NYT had a 30% chance of Don winning the 2016 election. 30% is far from outlandish. It's actually pretty likely. One thing I've found interesting in this saga is the extent to which the administration has kept the public informed on the latest intelligence, then seeing the predictions come to pass in real time. I don't remember the last time that happened.
Yeah but we suck at statistics and we generally assume people in charge got there by knowing what to do with authority. I certainly do. Lev Bodorowsky doesn't quite editorialize with his choice of graphs and statistics but he skirts the line? And one of the factoids he dripped out this morning is that Iranian oil could more than make up for a Russian shortfall. And that even before this, most Americans would be fine with that. Meanwhile, it sure looks like China has chosen sides. The Cold War Golden Oldies move is to fire up the Defense Production Act to cover Chinese shortfalls, mobilize the National Guard and fling troops into Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania ( we deployed F35s and AH64s there two days ago), bail out Turkey in exchange for closing the Bosphorus (they've been NATO members since 1952 and recently sold arms to Ukraine, sign a new nuclear deal with Iran that looks just like the old nuclear deal, crank up the mighty wurlitzer about a new "coalition of the willing" and get Toby Keith to sing about what an asshole Putin is. I suspect that if you gave every follower of QAnon a choice between InfoWars or Yellow Ribbon stickers, QAnon would cease to exist within two months. The entire militia movement sprung into existence because of a noteworthy lack of foreign enemies; now that K-Tel is reissuing golden oldies we're likely to be back at patriots insisting the government can do no wrong, rather than the other way 'round.
Yeah, what do you think that’s all been about with making aspects of intelligence public in real time? I haven’t seen that at this scale before.
I thought the intel declassifications were a pretty loud flex. One subtext is "We have so many different avenues of discerning your next move that we don't have to worry about compromising our sources". But 4sure, Putin flexed back, with "Ok, cool. Try and stop me. You won't". Biden seemingly getting the date "wrong" a couple of times might have prolonged the incursion for a week or so, which might help a little bit, especially if the weather warmed up in the meantime. I've heard (maybe 'bl00 can confirm?) Russian tanks are engineered to run optimally on permafrost. Having trouble googling to confirm. Sorry, unsolicited take from me, would also love to hear others weigh in.