on both sides of the aisle in Congress, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi working to organize a joint commission to investigate the riot and the circumstances that led to it. Republicans in Congress soon realized that their voters didn't have much problem with the riot, and so their enthusiasm cooled. In the end, the Senate voted the commission down.
Pelosi had already said she would set up a House committee to investigate if the commission were voted down, and she did so. She wanted House Republicans on the committee, but only two -- Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney -- agreed to it. Pelosi played her cards well; Republicans could not credibly claim that the 1-6 Committee, as it became known, was partisan when they had rejected a partisan commission.
After an opening session in which Capitol police testified about the riot, the committee went quiet, interviewing witnesses and collecting information. As of late, the committee apparently has obtained enough of a story to subpoena central figures in the incident, including Trump crony Steve Bannon and Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Bannon wasn't cooperative, and was charged by the Justice Department with contempt of Congress; Meadows appears to be going the same route.
There's been much public frustration over the 1-6 Committee, there being a perception that it is moving much too slowly and ineffectually. Trump's guilt is obvious, why should there be any problem? This is greatly underestimating the difficulty of the case. First, the White House has a a constructive agenda to carry out, and Joe Biden can't be seen as going after his predecessor -- that would prejudice the case. Biden is cooperative with Congress, but not taking any lead in the investigation.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is being given independence to do as he sees fit, but so far he has been no more than cooperative with Congress, too. It may seem baffling that he's no hurry to bust Trump, but the case is just too complicated, too players and too chaotic. Trump is not an easy target. Along with his extensive political and economic support, he is also a champion gaslighter, skilled at sowing confusion. He broke rules that nobody was really expecting anyone to break, meaning the legal system doesn't have strong precedents to fall back on. In addition, the sheer magnitude of his wrongdoing makes it very laborious to assemble a credible case.
The 1-6 Committee has an easier job. The committee will give its report probably no later than the start of summer. Where it goes is not clear, since it won't have any standing with courts or the DOJ -- it's not a proper criminal investigation. What will happen? We never had a president attempt to overthrow an election before, so we are in unknown territory, and are feeling our way. Given the enormity of Trump's crimes, however, it's hard to see how he can dodge the bullet. [ED: Alas, he did, leaving the committee investigation his sole condemnation for the crime in the history books. Better than nothing.]
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