Posts Tagged ‘Arabat Spit’

LinkSwarm for May 22, 2026

Friday, May 22nd, 2026

More of the Democrat election fraud that doesn’t exist, more Democrat welfare state fraud, a commie scumbag gets indicted, Ukraine returns to hammering Russia’s oil infrastructure, a very busy week for Kash Patel, the BBC wants us to sympathize with Muslims who enable child rape, and the best bagels in America are found in…Dallas?

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “Left’s election fraud denials crumble as DOJ exposes two-decade-long California cheating scheme. FBI Director Kash Patel says prior administrations looked the other way on election cheating but ‘those days are over.'”

    Despite evidence to the contrary, liberal voting activists have spent years minimizing cheating concerns and portraying those who want to investigate such problems as “election deniers.”

    But the FBI and the departments of Justice and Homeland Security are now systematically exposing electoral fraud – from non-citizen voting to ballot-box-stuffing schemes that are turning the table in epic fashion.

    The latest strike came Monday when a longtime voting activist in California reached a deal with federal prosecutors to admit to illegally paying homeless people to sign election petitions and paying people to register to vote. The two-decade scheme allegedly leveraged the Democrat-run state’s lax mail-in voting system, which sends ballot forms to everyone whether they ask for them or not.

    The felony charge and plea deal announced Monday against Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, of Marina Del Ray, Calif., not only signals an investigation into others, it likely will provide legal fodder to the Justice Department’s efforts to force California to turn over its voter registration database to look for other abuses.

    That case, and others like it against blue states, are working their way through the federal courts in a major initiative led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.

    Prosecutors said Armstrong spent two decades collecting ballot registration forms, including in California’s high-profile voter initiatives. On occasion, Brown targeted homeless people on Skid Row in Los Angeles, offering them money to fill out forms, and even sometimes letting them use her own address to put on the forms.

    The plea deal mentioned Armstrong was paid by “coordinators” to gather signatures for ballots, and she used some of that money to enlist people to register to vote and sign petitions.

    “Because her coordinators only paid for signatures attributable to registered voters, Armstrong endeavored to ensure the people who signed her petitions were registered voters,” the DOJ said in announcing the plea deal.

    “Armstrong regularly paid and offered to pay individuals cash, usually in amounts between $2 and $3, to induce them to sign her petitions,” DOJ said, adding in January she “knowingly and willfully paid another person to register to vote. She paid the person for the purpose of causing that person to register to vote in federal elections.”

    Democrats have hundreds of ways to cheat in elections, and one by one the Trump Administration is shutting them down and prosecuting the perps.

  • A vast improvement: “Trump administration had full year of zero border releases.”

    While campaigning in 2024, President Donald Trump pledged to fix the nation’s broken immigration system, a system exacerbated by the rogue incompetence of the Biden administration. Now, after 18 months into his second term, Trump has maintained his excellence in border security and upheld his campaign promise regarding illegal immigration, as the Trump administration has achieved a year of zero releases at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    Whereas the Biden administration wantonly permitted, if not outright encouraged, border security agencies to release illegal immigrants into the United States, Trump has ensured such ineptitudes would not happen under his watch. After innocent victims such as Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray, and many others were murdered by violent illegal immigrants, the Trump administration utilized every possible avenue to ensure that such atrocities would not recur. The first barrier to accomplishing this was limiting border releases.

    It is a remarkable success that shows the country’s border security issues stem from failed leadership and a failed president. Biden’s atrocious border policies made the country more dangerous. Trump’s policies made the country safe again. It’s a success that should not go unrecognized.

    Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin touted the historic feat in a press release.

    “Twelve straight months of ZERO releases at the border. Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, we are delivering the most secure border in American history,” Mullin said. “The days of catch and release are over. We are enforcing the nation’s laws and sending illegal aliens back to their home countries.”

  • Another day, another indictment for Minnesota welfare state fraud. Kash Patel:

    Today – 15 individuals have been indicted for over $90 million in an alleged massive healthcare fraud scheme in Minnesota, after a sweeping FBI investigation with @TheJusticeDept
    and our Interagency Partners.

    These charges involve the two LARGEST Medicaid fraud cases ever charged in this district and first-of-their kind charges involving 7 additional Medicaid programs.

    As alleged, the defendants defrauded Minnesota public healthcare resources for tens of millions, targeting programs such as Housing Stabilization Services, Child Care, Medicaid programs, Individualized Home Supports (IHS), and more.

    In one case, defendants even developed a scheme worth over $40 million to target the Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) – an autism healthcare program – paying kickbacks to parents who fraudulently used autism centers to diagnose children with autism regardless of medical necessity, and billing for services not actually provided. This not only defrauded taxpayers, but robbed valuable resources from families truly in need.

    President Trump gave this law enforcement team a mandate to investigate and systematically dismantle this exact kind of public fraud in America – which grossly abuses and mismanages money from hardworking American taxpayers – and that’s exactly what we’re doing. Today’s indictment in a massive moment in this effort.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “The Democratic Model: Corruption as a Feature, Not a Flaw.”

    Gavin Newsom is, in many ways, the most corrupt governor in America.

    By that, I don’t mean that he spends his time and effort skimming off the top to put money in his own pockets. I have no evidence that he does, although an awful lot of money flows to and through the fingers of his wife. His personal wealth is not staggering by California standards—estimated at a few tens of millions of dollars—and he has it through his relationship with the Getty Oil family. Sort of a nepo-baby once removed.

    His corruption is more in the style of Putin—using power to make others rich and indebted to him, and he has pillaged the coffers of the City of San Francisco and the State of California in order to do so. The ultimate goal is ultimate power, and his path to that power has been to leverage the power he has gained at each step up the ladder to enrich a group of allies who will, in turn, fund his rise further.

    In 2023 Newsom was given a bill to sign that would have required private insurers to cover hearing aids for children. Many other states require insurers to cover them.

    According to NY Post, Newsom vetoed the bill and decided instead to have the state provide the hearing aids. The result was $23 million spent on hearing aids for 300 people. About $76,000 a person. About 20,000 children in CA still need hearing aids.

    Well done Gavin.

    The scale of Newsom’s corruption is almost beyond comprehension. California, if it were its own country, would have the fourth-largest economy in the world. Its economy is about twice the size of Russia’s, and its state budget is about 50% larger than Russia’s, despite having no war to fund against Ukraine or anybody else besides the taxpayers of California.

    That gives a lot of room for corrupt spending, especially when nobody is looking to uncover it.

    The other day, I took a look at Newsom’s Baby 2 Baby free diaper program, which is an obvious scam, paying highly inflated prices for cheap Mexican diapers to an NGO run by friends of his wife, who all make nice salaries.

    Read the whole thing. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Suck it, commie scumbag: “Former Cuban President Raul Castro indicted in US court.”

    The United States has indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro, a senior Trump administration official confirmed. A federal grand jury in Florida indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro along with five other defendants, according to court filings made public Wednesday.

    The charges mark a major escalation in a long-running US legal case tied to the 1996 downing of two civilian aircraft, an incident that killed four people and has remained a flashpoint in US-Cuba relations for decades.

    Castro, 94, served as Cuba’s defense minister at the time of the shootdown before becoming president in 2008, following the illness of his brother Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro died in 2016.

    Remember that the commie rulers have a secret corporation (GAESA (Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A.) that allows them to rob Cubans blind. “How is it possible for a military company to control 40% of the national economy, accumulate $14.5 billion in bank deposits, not publish financial statements, avoid paying taxes in foreign currency, and not be accountable to the National Assembly?”

  • Hope you enjoyed your Victory Day parade, Vlad. “Moscow Attacked By Drones: Oil Depot, Microchip Factory & Airport All Hit.” The chip factory is Angstrem, which was reportedly running some very ancient process technology indeed. But I bet a bunch of what they could produce was used by the Russian military.
  • Big Drone Strike on Kstovo Oil Refinery: Fourth Biggest in Russia.” This is in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, east of Moscow.
  • Big Strike on Syzran Oil Refinery by Drones: Fourth Hit in a Week.”
  • Huge Fire at Moscow as Factory/Warehouse Burns!” Possibly a drone strike, possibly something else.
  • “Ukraine Liberates Stepnohirsk in Zaporizhzhia.”
  • Multiple Tanks & MT-LB Destroyed. A Russian mechanized assault was defeated near Chervonyi Lyman, Donetsk Oblast.”
  • “Buyan-Class Corvette Reported SUNK At Kaspiysk Naval Base, Caspian Sea.”
  • “Drones Completely Destroy FSB Base on Arabat Spit: 100 KIA/WIA.” That’s the thin strip of land immediately to the east of Crimea.
  • Yo, dawg, we hear you like drones, so we put attack rockets on your drones, and hit a Russian Black Sea Fleet base with them.
  • “Former Texas Lottery Director Gary Grief Re-Indicted After Travis County DA Dismissed Initial Charges. Also indicted is the now-defunct Texas Lottery Commission.”

    Gary Grief, the former executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission, has been re-indicted in connection with a rigged jackpot following the dismissal of a prior indictment.

    A summons was issued one day after Texas Scorecard originally reported that an initial indictment against Grief had been quietly dismissed by the Travis County District Attorney’s office.

    The reissued indictment, a carbon copy of the first, and the new summons come amid ongoing scrutiny of the handling of the high-profile case.

    Travis County District Attorney José Garza told Texas Scorecard Thursday he could not currently comment on the matter, but that his office would release more information on the case soon.

    Before the latest indictment came to light, Gov. Greg Abbott called the initial dismissal “incomprehensible.”

    Snip.

    Court records posted to X by Dylan McKim with KXAN-AUSTIN indicate that not only was Grief summoned, but the Texas Lottery Commission itself is named. A separate indictment identifies Ed Rogers and Clay Kidd alongside Grief as “managerial agents” acting on behalf of the agency.

    Notably, Ryan Mindell, Grief’s right-hand man at the Texas Lottery Commission in 2023 and his short-lived successor, is not currently summoned in connection with the case. Mindell quit the commission after lawmakers called for his removal during the 2025 legislative session.

    The original indictment against Grief was secured in April 2026 on a first-degree felony charge of abuse of official capacity involving more than $300,000, stemming from a rigged $95 million jackpot.

    The charge came after a year-long investigation by the Texas Rangers into Grief’s controversial authorization of third-party companies that resold lottery tickets on behalf of customers, effectively enabling the online sale of Texas lottery tickets without legislative approval.

    During the 2023 legislative session, Grief misled members of the Senate about resellers operating openly in Texas. The practice was ultimately outlawed during the 2025 legislative session after revelations that couriers facilitated bulk purchases, leading to a $95 million Lotto Texas jackpot win in April 2023 that was reportedly rigged by an international gambling syndicate.

    Yeah, that lottery win was suspicious as hell.

  • Massie Ousted by Trump-Backed Challenger in Kentucky Primary.”

    Farmer and former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein prevailed over Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) in a closely watched primary race on Tuesday evening, bringing to an end the most expensive U.S. House primary on record.

    Massie, who has represented Kentucky’s fourth district since 2012, is one of several lawmakers to lose a seat this cycle thanks to a retribution campaign Trump has undertaken against legislators who have dared to cross him.

    The bad blood between Massie and Trump dates back to the president’s first term. As early as 2020, Trump called the Kentucky Republican a “third-rate grandstander” after Massie voted against the president’s Covid-19 relief package.

    While Trump and Massie seemed to make amends, with Trump endorsing Massie for reelection in 2022, the president’s second term has seen the pair butt heads repeatedly over a slew of issues, from the Iran war to tariffs.

    Trump on Monday blasted Massie as an “obstructionist and a fool.”

    Massie, who also controversially opposed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” worked with Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California to advance a bill in Congress to compel the Trump administration to release government files on deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

    Massie’s opposition to U.S. aid to Israel and his vote against a resolution condemning antisemitism made him a target of not only the president but the Republican Jewish Coalition and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as well. Both groups have spent more than $4 million on anti-Massie ads.

    You can stray from the party on an issue or two and still survive, but when you make a habit of working with Democrats against stated Republican priorities time after time, expect a reckoning.

  • Republicans have one thing going for them in the midterms: Fat stacks of cash.

    The Republican National Committee ended the month of April with more cash on hand than at any other point in the group’s history, as closely contested midterm elections draw near and the fate of Republicans’s majority in the House and Senate hang in the balance.

    The RNC raised $18.6 million in April, bringing its total cash on hand to $123.8 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

    “Republicans have the candidates, resources, and momentum needed to win the midterms, but we cannot let up now,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said in a statement. “Democrats will spend whatever it takes to try to stop President Trump’s America First agenda, which is why the RNC is already investing aggressively in our ground game and election integrity operation, including deploying 34 State Directors and Election Integrity Directors across 17 key battleground states to drive turnout and secure victories this November.”

  • Democrats lie to everyone, including themselves: “Harris Campaign Didn’t Go Negative Enough on Trump, DNC Autopsy Concludes.”

    A newly-released Democratic National Committee report looking back at how the party lost the 2024 election concludes that then-Vice President Kamala Harris lost, in part, because she failed to focus sufficient negative attention on President Trump.

    “The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump’s negatives, and the White House did not effectively support Vice President Harris over three and half years to improve her standing before the candidate switch,” reads the autopsy, written by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, who was asked by the DNC to investigate why the party failed to wing big in 2024.

    Rivera goes on to suggest that Democrats failed to remind Americans why they disliked Trump in his first term.

    “The idea Trump’s negatives were ‘baked in’ is a major failure of analysis and reality, given how his favorability has cratered less than a year into this term,” he adds.

    Rivera’s finding that Harris wasn’t sufficiently negative is curious given that Harris and her surrogates incessantly depicted Trump as a threat to democracy who revealed his true colors on January 6.

    Harris attacked Trump repeatedly during the campaign, calling her opponent “increasingly unhinged and unstable” and telling CNN that she believed he was a fascist who wanted “unchecked power.”

    Party officials interviewed hundreds of Democrats in all 50 states to create the report. Democrats had asked DNC Chairman Ken Martin for months to publicly release the findings, but Martin chose to do so only after being “presented with CNN’s reporting about much of its contents,” according to the outlet, which first obtained the nearly 200-page report.

    The report is littered with notes drafted by DNC editors pointing out that many of Rivera’s claims are unsubstantiated and/or contradict publicly available reporting.

    Yay think? It wasn’t the fact that, oh, Harris was a cringingly bad candidate, that Biden was an ambulatory corpse whose headless administration was a disaster for ordinary Americans thanks to inflation and letting a flood of illegal aliens enter the country, or that actual voters hate transsexual madness and social justice lunacy? But no, telling the truth would offend the Party’s toxic cadres of intersectional grievance mongers. They’d rather lie to themselves and continue to lose rather than being dragged on BlueSky.

  • Supreme Court rules that trucking companies can be held liable for unsafe drivers. Result: Foreign drivers are suddenly off the road.

    This trucker is in Eden, Ohio, and just parked at a truck stop where he got a bite to eat at an Indian restaurant.

    (Sikh Indians now own 20% of all trucking businesses in North America.)

    He says foreign truckers are being hit HARD after the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that logistics companies can be held liable for hiring unsafe drivers.

    None of ‘em can get loads out of Ohio today. And I was talking to the Iman guy while I was in there at the Punjabi place getting something to eat, and he said that the reason they they can’t get freight out of Ohio today is because the freight workers won’t work with them anymore.

    Apparently, what has happened, is yesterday they had the Supreme Court ruling that brokers could be held liable for accidents with carriers with red flags. Apparently, the trickle trickle-down effect happened like THAT.

    A leftist might look at this and say it’s racist. An “inequitable” number of carriers with foreign drivers are being excluded??

    Well, as it turns out, these truckers just so happen to be the ones that are the least safe.

    I was looking up a few of these DoT numbers for these guys, and they do have pretty substantial track record of unsafe behavior – accidents, high out-of-service rates, things like that.

    Many foreigners, even illegals, have been able to game the system, getting CDLs issued by Democrat-led states like New York and California even though they are not qualified. CDL schools run by migrants have participated in this fraud for years.

    Meanwhile, the number of deaths involving 18 wheelers on U.S. roads has risen 50% in just the last 15 years. Thanks to SCOTUS, that might reverse very quickly in the near future.

    As a bonus, Americans will have a chance to get back into a trucking industry that’s excluded them in favor of cheap, unsafe, illegal labor!!

  • And more wins over scamming foreigners: “FBI shuts down Indian call center for defrauding Americans.”

    The FBI announced on Wednesday that they were shutting down a scam call center in India which has defrauded hundreds of elderly Americans out of millions of dollars.

    Snip.

    Former CEO Adam Young, 42, of Miami, FL, and former CSO Harrison Gevirtz, 33, of Las Vegas, NV, admitted to operating a business that provided telecommunications-related services, including telephone numbers, call routing services, call tracking, and call forwarding services, to customers they knew were engaged in tech-support fraud schemes. Young and Gevirtz each pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony, in violation of federal law. They are scheduled to be sentenced on June 16, 2026. The sentences imposed will be determined by a federal district judge after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors …

    Indian citizens Sahil Narang, Chirag Sachdeva, Abrar Anjum and Manish Kumar, were convicted of charges related to telemarketing fraud schemes based in the Republic of India that targeted and defrauded Americans of millions of dollars, many of them vulnerable to fraud schemes due to age or infirmity. The investigation also contributed to the conviction of another individual, Jagmeet Singh Virk, in the U.S. District Court for the Norther [sic] District of California. The investigation further revealed that call centers based in India utilized Young and Gervitz’s business to route their ‘tech fraud’ scheme calls and, in some instances, advised those fraudsters on methods intended to reduce complaints and prevent account terminations.

    Now if they could just shut down every Indian company pretending to be an American company (a plague among temporary and contract work firms), that would greatly improve the situation for American job seekers.

  • “Tulsi Gabbard is stepping down from her role as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to support her husband, Abraham, as he battles an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”
  • “Texas Children’s Hospital Agrees to Create Detransition Clinic, Pay $10 Million in ‘Historic’ Settlement. The agreement stems from a years-long investigation into alleged Medicaid fraud tied to sex-change procedures on minors.”

    A years-long controversy surrounding gender mutilation procedures at Texas Children’s Hospital have culminated in a sweeping settlement with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that will force the hospital to pay $10 million, fire five doctors, halt “gender-transition” procedures, and create the nation’s first “Detransition Clinic.”

    According to Paxton’s office, the settlement resolves allegations that Texas Children’s improperly billed Texas Medicaid for sex-change interventions using false diagnosis codes despite longstanding state policy prohibiting Medicaid coverage for such procedures.

    Under the agreement, Texas Children’s will establish a multidisciplinary clinic intended to provide care to patients who previously underwent “gender-transition” procedures. The hospital will fully fund the clinic for at least five years, with services provided free of charge to patients.

    The settlement also requires Texas Children’s to terminate and permanently revoke privileges for five physicians accused of performing the procedures. The hospital further agreed not to provide “gender-transition” services moving forward and to adopt new ethics and compliance measures.

    We asked the sick leftwing freaks not to mutilate children in the name of their perverse social justice religion, and they just couldn’t help themselves.

  • Case in point: All but eight Democrats vote against bill to let parents know if teachers are trying to trans their kids.
  • [sigh]: “Federal Judge Again Blocks Texas Law Allowing Arrest and Deportation of Illegal Immigrants.”

    Just one day before a controversial Texas law on illegal immigration was set to take effect, a federal judge granted a new injunction saying most of the law would not pass constitutional muster before the U.S. Supreme Court.

    U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra, who blocked implementation of Texas Senate Bill (SB) 4 in 2024, opined that the law “threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice.”

    Approved by lawmakers in 2023, SB 4, filed by Texas Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), established a criminal offense for illegal entry into the state from a foreign nation, and provided a mechanism for judges to order offenders to return to their nation of origin.

    Implementation was delayed until the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a pending lawsuit last month on the grounds that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue, clearing the way for the law to take effect on May 15.

    Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Texas Civil Rights Project filed a new challenge on behalf of two unnamed individuals who said they could be arrested and subject to SB 4’s provisions.

    Ezra’s injunction applies to four provisions of SB 4: criminal penalties for re-entry without authorization; authorizing magistrates to order deportation; criminalization of failure to comply with a Texas magistrate’s deportation order; and SB 4’s requirement that magistrates continue a prosecution even when a person has a pending immigration case under federal law.

    In his opinion released last week, Ezra noted that while federal authorities can elicit help with immigration enforcement actions from state and local law enforcement, SB 4 would clash with precedent set in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Arizona v. United States.

  • “British authorities finally give Pakistani rape gang nearly 300 years of combined jail time for crimes committed 23+ years ago.”

    The offences mainly took place in Dewsbury and Batley, north Kirklees, and involved three girls.

    One was just 12 years old when the offences started in 1995. They ended in 2003.

    The trials began in 2023 and the perps were convicted and sentenced in 2024 through late 2025. The reason we are only learning their sentences now is because there was a court-ordered ban on reporting (they can do this in England)

    Reporting restrictions had been put in place to ‘safeguard the fairness and integrity of the court process.’

    Translation: They were to ensure the safety of Labour poll numbers from outraged Britons…

  • BBC tries to make Afghan man selling his own daughters for child rape a sympathetic victim.
  • “California ‘problem solving’: Create a useless bureaucracy that voters can’t touch.

    California is the land of expensive, useless bureaucracies, which Democrats allow to do nothing but impose more regulations on Californians.

    In 2023, California created a fast-food council to micromanage fast-food restaurants from wages to working conditions. The council, the first of its kind in the United States, exists to justify California’s fast-food minimum wage hike, which jumped to $20 an hour, and the council has the ability to increase over the coming years. By now, you know how this went: Fast-food restaurants shut down, cut jobs, cut worker hours, raised prices, or did some combination of those things.

    More notably, though, the council that is required to meet at least twice a year does not really exist. The last subcommittee meeting for the council took place in February 2025. It has now been over a year since the council has done anything, and even then, it could not be bothered to gather all nine members. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) plucked the council’s chairman for a different state appointment after that last subcommittee meeting, and it hasn’t gathered since.

    Despite this, the council was still allocated $1.1 million from the state budget.

  • Ian McCollum talks about the wild, woolly days of shipping guns out of the post-communist eastern bloc.
  • Louis Rossmann: 1,600 forks. That’s a lot of pie…
  • Fender won a lawsuit (by default) in Germany, and now it’s suing every guitar maker in the world that makes guitars that look even remotely like Stratocasters. “The decision to enforce the EU-based ruling on US builders marks a huge development in the case, and the outcome of such legal battles could very well reshape the guitar industry as we know it.” I rather suspect this strategy isn’t going to work out well for them…
  • “Schlitz beer production ends after 175 years.” And now an interlude via MST3K:

  • Long Beach, New jersey has to impose a curfew due to “unruly teens.”

  • Google is about to ruin the Internet. “Google is changing its search engine to focus on AI recommendations and NOT links to websites, according to its Google I/O presentation. And it’s a wrap. That’s it for the free and open internet. Niche publications and independent voices will likely get completely shut out of organic search as the internet becomes pay-to-win.” Another reason to stick to DuckDuckGo.
  • The world’s best bagel is now evidently found in Dallas, Texas, at Starship Bagel. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “4s on Tinder are no longer layups for 6’3 millionaires.”
  • Crazy money is pouring into hypercars.
  • Speaking of crazy money, here are some highlights from the David Aronovitz Auction of important science fiction, fantasy and horror first editions.
  • And speaking of science fiction first editions, I’m going to be sending a new book catalog out next week. Drop me a line if you want a copy.
  • Critical Drinker reviews Pragmata, mostly enjoys it. If the terminally online left hadn’t freaked out about this game, I doubt I ever would have heard about it…
  • Once again, the Babylon Bee is doing straight up reporting from LA: “New Polls Show Dead Heat Between ‘Make Everything Worse’ Candidate And ‘Fix Everything’ Candidate.”
  • “Zillow Adds New Feature For California Homes Showing Whether They Are Currently On Fire.”
  • “London Mayor Confused By Protesters Not Chanting ‘Death To Jews.'”
  • “Man Just 17 Home Depot Trips Away From Purchasing Correct Light Bulbs.”
  • “Hi-ho Silver, away!”

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend!

    Ukraine Update for November 15, 2022: Dnipro Crossed?

    Tuesday, November 15th, 2022

    Right after Kherson city was liberated and spans on the Antonivsky and Nova Kakhkovka bridges blown, a whole lot of commenters went “Well, Ukraine obviously isn’t going to try to cross the Dnipro there, it’s too wide.”

    Looks like that assumption might have been in error, as there are already reports that Ukraine has landed on the other side.

    The Kinburn Spit is a narrow finger of sand and scrub, barely three miles long, that juts from the wider Kinburn Peninsula into the Black Sea at the mouth of the Dnipro River south of Kherson. It and the adjacent peninsula also are the last parts of Ukraine’s Mykolaiv Oblast that remain under Russian occupation.

    Don’t expect that to last. The Kremlin on Wednesday ordered its battered forces on the right bank of the Dnipro to retreat to the river’s opposite bank.

    The order came six months after Ukrainian brigades, re-armed with European howitzers and American rocket-launchers, began bombarding Russian supply lines in the south—and two months after those same brigades launched a counteroffensive aimed at liberating Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts.

    The Ukrainians have the Kinburn Spit in their sights. They’ve got the troops, the equipment … and a plan.

    Russian troops seized the Kinburn Spit in mid-June as Russian advances in the south—having already overwhelmed Kherson city—ran into stiff resistance a few miles south of Mykolaiv city. Capturing the spit would turn out to be one of the Russian army’s last victories in the south. The four-month Ukrainian counterlogistics campaign that preceded Ukraine’s southern counteroffensive already was underway.

    Kinburn matters. Russian control of the sandy strip “will allow them to exert further control of the Black Sea coast,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. explained in June. For the Ukrainians, Kinburn is a back door—a way to get forces onto the left bank of the Dnipro without crossing the river, likely while under fire.

    As far back as April, U.K. intelligence agents were advising their government to support Ukrainian forces in any future attempt to “conduct beach reconnaissance” on the Kinburn Spit. The recon could “Identify good landing locations for a larger assault force for a future counterattack,” the agents explained in a presentation that later leaked to the press.

    It’s possible Ukrainian special operations forces riding in rigid-hull inflatable boats began reconnoitering the spit as early as September. In October, video circulated online reportedly depicting the Ukrainian navy’s last remaining big ship, the 240-foot amphibious vessel Yuri Olefirenko, apparently firing rockets at Russian forces on or near the spit.

    The Ukrainian military’s southern command on Saturday announced its intention to liberate Kinburn. Within a day, there were videos online possibly depicting Ukrainian commandos riding toward the spit in their small boats.

    Here’s a video of Ukrainian forces doing just that:

    Looks more like a commando raid or a reconnaissance in force. And here’s a video analyzing Russia defensive position on the Spit:

    There are unconfirmed reports of other river crossing zones. I’d take those with several grains of salt. But it seems possible. Indeed, there are reports confirming that Russia has indeed bugged out from towns in Kherson south of the Dnipro, like this video of apparently abandoned posts in Oleshky, directly south of the Antonovsky Bridge:

    The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has evidently confirmed Russia’s pullout from the banks of the Dnipro as well:

    Russia is preparing defensive positions in Crimea:

    Three areas they’ve prepared defensive lines are on the isthmus just south of Perekop, just south of the Chongar Strait, and even on the Arabat Spit, that tiny bit we talked about having a tiny dirt road here. Says Suchomimus: “It’s a bit of preparedness and foresight we haven’t seen from them so far.”

    Peter Zeihan thinks that Crimea is so hard to supply that Russia would be better off abandoning it:

    I suspect Putin would rather die that give up Crimea voluntarily.

    if all that weren’t enough. there’s the tiny little matter that a Russian missile reportedly strayed into Poland, killing two people.

    Pooty Poot certainly knows how to make friends and influence people…

    Update: Current thinking seems to be that the Polish missile strike was a Ukrainian ground to air missile that went astray trying to intercept a Russian missile.

    Russia Starts Bugging Out

    Thursday, November 10th, 2022

    Lets look at the news that Russia has announced a complete withdrawal from Kherson oblast north/west of the Dnipro River.

    First up: A big picture overview from Peter Zeihan, that I have some minor to moderate quibbles with.

    Takeaways:

  • Russia has announced withdrawing from the Kherson pocket, which is their only territory west of the Dnipro River.
  • “Reports at this point indicate that the Russians are withdrawing at full speed from all positions.”
  • Not a rout…yet.
  • “Based on whose statistics you’re looking at, they’re somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 Russian forces in the area, but it’s generally accepted on both sides these are the best troops that the Russians have, with the best training and the best equipment.”
  • Those Russians haven’t been properly supplied for a month due to the Kerch Strait Bridge attack. “Which is the only heavy rail connection that can handle freight transport from Russia proper to the southern front.”
  • “Everything now has to come in by truck and the Russians have lost the vast majority of their tactical truck support fleet for the military and are now using civilian vehicles, making them very vulnerable.”
  • “Not enough shells and not enough fuel have been getting to the Kherson front.”
  • One result: For the last two weeks, Ukrainian artillery has received zero counter-battery fire. “So the Ukrainians have just been able to plug away with whatever ammo they have.”
  • “The Ukrainians are being presented with a golden opportunity even if it’s only 20,000 Russian troops that are here. They’re now all in a state of retreat and they all have to go to the same places.”
  • “There are only two bridges across the [Dnipro] river, and the Ukrainians have excellent intelligence on the entire zone, so if the Russians put up a pontoon bridge it usually only lasts for a few minutes before it gets taken out.” I rather strongly suspect that Zeihan is either exaggerating here, or the sources he’s depending on are. It’s a bit too far front the frontlines for easy Excalibur range, and I sincerely doubt Ukrainian observers can get approval for HIMARS strikes within minutes for targets of opportunity. They’re just too expensive, and it’s not like they have huge quantities on hand.
  • “All of the Russians need to go on the same roads and the same intersections, which are all going to be massive kill zones until they reach the bridgeheads, one of which is at Kherson city, and the other one which is at the dam at Nova Kakhkovka.”
  • “The Ukrainians have been hitting these bridges with rocket fire for weeks, and they can’t handle heavy equipment any more.” Here Zeihan’s information is out of date; Russia has successfully repaired the bridge at Nova Kakhkovka using aggregate fill, which means it probably can be used for Russian heavy equipment to escape. See the video below for more details.
  • “Which means the Russians are going to have to make a massive parking jam at the bridgehead, dismount, and then run across while under artillery fire the entire time. The casualties are going to be immense, and that’s the best case scenario.”
  • “Best guess is that not only are the Russians going to be leaving behind their best gear, but they’re leaving behind more gear than what Ukrainians captured from the Russians in the Izyum assault back in September.” In this I also think Zeihan is overly optimistic. Russia has fought this war very stupidly for the first six months, and the disordered flight from Izyum, leaving so much equipment behind, should never have happened with a competent plan for a fighting retreat. By contrast, all the evidence we have from Kherson (again, see the video below) suggests that Russia is planning a fairly competent and orderly retreat, especially with the ability to use the Nova Kakhkovka bridge. Will Russia leave a lot of good kit behind in Kherson? Probably. Will they leave more behind than Izyum? For that I’m very skeptical. Then again, the Russian military has constantly surprised me with the depths of their incompetence over the past eight months…
  • “The Ukrainians are likely to enter the war by May with a tank and artillery force that’s more than five times its strength on the first day of the war.” For tanks, I think this figure is greatly exaggerated. According to Oryx, Ukraine has captured 503 tanks total, and they had more than that in active service. For artillery, though still unlikely, it seems a bit more plausible, as Ukraine started with less and Russia has tons and tons of towed artillery, which is exactly the sort of thing that’s going to get left behind in a hasty retreat.
  • “The Russians have already used the majority of their missile and tank forces, which began this war as the world’s largest.” That, I think, is accurate. Russia has been expending smart ordinance at a furious rate, and with sanctions, it doesn’t have the technological base to easily replace them.
  • “The Kherson withdrawal, and the likely rout to come, does mark the end of any hope the Russians had of regaining any sort of strategic initiative, or any sort of meaningful offensive operations, until at least to May. It’ll take them at least that long to bring in fresh troops and fresh gear.”
  • “In that time, the Ukrainians are not going to sit on their hands. They don’t have to cross the river to strike at the Russians. Once they get to the river, the long-range rockets and artillery are going to be able to target the isthmus, which is only about three kilometers wide, that connects the Ukrainian mainland to the Crimean peninsula.” On the Deep State map, I get closer to 9km just south of Perekop. Plus the Chongar strait bridge, which will be in HIMARS range. Plus the rail bridge just south of Syvash. Plus the little road southwest of Vasylivka crossing, which looks too small and precarious to support heavy traffic. Ditto the long, skinny road that runs down the Arabat Spit that separates the Sea of Azov from the Syvash Lake (AKA Rotten Lake), which appears to be a literal dirt road more suitable for dirt biking that main battle tanks. (Actually, there appear to be several weird little dyke-top roads that separate different segments of the Syvash Lake, though none really look up to military duty.)
  • “Because the Kerch rail bridge is out, Russia cannot only not bring in ammo and troops and fuel, it can’t bring in food. Their only other option are some very light rail and road connections across that isthmus, coming from the rest of occupied Ukraine, all of which Ukraine will still be able to strike.”
  • “In capturing Kherson, the Ukrainians are going to be able to cut the water flows to the Crimea canal, and water from that canal is solely responsible for three-quarters of the food grown in Crimea. So no imported food, little grown food. Russia is either going to have to evacuate the entire peninsula by car across the Kerch bridge’s remaining road span, or suffer a 1980s Ethiopia style famine.” Here again I think Zeihan exaggerates, as Russia will still be able to bring in food via ship across the Black Sea or the Sea of Azov. Crimeans could well be looking at a very lean year, maybe even Siege of Saint Petersburg lean, but that’s not “Ethiopians dropping dead of famine” lean.
  • Next up: Suchomimus offers a detailed map update. Zeihan is a geopolitical generalist jack of all trades, but detailed video and geolocation analysis is all Suchomimus does.

    Takeaways:

  • Russia has blown up most (probably all) of the bridges over the Inhulets River.
  • Russia has several ferries to run troops and equipment over the Dnipro, along with rallying point to stage units for withdrawal. Some of the staging areas have been hit by Ukrainian artillery, but satellite photos show Russian forces spread out in those areas to minimize damage.
  • No evidence of heavy vehicles using those ferries yet. “It’s unknown if these ferries and barges can actually support anything heavier or not, and if they can, it’s likely they can only carry one at a time.”
  • There are two ferry loading points in Kherson city itself.
  • There are also Russian Raptor class patrol boats operating in the Dnipro, which makes sense.
  • The southern bank shows several unloading spots. “This shows the ferry unloading spots, as well as a number of defensive positions trenches and earth walls which have been constructed. This point is reported to be less used than it was because of numerous calls from Mr. HIMARS. But it’s still heavily defended with trenches.”
  • As mentioned above, Russia has repaired the Nova Kakhkovka bridge over the Dnipro River using fill materials. “The main bridge is fully repaired, and there are three smaller and lighter bridges, so this is the only real crossing point…there’s no way to move heavy vehicles other than the ferries, and we’ve only seen light trucks on those so far on the Eastern side. Nova Kakhkovka is the only real option, so they are in a bit of a pickle, at least when it comes to getting heavy vehicles back across.”
  • “I expect the priority will be holding Nova Kakhkovka for as long as possible.”
  • Russia has constructed no less than three successive prepared defensive lines on the south/east side of the Dnipro.
  • Finally, after a month of almost no significant Kherson updates, are we seeing frontline movement indicating a Russian withdrawal? Oh yeah. Here’s Kherson at 4:04 AM Ukrainian time today:

    And here it is at 11:37 AM:

    That looks pretty dramatic to me…