I’m not sure exactly what the point of this article is. It doesn’t actually allege any wrongdoing, and it seems he hasn’t been to Russia since Zalinsky took office. Even prior to that there could have been innocent explanations for his travel to Russia. Basically this is some smoke, but no actual evidence of fire. It certainly raises some eyebrows, but considering those eyebrows were already raised prior to this this doesn’t really seem to be adding anything new.

What? Vote for them? Be incredibly pissed they threw the election and now our democracy is fucked? Yeah.

While everything you said is true the DNC is also equally to blame. For better or worse FPTP means we only have two parties, which means there’s an onus on them to appeal to as many voters as they can (to do anything less is to guarantee their loss). The DNC for decades now has followed a policy of appealing not to the general public, but to a wealthy subset in order to maximize their own bribes campaign contributions. That has seen a steady rightward shift of their economic (and to a lesser extent social) policies. This rightward shift naturally alienates a large block of those that would otherwise support them. After all if you’re a supporter of right wing policies you would already be a Republican, thus if you aren’t it’s because you’re looking for left wing policies. Something the Democrats increasingly do not have.

There are three possible outcomes for each potential voter. You can vote Republican. You can vote Democrat. Or you can not vote (or vote 3rd party, the outcome is identical either way). Because voting isn’t mandatory, the default state is not voting. Republicans have spent the last couple decades erecting roadblocks to voting, passing ID laws, closing polling places to increase lines, encouraging their followers to harass voters, purging voter rolls at the last minute, etc.

All that means that it takes actual effort to go out and vote. For an increasingly exhausted public, that is struggling just to survive day to day, that might have to take a precious day off from work to stand in an uncomfortable line for hours at a time while being menaced by unhinged MAGA, they need a strong encouragement to put up with all that.

From a purely logical standpoint the threat posed by Trump and MAGA should be sufficient motivation. But people are not always or even often logical. Republicans have spent decades fine tuning their propaganda. They’ve weaponized AM radio, and talking head “news” shows like Hannity, to convince their voters that Democrats are perpetually moments away from rounding them all up and having them executed. That’s the reason Republicans always show up to vote, no matter how onerous the process becomes.

Democrats in contrast have been hesitant to call a spade a spade. They should have been blaring the threat posed by Trump from day one of his campaign in the most explicit language possible. Every opportunity should have been taken to replay highlights of every unhinged statement Trump made to highlight exactly how dangerous he was. Instead they use euphemisms, saying things like “extremists” rather than terrorists, or “Insurrection” instead of attempted coup.

Added to all of that is dissatisfaction with Democrats policies right when they needed to be doing everything they could to convince people that if they just got off their asses and voted things would significantly improve for them.

So yes, this is very much a failure of Democrats. The party failed not just themselves but the American public. Unfortunately now everyone pays the price for that, not just the apathetic voters that sat out, but even those of us that did the sane logical thing and voted for the lesser evil.

There will be no appeasing him, that’s a losing play. Trump is a bottomless pit of greed and narcissism. At best you can temporarily become a useful pawn to him but sooner or later he will turn on you, if for no other reason than he needs a scapegoat for his latest failure.

I suppose the real question here is, is Xi bothered enough to actually do something about it, or is this just more grumbling.

Does NK have that many spare soldiers to offer? Seems like every other week there’s more news of rampant starvation in NK, and it’s not a particularly large country to begin with. I’d think they would need all the bodies at home they can get. On the other hand maybe they’re just counting on the Russians to feed them.

Same thing at a smaller scale happens all over the place as executive and management teams packed with yes men and brown nosers feed a steady stream of bullshit up the ladder and minimize anything negative, particularly if it’s a direct result of the upper level managements decisions. So many absolutely horrendous decisions could be headed off if someone had the balls to tell the CEO he’s a fucking idiot and no way what he just proposed is going to work.

Ah, clearly their mistake was not using a rectangle for their screw on cap, what could possibly go wrong.

I mean I’m sure that’s what their leader told him to say, and by their leader I mean Putin. It’s basically the worst kept secret at this point that Hungary isn’t actually its own country anymore but a Russian territory.

Putin would be very angry and threaten to use nukes… so basically just another Tuesday.

Ah yes, it’s…

checks notes

the US fault that Russia invaded Ukraine. Right, makes perfect sense, carry on.

The only involvement the US or even most of the NATO countries have had in this complete shitshow has been to sell obsolete military hardware to Ukraine at a steep discount. It was probably cheaper to ship the stuff in bulk to Ukraine than it would cost to properly decommission it so might even have saved some money doing that.

Russia desperately wants to make this a fight with NATO or even better the US so they look like less of a laughing stock for losing this badly.

They tried making subscription turn signals but nobody bought them. /s

I seem to recall a big kerfuffle around a decade and a half back about Russia not actually knowing what became of a whole bunch of nuclear weapons in the aftermath of the USSR collapsing. There were also rumors of Soviet nukes being sold off to various unsavory groups. It really wouldn’t surprise me to find out there was some truth to that.

I have also heard that ICBMs and the like require regular expensive and specialized maintenance in order to remain functional. Knowing what we now know about Russia what do you figure the odds are that some general or other decided those maintenance funds would be better used to line their pockets since the odds of actually using those nukes were so low?

China would just wait until it’s over and then pick through the remains of Russia. Probably try to claim a big chunk of southern Russia using some excuse or another.

I’ve learned how powerful the unelected bureaucracy is. You have to win in November … you have to dismantle the leftist state … they are devious, they are ruthless and they are out to get you.

Those are called voters.

It’s Japan, I’m sure somebody is planning to.