It Looks Like, For Some Reason, The Word Has Gone Out

There's a lot of new opinion across the spectrum that something's changed. For instance, at CNN:

A top legal analyst at CNN said it is possible President Biden’s son Hunter Biden could be indicted by the U.S. government following an investigation into his foreign business dealings.

“This is a very real, very substantial investigation of potentially serious federal crimes,” Elie Honig said Wednesday morning on the network. “We are seeing federal prosecutors in Delaware do exactly what you would expect to see federal prosecutors do in this situation.”

Honig said it appears the investigation into Hunter Biden’s business overseas is “gaining steam.”

Another take on CNN's report suggests there are questions about an issue that caught my eye more than a week ago:

WATCH: Even CNN confirms that Hunter Biden is under investigation for “money transfers,” “business activities in China,” “Burisma,” and the "source" of the funds he used to pay his tax bills. pic.twitter.com/5EqrYJhnqE

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 30, 2022

As I asked back then, if Hunter is broke, how did he manage to pay a million-dollar tax bill? The CNN story continues,

There is a realistic chance this could result in federal charges,” Honig said. “Of course, then we’d be in unprecedented political territory — not legal territory but a situation of having potentially the Department of Justice prosecuting and trying to imprison the son of the president.”

But what isn't mentioned is the potential exposure, both legal and political, of the Biden family's commingled finances. It's been generally acknowledged that Hunter and Joe have paid each other's bills for one thing or another all along. Tax problems for Hunter are almost certainly tax problems for Joe, his brother, and other members of the family.

Another issue that nobody's mentioned is the question of Hunter's relationship with the Secret Service, which continued in the four-year interregnum between the end of Joe's term as vice president and his inauguration as president, when neither Joe nor Hunter had Secret Service protection. The Washington Examiner reported last year,

A former U.S. Secret Service agent went to check on Hunter Biden in 2018, when the future president’s son was holed up in a Los Angeles hotel room. The agent became alarmed about, and frustrated with, Hunter Biden, text messages obtained by the Washington Examiner  show.

“As your friend we need to resolve this in the immediate. Call the front desk now H or I will have to assume you are in danger and we will have to make them give us keys,” texted the former agent in the May 24, 2018 incident.

. . . At the time of the hotel incident, Hunter Biden was living in Los Angeles. His father, current President Joe Biden, was the former vice president and neither he nor his son had Secret Service protection. At 6:37 p.m., the following text exchange occurred between Hunter and the former agent, invoking the code name “Celtic,” which was and remains Joe Biden’s Secret Service handle:

Former agent: "H- I’m in the lobby, come down. Thanks..."

Biden: "5 minutes."

Former agent: "Come on H this is linked to Celtic’s account. DC is calling me every 10. Let me up or come down. I can’t help if you don’t let me. H."

There was another, similar incident that year:

On Oct. 23, 2018, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and daughter in law Hallie were involved in a bizarre incident in which Hallie took Hunter’s gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone.

Delaware police began investigating, concerned that the trash can was across from a high school and that the missing gun could be used in a crime, according to law enforcement officials and a copy of the police report obtained by POLITICO.

But a curious thing happened at the time: Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.

The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.

The Secret Service says it has no record of its agents investigating the incident, and Joe Biden, who was not under protection at the time, said through a spokesperson he has no knowledge of any Secret Service involvement.

. . . the alleged involvement of the Secret Service remains a mystery. One law enforcement official said that at the time of the incident, individual Secret Service agents at the agency’s offices in Wilmington, Del., and Philadelphia kept an informal hand in maintaining the former vice president’s security. The person cited an instance in 2019 when the Wilmington office of the Secret Service called the Delaware State Police to arrange security for a public appearance by Biden.

The exact relationship between Joe, Hunter, and other members of the Biden family with the Secret Service, especially during years in which they were not protectees, is a question that needs investigation. Acccording to the Epoch Times,

The U.S. Secret Service (USSS) says it cannot locate years of records on communications regarding agents guarding Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden was a Secret Service protectee from Jan. 29, 2009, to July 8, 2014, and traveled extensively during that time, including to Russia, China, and India, a congressional investigation found.

As part of the probe, which is ongoing, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have sought records from the Secret Service in their roles as the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Secret Service provided some 261 heavily redacted pages (pdf) concerning the travel but did not provide any records from 2010, 2011, or 2013.

But someone also should be asking questions about 2018, and indeed, what services the Secret Service is now providing for Hunter, who has adopted a new, very low public profile, at Joe's behest. This man is an addict. Does Hunter now have permanent 24/7 minders? What do the minders do for him to keep him happy but out of trouble?

Hunter Biden Is Married? This is New.

Yesterday morning I opened my phone to find a headline in the UK Daily Mail: EXCLUSIVE: Living her best life! Hunter Biden's wife Melissa Cohen, 35, flaunts her toned body on Ipanema Beach in Rio as her husband faces grand jury probe into his murky finances thousands of miles away. I've got to think Hunter's second marriage is one of the under-reported events of our time.

Hunter Biden's wife Melissa Cohen was spotted going for a swim on a beach in Brazil while her husband is thousands of miles away facing a grand jury probe into his murky finances and business deals.

. . . The mother-of-one appeared to enjoy the waves solo in her yellow top and navy blue-patterned bottoms, but several Secret Service agents were nearby at all times, costing US taxpayers thousands.

South African-born Melissa is in town for the Orphaned Starfish Foundation's benefit for the LGBTQ+ community, orphans, indigenous children and victims of trafficking and abuse. She is the guest of honor at Thursday night's event.

So I went looking for more and came up with some interesting context. In brief,

In 2018, a stripper named Lunden Roberts gave birth to a child out of wedlock and named Hunter the father in a paternity suit. The baby was conceived while he was still dating [Beau's widow] Hallie. Hunter initially denied the claim, but a DNA test proved otherwise. In January 2020, he agreed to pay Roberts an undisclosed amount of monthly child support.

In 2019, shortly after breaking up with Hallie, Biden began dating Melissa Cohen. To date, they are still an item. [cough, cough.]

Melissa Cohen is a South African activist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She moved to the US at 21 after earning an interior design degree from Greenside Design Center College of Design in South Africa.

She was previously married to an American entrepreneur Jason Landver between 2012 and 2014. In March, she gave birth to a son with Hunter. The child is reportedly named after his deceased uncle, Beau.

Hunter and Cohen’s relationship moved at warp speed. A few days after their first date, he had the word “shalom” tattooed on his left bicep to match her ink. A few days after that, he proposed. They were married within 24 hours [in May, 2019].

Cohen apparently comes with her own bizarre baggage. According to the Daily Mail, the 33-year-old, who is adopted, claims she spent the first few years of her life being raised by African tribeswomen. The self-described “jungle girl” says her native tongue is Xhosa, a tribal dialect. Friends believe “she may have embellished some aspects of her background in order to raise money for her various conservation projects.”

Sources also revealed unsavory details about her former marriage to Landver. “She decided she wanted to stay in America so she gave him an ultimatum,” said an insider. “She said we need to get married to get my visa or she would have to leave. It was very manipulative.”

Despite living a lavish lifestyle on Landver’s dime, the two ultimately called it quits. She accepted a $50,000 payment, kept her two-and-a-half carat ring, and even had her ex-husband finance a one-month trip to Europe “to ease the pain of their split.”

It's worth noting that Hunter's May 2019 marriage to Cohen came at the end of the extended binge that culminated in his dropping the now-famous laptop off for repair just a month earlier, that April. Hunter's relationship with his late brother Beau's widow Hallie ended in that same period, while the best information I've been able to find is that Hunter's employment as a Burisma board member ended about April or May 2019 as well, corresponding roughly to Zelensky's election as President of Ukraine on April 21, 2019 on an anti-corruption platform.

At the same time, Hunter's dad, Joe, appears to have been starting to set his presidential campaign in motion and may have wanted Hunter to tone thngs down.

Hunter had been financially squeeezed since Joe left the vice presidency. According to the New York Post,

From May 2014, Burisma Holdings Ltd. was paying Hunter $83,333 a month to sit on its board, invoices on his abandoned laptop show.

But in an email on March 19, 2017, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi asked Hunter to sign a new director’s agreement and informed him “the only thing that was amended is the compensation rate.”

. . . After the email, the amount listed on Hunter’s monthly Burisma invoices was reduced to $41,500, effective from May 2017.

An extended summary of Hunter's autobiography in the Forward gives further detail on how his relationship with Melissa Cohen developed:

Just after getting the boot from the Petit Ermitage, a swanky Los Angeles hotel, and while sitting on the rooftop pool figuring out where to go next, a drunk and high Hunter struck up a conversation with a group of hipsters, who all seemed to think that he needed to meet one of their friends: Melissa Cohen. Late that night he texted her, asking to meet up for drinks. She countered with an offer to meet for coffee the next morning — but didn’t show up until dinnertime.

Hunter describes his first glimpse of Melissa, who arrived with “oversized sunglasses pushed atop her honey-blond hair,” as a “bell-ringer.” Within a few minutes, he told her she had the same blue eyes as Beau, his brother. Then, he announced he was in love with her. An hour later, he confessed to his drug addiction.

Melissa, in his recollection, was unfazed. “Not anymore,” she said. “You’re finished with that.”

“Beautiful Things” details a slew of rehab programs that never quite worked. Instead, it took Melissa’s care to catapult Hunter into his current sobriety. A day after meeting him, she disposed of all his drugs. She confiscated his car keys, wallet, computer, and phone, deleting all contacts except immediate family members. When drug dealers knocked on the door, she “turned to steel” and dispatched them unceremoniously.

After a difficult period of withdrawal — Hunter doesn’t specify how long this lasted, but credits Melissa with putting up with “my whining and crying and scheming” — he slept for three days. On the fourth day, Hunter popped the question “like a trial balloon, light and breezy: ‘We should get married!’” That night, the two visited destination tattoo parlor Shamrock Social Club, where Hunter got the tattoo the Schmooze can’t stop talking about: The word “Shalom,” inked on his left bicep, which matched one of Melissa’s preexisting tats.

“Shalom” tattoos tend to usher in major life decisions, and the next morning Hunter and Melissa decided to get hitched — that day. Wedding preparations were slapdash: Hunter located a “marriage shop” and paid its owner to hurry to Melissa’s apartment in rush-hour traffic. Yet, he said, there was no sense of haste: “The decision never felt rash or harebrained or reckless. It felt urgent. I felt like I’d been given a reprieve.”

The story glosses over the fact that this all occurred -- first date through rehab struggle to marriage -- within ten days. I bet that rehab really worked, huh? As far as I can tell, Cohen herself had few or no financial resources, and whatever she got in her divorce settlement we must assume had long since been spent. She seeems to have cast an effective spell on the desperate Hunter, but I would assume that any other potential suitor with the means to support her lifestyle would likely have seen her as an aging gold-digger. Given her own sketchy background, he was the best she could manage. It's probably no coincidence that she got pregnant around the time they first met.

Curious about their utlimate living arrangements, I found this story, also in the New York Post, dated last July:

Hunter Biden has a new Malibu rental with an art studio, according to reports.

The 51-year-old, who detailed his battle with cocaine and alcohol addictions in his book “Beautiful Things,” moved into the pad with his wife, South African model and filmmaker Melissa Cohen, and their 1-year-old son, Beau Jr., he told Artnet earlier this month.

The rental was listed for $20,000 a month in April, and the listing was removed on May 10, two months ago, signaling that a rental agreement had been reached (though TMZ reported that the rental began four months ago when the property was first listed).

. . . The 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-bathroom home was purchased in 2019 for $3.34 million. The house has an open floor plan, solid oak floors, French doors and 180-degree ocean views, according to Realtor.com.

. . . Hunter recently left a $5.4 million Venice Beach house — which was guarded by the Secret Service — that cost an estimated $25,000 per month and which he found after living in Hollywood Hills, The Post reported. The new rental is also guarded by the Secret Service, TMZ has reported.

So Hunter's current home is 20% less expensive, presumably allowing for his diminished prospects as an investor and board member, but not all that less. I've got to assume Melissa, currently jet-setting in Brazil, isn't there all that often, and I also suspect young toddler Beau must be looked after elsewhere, as it would not be prudent to leave him in the care of his cokehead father.

We know someone just paid a million-dollar tax bill for Hunter as the prospect of his indictment looms. I've got to think the cost of maintaining Melissa's lifestyle, including charitable donations that make her a guest of honor, is not inconsequential, and you know she doesn't fly coach. Not to mention nannies and minders for little Beau. The one bright spot is the Secret Service pays for the limos. The cost of minders for Hunter himself is presumably out of the Secret Service budget as well. Do the agents run out for his drugs? How do they vet the hookers?

Asking for a friend.

Yet Again, It's Not Dementia

There's been a lot of reaction to President Brandon's multiple gaffes over the weekend in Poland, which I've discussed here, as well as to his more recent attempts to claim they weren't gaffes at all. For instance,

Doocy: "The big things you say on the world stage keep getting walked back."

Biden: "What's getting walked backed?"

Biden: You told troops they are going to Ukraine, the U.S. would use a chemical weapon, and called for regime change in Russia.

Biden: "None of the 3 occurred." pic.twitter.com/cwZPzANIoC

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 28, 2022

Elsewhere,

When Biden was asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy to clarify his assertion that Russian President Vladimir Putin would trigger a “response in kind” if he used chemical weapons, the president grew indignant.

“I’m not gonna tell you. Why would I tell you?” he replied. “You gotta be silly.”

When Doocy told Biden the world wanted to know what he meant, he dismissed the question.

“The world wants to know a lot of things,” he replied. “I’m not telling them what the response will be… then Russia knows the response.”

Biden was asked about his other two comments that required clarification from the White House, including a comment to American troops about what they would see when they got to Ukraine and his comment about regime change in Russia.

“None of the three occurred, you interpreted the language that way,” he complained.

He indicated he believed everyone criticizing him for his comments about Putin was being dishonest.

Tucker Carlson, who at best is not up to the standard once set by El Rushbo, is urging those around him to invoke the 25th Amendment:

So you know exactly what that is. You've seen it in people around you, people you love. It has nothing to do with politics. What you just saw is a man who is losing the ability to regulate his emotions. Uncontrollable flashes of anger are common among people who are aging, particularly among men, and they often accompany senility. Losing it is a very frustrating experience and your heart goes out to anyone who is.

. . . All right. Joke's over, too much is at stake. If there was ever a time, if there was, in U.S. history, ever a time, to invoke the 25th Amendment, it is now. As Joe Biden himself put it, "For God's sakes, this man cannot remain in power," for all of our sakes.

I certainly agree that something is gravely wrong. The problem is that it isn't dementia, which in any case is a medical condition that requires a medical diagnosis, which Tucker Carlson is not qualified to make. What Biden is doing is simply "gaslighting", which is a common term for an identifiable interactive strategy. He's simply denying things took place, or he's insisting that people are interpreting his remarks incorrectly, or he's insisting that people are "silly".

The impression I have is that at the cabinet level, people are doing what they can to countermand anything that may go awry, and nobody is going to push any nuclear buttons. The problem is that due to an election that looks less and less legitimate, given the extent to which the media promoted a false narrative of a Ukraine phone call on one hand and suppressed a true narrative of the Hunter laptop and extensive conflicts of interest in the Biden family, a man who was never fit for the office has found himself in it.

There isn't going to be an easy fix. Nobody is going to get the collection of hacks and incompetents in the cabinet and Democrat congressional leadership we have now to invoke the 25th Amendment, and that isn't the appropriate remedy anyhow. Not much of anything can be done until Republicans can take over congress afer the November election, but even then, committee investigations will have little effect. Without a major revelation, impeachment is just as feckless a move for Republicans as it's been all along for anyone, and let's face it, that goes all the way back to Andrew Johnson.

These are things Biden understands. Whatever comes up, he's fully aware that he can hold onto his office with its perks and graft with the same lies and gaslighting he's always used. The only slight chink in the armor will be what can actually be found in Hunter's extravagant lifestyle, how it's been funded over decades, and what kind of skim the Big Guy took off the top. But even that will be no slam dunk, and it's a mistake to assume Biden will just one day shuffle off the stage in a fog.

The Biden Conundrum Continues

Over the weekend, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Kuleba said of the meeting with US representatives in Warsaw,

"Today is a real opportunity to thank the United States for everything it has done for Ukraine so far. We thank every nation – not all assistance is reported in the media, but I know what every country has done, and we thank every one of them. But no one has done more for Ukraine throughout this time than the United States," the foreign minister stressed.

Yet Ukraine President Zelensky remarked on the same day,

NBC: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thinks Biden is “all talk" and lacks the courage to respond to Russia pic.twitter.com/2M4FxC0fSc

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 27, 2022

The story at the Red State blog observes,

That’s the correct take, regardless of whether one personally thinks the US should be more involved in Ukraine at the moment. If Biden weren’t trying to present himself as a savior, “uniting'” the world against Russian aggression, then Zelensky’s critique might be out of bounds. But what Biden is doing is what he’s always done throughout his political career, which is to pretend he’s in the thick of the action when he’s actually just falsely pumping up his ego.

. . . I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for the Ukrainian president to see someone like Biden playing celebrity on the world stage and taking credit for things he didn’t even do, while refusing to take direct action.

The contradiction may stem from the fact that foreign minister Kuleba and the defense minister met with their counterparts, Secretaries Blinken and Austin, without Biden being there. However, the red light-green light affair over sending Polish Mig fighters to Ukraine is an indication that Biden can cancel any prior agreement. On March 6, Secretary Blinken said Poland had a "green light" to transfer the jets to Ukraine; by March 10, Biden appears to have changed his mind:

“POTUS will do what the military advises here and the advice now is not to do this and instead send the Ukrainian government more things they can make good use of,” a senior administration official told POLITICO. Ukraine has “many planes they already don’t fly much because of Russian air defense.” The official added that it’s “not clear what sending more planes achieves.”

The takeaway, certainly from Zelensky's point of view, is that Biden is timid and unreliable. Certainly the implication from the "senior administration official" is that the Pentagon knows better than Zelensky what Zelensky really needs.

The problem is not so much that Biden said something like what Reagan said (though Reagan was referring specifically to the Berlin Wall in an apostrophe to Gorbachev, implying that Gorbachev should remain in power to tear it down, while Biden said something vaguely implying regime change), the real issue is that Reagan meant it, while Biden was bloviating.

Biden is simply the uncertain creature of his handlers, who themselves are not serious people. Putin read Biden correctly; the one both he and Biden completely misread was Zelensky.

Back To The Dunning-Kruger Effect

I had drafts for a couple of other posts prepared and ready to go today, but almost as soon as I put yesterday's post up, President Brandon let me know I wasn't done:

He came, he saw, he confused.

Joe Biden’s call-to-arms speech in Poland was long on soaring rhetoric about the virtues of democracy but woefully short on what more the West will do to help Ukraine defeat the Russian invasion. But by the time he got to the finish, most of that was forgotten.

What mattered most and what will be remembered for a long time was a single line the president of the United States said about the president of Russia: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

In the context of the speech and the slaughter of Ukrainian civilians, it’s impossible to understand that line as anything other than a call for regime change, a move that would dramatically raise the stakes with Russia at a time when Biden has been at pains to lower them.

I'm actually of two minds about this. President Trump was actually far more belligerent in his public challenges to renegade world leaders:

The US president used Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s Day speech as the basis for his latest provocative tweet against the leader, whom he has previously referred to as “little rocket man”, saying the “nuclear button” in Washington is “much bigger and more powerful” than Kim’s – “and my button works!”.

It seems as though some people were even encouraged to see this tone from Biden:

President Joe Biden stunned pundits and politicians on Saturday when, at the end of a fiery speech in Warsaw, he seemed to endorse regime change in Russia, saying Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”

His speech caused a huge reaction, particularly among members of the media and public figures in areas of foreign policy and politics. That included a lot of people on social media comparing his commentary to Ronald Reagan’s historic “Tear Down This Wall” speech in Berlin in June of 1987.

, , , If it isn’t clear which part of the speech the verified users were reacting to, it was spelled out explicitly several times. They were reacting very directly to his saying that Putin cannot remain in power, which was widely discussed as meaning a call for regime change.

. . . However, after the White House walked that back, attempting to clarify that Biden meant Putin shouldn’t have power over neighboring countries, there were doubts about the comparison to Reagan’s speech. Some, like reporter Mark Knoller and pundit Larry Sabato, specifically moderated their own praise in concert with the White House response.

(Apparently, though, nobody saw any parallels to "my button is much bigger".) The bottom line here is that Biden seems to have decided off the cuff to depart from the teleprompter and insert his own version of "tear down this wall" without giving it much thought -- indeed, without giving it any more thought than he'd give to anything else. The difference here is that "tear down this wall" was written for Reagan (by a speechwriter who's built an entire subsequent career on having written it), and clearly the text was approved up the chain of command before Reagan delivered it.

Even "my button is much bigger" had some level of deliberation on Trump's part (or on the part of whomever else was at his side) before he sent the tweet. And of course, it worked; Kim immediately ended his nuclear bombast. The problem for Biden is that however justifiable and potentially effective his ad lib may have been, his staff was not on board with it, and they walked it back. Nobody who worked for Trump walked back the tweet about the button.

I realized early this morning that I've already posted about Biden and the Dunning-Kruger effect. According to Britannica,

Dunning-Kruger effect, in psychology, a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general. According to the researchers for whom it is named, psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the effect is explained by the fact that the metacognitive ability to recognize deficiencies in one’s own knowledge or competence requires that one possess at least a minimum level of the same kind of knowledge or competence, which those who exhibit the effect have not attained. Because they are unaware of their deficiencies, such people generally assume that they are not deficient, in keeping with the tendency of most people to “choose what they think is the most reasonable and optimal option.”

As I noted yesterday, Biden has fequently made remarks dismissive of reporters' assumptions, as when he's insisted throughout the Russo-Ukraine War that he never intended for sanctions to deter Putin, even as his administration has repeatedly said it relies on them on the basis that they do. We must assume that Biden's national security handlers had been working on the assumption that he would not make remarks outside expected unprovocative parameters, when instead, without giving it any thought, he did so.

If this were Reagan or Trump (especially Reagan), the remarks would have been fully calculated; in the case of Trump, they carried a level of instinctive confidence that also turns out to have been justified. With Biden, they were sponanteous empty bombast that carried the extra disadvantage of needing "clarification".

Again, this is not a medical issue, and the Dunning-Kruger effect is not a medical condition. The issue is that Biden is so ignorant he doesn't know what stupid is. This is dangerous. Should this man remain in power?

Biden's Poland Performance

The hits just keep on coming. The most recent from President Brandon's visit to Poland was described as follows:

President Joe Biden was tragically felled by a slice of pizza topped with jalapeño peppers in Warsaw on Friday, Fox News contributor Charlie Hurt reported on Hannity.

. . . Biden . . . ate pizza with soldiers and afterward met with Polish President Andrezj Duda. As Biden spoke, he coughed and took a sip of his drink. He turned to Duda and said, “I was visiting our troops and I had pizza pie with hot peppers on it.”

. . . as b-roll of Biden eating pizza aired, Hurt said, “And there he is, defeated by a slice of jalapeño pizza.”

Biden is the first president to be “defeated” by food on foreign soil since George H.W. Bush threw up on the prime minister of Japan during a dinner in Tokyo in 1992.

That was the least of it. On Thursday, he insisted there was no reason to have imposed sanctions on Putin, or something like that:

President Biden suggested Thursday that sanctions were not meant to deter the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling reporters now that "sanctions never deter."

"Sir, deterrence didn’t work. What makes you think Vladimir Putin will alter course based on the action you’ve taken today," Biden was asked by CBS reporter Christina Ruffini during a press conference at a NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium.

"Let’s get something straight. You remember if you covered me from the very beginning, I did not say that, in fact, the sanctions would deter him. Sanctions never deter. You keep talking about that. Sanctions never deter," Biden responded.

Ruffini repeated the question, asking whether these actions could make Putin change course.

"That’s not what I said. You’re playing a game with me. The answer’s no," Biden snapped back.

. . . Biden's remarks come after weeks of messaging from key Biden administration officials – including Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken – who claimed the sanctions placed on Russia were meant to deter the actions of Putin.

But this is completely consistent with the position he took a month ago, when immediately after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, he said “no one expected sanctions would prevent anything”, again to the amazement of the press:

CBS News' Margaret Brennan: "I thought that was so interesting when President Biden said, 'No one expected sanctions to prevent anything.'

"Actually, that's exactly what his foreign policy team said again and again, and it's what his secretary of state said to me on Sunday."

He was called out for "inconsistency" then, but as far as I can see, he's been completely consistent. As I said then, he really believes he's a skilled Machiavellian manipulator, operating in a behind-the-scenes dimension of Realpolitik beyond conventional expectations. It's plain he regarded sanctions as kabuki from the get-go, an empty threat made for the benefit of the ignorant public, and I think the subtext as well was that he was going to avoid World War III by letting Putin roll into Ukraine, and the whole thing would be over within a matter of days anyhow.

The gaffe during his pep talk to the 82nd Airborne was of a piece:

“You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see — you’re gonna see women, young people standing in the middle in front of a damned tank just saying, ‘I’m not leaving, I’m holding my ground,’” Biden said.

A White House official quickly clarified that Biden wasn’t changing his stance on deploying the military into Ukraine.

“The president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position,” a Biden spokesman told The Post.

There's nothing new here; this isn't an issue of cognitive decline. Biden is aware of his surroundings; he isn't talking to people who aren't there; he's speaking as coherently as any dumb guy can. In fact, he was just running his mouth like any jerk in the corner bar. It's just that you can't take anything he says seriously, and in fact, he gets impatient with people who expect him to be serious.

President Zelensky And The Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations

I continue to think Ukraine's President Zelensky is practicing wartime national-purpose rhetoric at an Abraham Lincon or Winston Churchill level. Below is from his March 24 address in English to NATO:

I am addressing you from Kyiv, our capital, which has been fighting for a month already, just as our entire state.

Yes, it is true - we are not in the Alliance. Not in the most powerful defense union in the world. Not one of the 30 states under the umbrella of joint protection. Under the umbrella of Article 5. It feels like we are in the "gray zone". Between the West and Russia. But we defend all our common values. And we are bright people! And we have been defending all these values for a month now!

. . . And do you have confidence that Article 5 can work?

"Budapest" hasn’t worked for us already. Our Budapest Memorandum. Has not worked for peace in Ukraine.

And I will tell you honestly - today Budapest is not working for peace in Ukraine as well. Yes, we receive help from individual members of the Alliance. I am very grateful. Ukrainians are sincerely grateful for this. To each of you who gives what you have, supporting us.

But what about the Alliance? The question of Article 5 is fundamental. I just want you to know what we think about it. And I sincerely wish you that we are wrong in our assessments and in our doubts. I sincerely wish that you actually have a very strong Alliance. Because if we are wrong, the world is safe. But if we are at least one percent right, I ask you to reconsider your attitude. Your own estimates. And really take care of security, security in Europe and, consequently, in the world.

You can give us one percent of all your aircraft. One percent of all your tanks. One percent! We can't just buy it. Such a supply directly depends only on NATO's decisions, on political decisions, by the way.

MLRS systems. Anti-ship weapons. Means of air defense. Is it possible to survive such a war without it?

So when it's finally available, it will give us and you as well, one hundred percent security. And we need one. And the only thing I demand from you. . . After such a month of war. This is a request for the sake of our military. After such a war against Russia ... Never, please, never tell us again that our army does not meet NATO standards.

We have shown what our standards are capable of. And how much we can give to the common security in Europe and the world. How much we can do to protect against aggression against everything we value, everything you value. But NATO has yet to show what the Alliance can do to save people. To show that this is truly the most powerful defense union in the world. And the world is waiting. And Ukraine is very much waiting. Waiting for real actions. Real security guarantees. From those whose word is trustworthy. And whose actions can keep the peace.

This is actually a version of President Trump's line with NATO, that, effectively, in not budgeting adequately for defense, NATO is relying on someone else -- in Trump's case, the US -- to provide its security. Zelensky is making precisely the same argument from the other direction, that Ukraine has been willing to fight, and indeed to fight at a level that's at least equivalent to NATO, indeed to provide security to NATO, while NATO as an alliance hasn't been functioning very well and is effectively allowing Ukraine to provide its security..

In fact, I think Zelensky and Trump are similar populist, national-interest and national-identity politicians. This is an issue that the US right is currently struggling with; they don't trust Trump, and they don't trust Zelensky. Well and good, but who has a better idea?

It seems to me that Zelensky's argument boils down to this:

• Ukraine is outside of NATO and can't invoke Article 5 for mutual defense
• However, Ukaine has far surpassed expectations and is now actually protecting NATO merely by conducting a successful defense of its own territory
• NATO members who rely on Article 5 for their own defense from a Russian invasion are naive
• Other international agreements that theoretically protected Ukraine haven't worked
• So how much confidence can you really have in Article 5?
• On the other hand, we have protected you without the obligation Article 5 would have imposed on us
• It's in your individual interest to support us with active military assistance
• You owe it to yourselves to behave as if you're a trustworthy alliance.

The story of the Russia-Ukraine war has consistently been about underestimating Ukraine. I think, though, that Zelensky has an acute understanding of the situation on the ground. As Russia weakens during this war -- and as its actual weakness prior to the war has been revealed -- the strategic fulcrum in Europe must inevitably move east. The decision making majority will also move east, especially if or when Finland and Sweden join NATO.

However, the strategic reality, as Zelensky lays out here, is effectively that there is a parallel quasi-alliance that not only includes but is at least morally led by Ukraine and Zelensky. Ukraine as of now is neither in NATO nor the EU but as a practical matter is setting the terms for decision making in both. All are obligated to send Ukraine aid, notwithstanding any actual alliance, in their own interest. Some, like Hungary, aren't pulling their weight, but Zelensky is setting expectations.

It seems to me that this is a situation that Trump as president would endorse. If NATO had become complacent that the US would make up any defense budget shortfall among its members, Putin's invasion of Ukraine woke them up. Indeed, a recognition, as Zelensky puts it, that "NATO has yet to show what the Alliance can do to save people" ought to be prompting Europe to rethink what a functional alliance would look like. As a practical matter, this will have to include Ukraine, and Zelensky will be a major leader.

A footnote is that Biden and the US have been transitioning away from a leadership role in the new de facto alliance. The performances of both President Biden and Vice President Harris in Poland have been terrible. Beyond Zelensky's unexpectedly superb performance, Both Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron have shown far more initiative than Biden. For the sake of the West, it's good that others are stepping in.

In Other News

I've said here that the Russo-Ukraine War is just one theater of the larger Plebe War, although so far, there's been no actual shooting in the other theaters, like the US battles over transsexualism. An intriguing example is the photo above of the winners in the recent NCAA women's swimming championship. In nearly every case, the photo has been cropped by corporate media to focus on Lia, the fully intact, six foot four, cisgender male at left who identifies as a woman purely for athletic purposes, and it eliminates the runner-up women clustered far to the right, pretty clearly in protest at the outcome. Even so, Mr Thomas's victory grin seemes forced and equivocal.

This post at Instapundit, apparently from Twitter, shows the lengths to which corporate media will go to justify Mr Thomas's official standing as a female -- in the official corporate media photo, his facial features have clearly been retouched and softened. Well, of course. The guy has no intention of functioning as a woman once his athletic career is over, not to mention his 15 minutes of fame. The hormones were just to play the game, they'll wear off, but there's not going to be any surgery. Ever. Period. (I would imagine his hair and makeup are always done by his handlers, for that matter.)

I've already mentioned the peculiar case that the transsexualist battle is being fought over two figures, Mr Thomas and the even more absurd figure of Dr Rachel Levine, for whom the coporate media apparently hasn't even seen a need for handlers to do the hair and makeup. That's an indication of how much cynicism we're dealing with here. She's wearing a dress and a necklace. Isn't that enough? Salon characterizes her as "the highest ranking trans woman in government", which in effect is an argument from authority. The government says she's a woman. So shut up.

John Belushi used to get himself up in exactly that way on Saturday Night Live, and he'd get laughs for it. The whole kerfuffle over Twitter banning the Babylon Bee, a humor site, for naming Dr Levine Man of the Year is an indication of how seriously the gentry is taking this issue, I think because even the gentry when off camera can't suppress guffaws at Levine -- he's an ugly old fat guy in frumpy drag, and nobody can really cover that up. The. Plebs. Must. Not. Be. Allowed. To. Snicker. If they snicker at Dr Rachel Levine, who knows how many others they'll snicker at? The vice president? The speaker? Wouldn't a modern-day Belushi in drag do a better job playing either one than they do themselves?

This gets to the nexus of the trans campaign. On one hand, it makes the clear point that, like Mr Thomas, a man is actually just a better woman, and this is just another iteration of anti-feminism. On the other, if you announce that gender is nothing but a social consuct, you throw open the traditional question of same-sex attraction:

You can’t erase gender and simultaneously maintain the gains of the gay rights movement in western culture over the last 30 years. The status of identifying as a person attracted to the same sex depends solely on the notion of gender. To erase gender boundaries is to erase millions of gay Americans. Whatever your opinion of the gay rights movement, that is an immutable fact. There is no “gay” without gender.

The trans activists are quickly pushing themselves out of the LGB into a lettered category of their own making.

In other words, if you're a guy attracted to other guys because they're guys, you're transphobic. What about a woman who's been living a lie as a woman and now identifies as a man? Why not marry him? The writer goes on,

. . . These two movements cannot coexist peacefully. I say that as someone who has only ever been an observer. Right now, I am observing an exclusively progressive phenomenon fold in on itself. We might think our lesbian sisters are safe from the current thread of rabid misogyny running through pop culture, but we would be wrong. All women are the victims of this aggressive ideology. “Live and let live” is great, but only when both sides agree to let live. The all-trans-all-the-time mob isn’t willing to simply live their own lives and be happy with living in their own truth.

My basic question is, "Why are they doing this?" The trans movement is seeking not fully specified "rights" for a very tiny and not fully specified group. Mr Thomas as far as we can see doesn't have gender dysphoria, insofar as that is even a recognized condition -- outside the pool, he has no intention of living as other than a fully adjusted man and is apparently copacetic with that. He dates women and doesn't cruise gay bars. I would imagine that he doesn't even get off all that much at being in the women's locker room insofar as he might glimpse this or that.

He may, though, get off at the general unpleasantness his mere presence there causes. Misogyny is at the basis of this, perhaps not that far from the idea that rape is a power display more than sexual gratification per se. By the same token, Dr Rachel Levine posing as an absurdly frumpy woman is an act of misogyny, not self actualization.

But at bottom, it's a violation of natural law, in effect, as in other despotisms, a declaration that the government's law, even if in clear violation of natural law, is nevertheless the law of the land. This is problematic. This is the reason the trans battle is just another theater of the Plebe War.

Why Don't They Update The Maps?

I'm stumped. Above is this morning's map for the Ukraine theater of the Plebe War. As far as I can tell, the ISW site is the most prestigious ongoing assessment of the war's progress, but it's been misleading in important ways from the start.

First, I think it's generally acknowledged that the thick pink blobs that are said to denote "Assessed Russian-Controlled Ukrainian Territory" do not reflect the fact that the actual Russian controlled areas are really just thin lines along roads where Russian units advanced as of several weeks ago. The truth is Ukrainian forces operate freely within all the pink blobs and conduct attacks on Russian convoys at will there.

Second, the conventional wisdom at this point is that the Russian advances are "stalled" on all fronts except within Mariupol. For more than a week, the ISW assessments have consistently said nothing but words to the effect of "Russian forces did not make any major advances on March. . .", but they're now beginning to add, ". . . Ukrainian forces conducted local counterattacks northwest of Kyiv and around Mykolayiv."

In fact, there are increasing reports from different sources that Russian troops northwest of Kyiv are now encircled, for instance, here. The map key has a blue area to indicate "Claimed Ukrainian Counteroffensives" but in several weeks of following the ISW site, I haven't seen them add a single blue area for a claimed Ukrainian counteroffensive other than a tiny, almost invisible line northwest of Kharkhiv. But isn't a counteroffensive that cuts off the key suburbs northwest of Kyiv, "claimed" or not, eligible for inclusion on the map?

The same would apply to the area around Mykolaiv, which Ukraine has claimed to be recaptured. Per the Daily Kos a week ago,

Well, just a few hours ago, we got confirmation that Ukraine had taken Posad-Pokrovskote, which in itself isn’t a noteworthy place. What matters is where it is located: smack center between Mykolaiv and Kherson. That means Russia has been pushed back an incredible 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Voznesensk. More importantly, Russia has been pushed out at least 35 kilometers (22 miles) from Mykolaiv—out of range of most Russian artillery. Ukraine is now less than 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Kherson airport, which would be a massive morale boost. And the airport is just outside Kherson’s city limits.

Shouldn't there have been a blue dotted-line area from just north of Kherson to past Mykolaiv on the map? I mean, since a week ago? Instead, that area, which the best information seems to indicate is still in Ukrainian hands, is still listed on the map as a "claimed Russian advance".

Meanwhile, the retired US general talking heads are pretty much all gone from YouTube, which means they're also gone from network news. When they were on, they gave versions that ranged between defeatist to noncommittal on the prospects for Ukrainian success.

Eliot Cohen's question is worth asking: why can't the west admit that Ukraine is winning? It's a serious question, and the answer is non-trivial. For instance, I'm following the war with great interest and hungry for the latest information. But I'm a retired guy with lots of free time. Fine -- but the retired generals ought to know more than I do, except they don't seem to. The people at ISW are the professionals who do this full time.

I think deliberate obtuseness is one explanation for what's going on.

UPDATE: A report on a revised map from NBC News Chief Correspondent Richard Engel:

Ukraine making big gains around kyiv. I got a brief (with an unclassified map) from two top municipal officials pic.twitter.com/zASEbmISyJ

— Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) March 23, 2022

Why can't the ISW map be revised with these officially "claimed" Ukrainian advances?

"Why Can’t The West Admit That Ukraine Is Winning?"

There's been a flurry of leaked or blurted reports from the Russian side on its actual casualties in Ukraine. According to the UK Daily Mail,

Russia has lost almost 10,000 soldiers in less than four weeks in Ukraine, according to its own figures.

The death toll – an incredible tally for a war that the Kremlin believed would be over within days – was published by a pro-government website, but quickly taken down.

There was speculation that it was uploaded by a pro-Ukrainian employee. Russia had previously admitted to 498 deaths – but that was on March 2.

Although this estimate is at least deniable, this still exceeds the estimates of "more than 7,000" that have been the consensus in US media, apparently based on information from the Pentagon. However, another Russian leak gives an even bigger total.

A former internal affairs minister of #Ukraine @AvakovArsen shared the intercepted Russian military summary for March 18: Rus. Army troops killed 12,814. Private company Liga (former Vagner) troops killed 4,451. Total number ofservicemembers killed at war in Ukraine: 17,265. pic.twitter.com/TuSTIyHW5n

— Victor Kovalenko (@MrKovalenko) March 21, 2022

Ukraine's official current estimate of Russian deaths as of yesterday is "about 15,000", which is generally in line with the Twitter leak above.

This suggests to me that the Pentagon estimates on which the US media relies have been too conservative -- at this point, underestimating the real total by as much as 50%, which is enough to be seriously misleading. The only commentator to raise any question so far about this is Eliot Cohen, a deep-state Ivy Leaguer who was an architect of the failed Bush Jr policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a current piece in The Atlantic, Why Can’t the West Admit That Ukraine Is Winning?

Analysts and commentators have grudgingly declared that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been blocked, and that the war is stalemated. The more likely truth is that the Ukrainians are winning.

Well, if he never had the right answers, at least now he's come up with the right question. He goes on,

So why can’t Western analysts admit as much? Most professional scholars of the Russian military first predicted a quick and decisive Russian victory; then argued that the Russians would pause, learn from their mistakes, and regroup; then concluded that the Russians would actually have performed much better if they had followed their doctrine; and now tend to mutter that everything can change, that the war is not over, and that the weight of numbers still favors Russia. Their analytic failure will be only one of the elements of this war worth studying in the future.

. . . The evidence that Ukraine is winning this war is abundant, if one only looks closely at the available data. The absence of Russian progress on the front lines is just half the picture, obscured though it is by maps showing big red blobs, which reflect not what the Russians control but the areas through which they have driven. . . . Russian losses are staggering—between 7,000 and 14,000 soldiers dead, depending on your source, which implies (using a low-end rule of thumb about the ratios of such things) a minimum of nearly 30,000 taken off the battlefield by wounds, capture, or disappearance. Such a total would represent at least 15 percent of the entire invading force, enough to render most units combat ineffective.

However, the simple arithmetic I've done here suggests that although the total Russian invasion force was maybe 150,000, the actual numbers in the combat brigades doing the fighting are more like 42,000. If Cohen's estimate of those taken off the battlefield is 30,000, then the Russian brigades have fallen well below simple combat ineffectiveness. Anecdotal reports of 80% casualties in some Russian brigades seem perfectly reasonable in this context.

It's worth noting that as of late last week, the few retired US generals who were still giving prognostications in the media were saying the Russian attack would "culminate" within ten to 14 days -- but as of the weekend, all the respectable open-surce sites were declaring the attack "culminated", meaningless as that term may be, at least a week ahead of projections.

So Cohen may well have a point. On the other hand, as a career deep-stater, his conclusions are remarkably limited:

Most commentators have taken too narrow a view of this conflict, presenting it as solely between Russia and Ukraine.

True, true. But who are the actual adversaries?

Like most wars, though, it is being waged by two coalitions, fought primarily though not exclusively by Russian and Ukrainian nationals. The Russians have some Chechen auxiliaries who have yet to demonstrate much effectiveness (and who lost their commander early on), may get some Syrians (who will be even less able to integrate with Russian units), and find a half-hearted ally in Belarus, whose citizens have begun sabotaging its rail lines and whose army may well mutiny if asked to invade Ukraine.

Oh, quack, quack, quack. He goes on,

The Ukrainians have their auxiliaries, too, some 15,000 or so foreign volunteers, some probably worthless or dangerous to their allies, but others valuable—snipers, combat medics, and other specialists who have fought in Western armies. More important, they have behind them the military industries of countries including the United States, Sweden, Turkey, and the Czech Republic.

But if you ask me, the US is half-hearted at best, and neither NATO nor the EU has been unanimous. The biggest problem continues to be Joe Biden, who was making big baksheesh from Ukraine until Zelensky was voted president in 2019 and finally fired Hunter from Burisma. Biden and his deep-state allies never liked Zelensky and even as we speak are doing everything they can to delay effective aid.

The fight is much more a coalition of broad bourgeois and working-class interests in Europe and the US against an established deep-state status quo that enabled Putin for a generation. This is why the US media and politically astute generals have been maintaining a generally defeatist line on Ukraine. I would guess that Eliot Cohen's heart is with the gentry as well -- his analysis is ultimately obtuse, almost deliberately so.

Pope Francis, Just War, And Clausewitz

This piece at Breitbart reports on remarks by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on the Ukraine conflict:

“The use of weapons is never something desirable, because it always carries a very high risk of taking the life of people or causing serious injury and terrible material damage,” Cardinal Parolin told the Spanish Catholic weekly Vida Nueva when asked whether European nations should be sending weapons to Ukraine.

“Nonetheless, the right to defend one’s life, one’s people and one’s country sometimes also involves the sad recourse to arms,” the cardinal recognized. “At the same time both sides must refrain from the use of prohibited weapons and fully respect international humanitarian law to protect civilians and non-combatants.”

“On the other hand, although military aid to Ukraine may be understandable, the search for a negotiated solution, which silences weapons and prevents a nuclear escalation, remains a priority,” Parolin added.

The piece then draws an unwarranted conclusion, that this is "an apparent contradiction of Pope Francis’ rejection of Catholic 'just war' doctrine."

On Friday, Pope Francis ruled out the possibility of “just wars,” saying they do not exist.

. . . “Wars are always unjust,” he said, “because those who pay are the people of God. Our hearts cannot fail to weep in front of the children, the women killed, all the victims of war.”

In its explanation of “just war doctrine,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a compendium of Catholic belief, lays out a series of conditions necessary to justify the use of military force, summing up the teachings proposed by Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas.

The implication seems to be that Pope Francis is yet again contradicting Catholic doctrine, but I don't see this. As far as I can tell, Cardinal Parolin's remarks appear to have been very carefully drafted, and at least as quoted, he doesn't use the specific phrase "just war". He does refer to an implied natural "right to defend one’s life, one’s people and one’s country", but he also says the use of weapons is "never something desirable". He says "military aid to Ukraine may be understandable", but this is quite some distance from saying it's a just war.

In fact, I would almost put this in the context of Catholic moral theology that on one hand recognizes there are objective sins, but on the other also recognizes mitigating factors -- on one hand, a child steals a loaf of bread; on the other, the child is starving and hasn't been to Sunday school.

Elsewhere, quoting the Washington Post behind a paywall, this report says,

Pope Francis on Friday denounced the “perverse abuse of power” on display in Russia’s war in Ukraine and called for aid to Ukrainians who he said had been attacked in their “identity, history and tradition” and were “defending their land.” …

It came just days after Francis told the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, that the concept of a “just war” was obsolete since wars are never justifiable and that pastors must preach peace, not politics.

So it looks as though there's little or no actual daylight between Pope Francis and Cardinal Parolin. Parolin does not use the term "just war", but like Francis, he says Ukrainians are defending their land and their national identity, a sad state of affairs that has been forced on them. In fact, it looks as though the Vatican has a consistent foreign policy here, especially in light of the large Ukrainian Catholic minority there. It simply falls short of calling anything a "just war".

A recent blog post by the neo-Thomist philosopher Edward Feser outlines, I think, the core of the Vatican's problem. He quotes the relevant part of the Catechism on the criteria for just war and concludes,

[M]ilitary action to repel Russia’s invasion clearly is legitimate, and justice requires favoring the Ukrainian side in the war. In the abstract, support for Ukraine could include military action against Russia by any nation friendly to Ukraine. However, the justice of the cause of defending Ukraine fulfills only the first of the four criteria set out by the Catechism. What about the other three?

. . . Even a localized nuclear exchange would also render unlikely the fulfillment of the third condition for just war, viz. the “serious prospects of success.” If Russia uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine or NATO itself, would NATO countries really retaliate in kind? If they did not, it seems that Russian victory would be assured. But if they did retaliate in kind, it is very far from clear that this would not spiral into a conflict that no one could win. Nor can it be said that all the less extreme alternatives to NATO intervention have been exhausted, as the second criterion for just war requires.

Feser's overall argument is specific to an issue that arose earlier in the war, whether the US or other actors should impose a no-fly zone. He concludes that this could lead to a nuclear escalation, which would create "evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated". The problem, though, is that while the specific question of a no-fly zone has faded in importance, other issues have also changed the balance. The third just war criterion, there must be serious prospects of success, seems to have tilted in Ukraine's favor in subsequent weeks even without the no-fly zone.

But in general, rereading Feser's post in light of subsequent public remarks from both Francis and Cardinal Parolin, I suspect those behind the Vatican's public position went through a mental process close to Feser's.

The difficulty with declaring a "just war", I think, is also implied in Clausewitz's concept of friction:

Theoretically all sounds very well; the commander of a battalion is responsible for the execution of the order given; and as the battalion by its discipline is glued together into one piece, and the chief must be a man of acknowledged zeal, the beam turns on an iron pin with little friction. But it is not so in reality, and all that is exaggerated and false in such a conception manifests itself at once in war. . . . Further, every war is rich in particular facts; while, at the same time, each is an unexplored sea, full of rocks, which the general may have a suspicion of, but which he has never seen with his eye, and round which, moreover, he must steer in the night.

Circumstances change from battle to battle and from day to day, and the fog of war surrounds everything. Evaluating the criteria for a "just war" in a modern context is harder and harder. For now, I think Francis and Parolin are being both realisic and prudent, while at the same time, the prayers of Catholic parishes at mass these past few Sundays have clearly been for the people of Ukraine.

Clausewitz And The Culmination Point

The Institute for the Study of War site, which appears to be the most prestigious commentator on the Russo-Ukraine war, has made what strikes me as a meaningless pronouncement:

Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated.

I've noted on YouTube for the past week or two references to Clausewitzian "culmination" as a point where an attack exhausts itself. But that can take place either before it achieves its objective, in which case it's a victory for the defender, or after, in which case it's a victory for the attacker. But in either case, it leaves open the question of what happens next. Clausewitz himself seems to have recognized the problem:

The success of the attack is the result of a present superiority of force, it being understood that the moral as well as physical forces are included. In the preceding chapter we have shown that the power of the attack gradually exhausts itself; possibly at the same time the superiority may increase, but in most cases it diminishes. . . . There are strategic attacks which have led to an immediate peace but such instances are rare; the majority, on the contrary, lead only to a point at which the forces remaining are just sufficient to maintain a defensive, and to wait for peace. Beyond that point the scale turns, there is a reaction; the violence of such a reaction is commonly much greater than the force of the blow. This we call the culminating point of the attack. . . . If we reflect upon the number of the elements of which an equation of the forces in action is composed, we may conceive how difficult it is in many cases to determine which of two opponents has the superiority on his side. Often all hangs on the silken thread of imagination.

So basically, Clausewitz is saying you can look at a situation and think there may have been a culmination point, but that depends on how you see it, and you can't reliably say what will happen afterward anyhow. I had to read many such papers in graduate school. Why did the Institute for the Study of War even bother? Was it all the retired general talking heads mentioning Clausewitz and sounding smart? The Institute goes on:

The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine. Russian forces are digging in around the periphery of Kyiv and elsewhere, attempting to consolidate political control over areas they currently occupy, resupplying and attempting to reinforce units in static positions, and generally beginning to set conditions to hold in approximately their current forward positions for an indefinite time.

But Clausewitz himself says it's hard to know when the culmination has been reached, and it's just as hard to know what it means. Clausewitzian culmination is thus a sorta-kinda tautology. Why is the Institute so definite, and why is it so certain of the outcome when Clausewitz himself is neither?

My own instinctive view is that Ukrainian artillery appears to be awfully good, and Russians dug into fixed positions have supply issues. I would expect more cases like the Kherson airfield, a fixed position repeatedly attacked by Ukrainian artilery. But what do I know? They threw me out of ROTC.

In another theater of the Plebe War, Biden’s Handlers Are Preparing to Eject Him (and Kamala):

[T]he people who put Joe Biden in power—I cannot name them, but I know they are the same people who keep him in power—do not care about inflation, rising gas and food prices, COVID lockdowns or mask mandates, the porousness of our Southern border, the threat of war with Russia, or the myriad other issues that worry ordinary voters. . . . Joe Biden is an errand boy, a figurehead, in the metabolism of this great (not to say Great Society) act of political legerdemain.

. . . Why do you suppose that the New York Times has decided, finally, at this late date, to acknowledge that the story that the New York Post broke about Hunter’s laptop was true?

. . . I suspect that Joe Biden is being prepped for ejection. Exactly how it will happen I do not yet know. But he is on the threshold, or possibly has even passed the threshold, where he could appear to govern. His minders understand this. They must be the ones to replace him, otherwise they themselves risk being replaced, which would be intolerable. As I say, it’s not entirely clear yet how the defenestration will take place. Obviously, Kamala will have to be dealt with first, and she will be. Look for some ground softening stories such as the Times just served up about the laptop. They won’t be long in coming.

Seems like there's maybe a culmination taking place, not just in Ukraine, but in the whole Plebe War. But as Clausewtiz himself would tell us, "Often all hangs on the silken thread of imagination."

If anyone asks, here's my theory of how this could play out. It doesn't really matter whether Kamala or Joe goes first; there must be an overabundance of undeclared baksheesh in either case, or in Joe's, no shortage of gropes, grabs, and Zucker-like behavior. Under the 25th Amendment, no matter if Kamala or Joe goes first, whichever survives must nominate a new vice president, who must be confirmed by both houses of congress. That's likely to take a while, given the pivotal role of Sen Manchin in the evenly divided Senate (indeed as well, with no sitting vice president in such a case to break a Senate tie).

In fact, if either Kamala or Joe leaves before the November election, the issue probably won't be resolved until afterward, with likely Republican majorities in both houses. Thus any nominee for vice president after the election from either Democrat survivor in the presidency would have an even harder time geting approved.

But if there's a Republican House in January 2023, Kevin McCarthy would likely be speaker. The speaker is third in line, but with no vice president approved under the 25th Amendment, he'd be number two. But with either Kamala or Joe as an unsatisfactory/intolerable president, even for the lizard people, they'd force the removal of either, with McCarthy then moving into the Oval Office. Given this scenario, I will grant Roger Kimball's implied postulate that this would be easy and quick, but only under a Kimball-like scenario.

You heard it here first.

The Plebe War Is Not Going To Plan

Something's up.

A comprehensive report about the ongoing federal probe into Hunter Biden’s tax filings published by the New York Times on Wednesday night confirmed the existence of the first son’s infamous laptop.

The puzzling thing is although the New York Post broke the story in October 2020, and other outlets have since acknowledged the laptop is authentic, that the New York Times would belatedly report it is clearly big news. But nothing has changed about the story at all, except that the Times now says it's a story. Trump's reaction is understandable:

Former President Trump said the New York Times has admitted being a part of an effort to 'rig' the election for Joe Biden with their report confirming the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop and its contents.

Trump said in a statement on Friday, 500 days after the November 2, 2020, general election: 'The New York Times just admitted that it participated in an effort to rig the election for Joe Biden.'

When files from the laptop were published before the 2020 presidential election, the newspaper cast doubt on its provenance, linked it to Russian disinformation, and made no public attempt to obtain and verify it.

I've been mildly interested in Trump's more recent statements about the 2020 election, as well as the evolution of January 6 coverage. The bottom line is that you don't necessarily need to believe there was specific election fraud, or at least election fraud sufficient to change the outcome, to think something was hinky about it, not least that it put quite possibly the worst president in US history into office. If you take the meaning of "rig" to imply a general effort to deceive the public on key issues, rather than a simple exercise in stuffing ballot boxes, I don't think you can claim Trump is delusional.

But why the Times's about-face? After all, it's never disavowed the Pulitzer it received for its reporting on the Ukraine famine of the 1930s. Why not just let it lie? Maybe it's this:

The attorney for Lunden Alexis Roberts - the mother of one of Hunter Biden's five children - revealed he turned over to federal investigators a 'significant amount' of Hunter's financial records and said he would be 'surprised' if he was not indicted.

Clint Lancaster, who represents Roberts, said that he was complying with a subpoena in turning over 'a significant amount of Hunter's financial records,' and that both he and Roberts were interviewed by investigators.

The pretext for the Times story was reporting that Hunter had paid a million dollars in back taxes (wait a moment - isn't Hunter broke?), but it sounds like that alone won't make his problems go away. There's an investigation involving his "financial records". That can't help but involve the Big Guy.

I think someone, maybe not even at the Times itself, but someone who tells the Times what to print, decided it was time to get ahead of the story, which sounds like it might be big, and it would only be big if the Big Guy were involved. This story raises a related question about yesterday's Psaki press conference and questions from New York Post reporter Steve Nelson

Nelson asked three questions. First, if Biden was staying out of the DOJ investigation of his son. Psaki claimed he was. Then Nelson raised the Senate report about Hunter Biden’s company, Rosemont Seneca Thornton, allegedly receiving $3.5 million from Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, one of the richest women in Russia whose late husband used to be the mayor of Moscow. Nelson also raised a point that is not as well known — the report that Joe Biden himself had a subsequent meeting with the same woman for dinner in 2015 in Georgetown.

“This Yelena Baturina, she has not been sanctioned yet by the U.S. government. How is President Biden navigating conflicts of interest when it comes to sanctioning people who have done business with this family and can you explain to us what this $3.5 million was for?” Nelson asked.

“I don’t have any confirmation of the accuracy of that report, so I have no more further details,” Psaki declared.

How could you not know about the accuracy of the report? Either Joe Biden met with her or he did not. What did he meet with her for? That’s not a Hunter question; that’s a Joe Biden question. But Psaki refused to answer and be transparent.

The 2020 election was an opening campaign in the Plebe War, and other developments, like Putin's invasion of Ukraine, have resulted from it. Keep in mind that treason and bribery are among the high crimes and misdemeanors that can lead to impeachment. I think Ukraine news is going to fade pretty quickly, not leat because that's also not going to plan.