It could take months to deliver the tanks because the U.S. has to purchase them through a procurement process.
The move marks a reversal for the Biden administration, which had resisted sending the tanks, and comes as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced his country would provide 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks for Ukraine’s military. Britain said earlier this month it will provide 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks. France plans to contribute 10 armed fighting vehicles.
The Pentagon has long shown a reluctance to send their best miltech abroad for fear of it falling into enemy hands. However, for both the Leopard 2 and the Abrams, the question is which version of the tank are they sending to Ukraine? Any version of either is going to have more sophisticated and modern fire control systems than the majority of Russian tanks currently in theater. And any version of the Leopard 2 is going to feature a Rheinmetall 120mm smooth-bore gun, either the L/44 or the more powerful L/55. The L/44 should punch through the front armor of most Soviet/Russian tanks, and the L/55 should theoretically punch through all of them.
For the Abrams, the M1A1 and M1A2 are both armed with the L/44, and National Review is reporting that the Biden administration is sending M1A1s. (The original M1 uses the older 105mm rifled M68 gun. That’s thought to be able to penetrate any Soviet armor up to and including the early T-72 models, and possibly some later export models, but not later T-72s and more modern domestic Soviet/Russian tanks. In Desert Storm, even M60 Patton tanks with the 105mm gun were regularly reporting kills on T72s.) Thus Abrams and Leopard 2 120mm rounds of various sorts are fully interchangeable.
The Challenger 2 uses the Royal Ordnance L30 rifled 120mm gun, which uses different ammo.
Back to the BBC: “Germany also permitted other countries to send their Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine – which was restricted until now under export regulations.”
Poland has been itching to send Leopard 2s to Ukraine since very early on in the conflict, but Germany had been dragging its feet until now. Previous German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht was reportedly the clog in the process, and given this came down a week after her departure suggests that was in fact the case.
They’re getting enough Abrams for two plus tank companies (three tank platoons of four tanks each, plus two command tanks), but not enough for a full armor brigade. But add the 14 German Leopard 2s, and presumably you have a force that can rip a hole in any Russian line. Add the already announced Bradleys and other IFVs, and you have a mobile infantry force behind them that can then exploit those holes.
Ukrainian military blogger Denys Davydov seems pretty ecstatic at the news:
He says that Ukraine will be receiving Leopard 2A6 tanks, which are very modern indeed. There are a number of country-specific variants, but they all use the L/55 main gun and modern fire control systems, electronics and composite armor.
He repeats the rumor that Germany refused to send Leopard tanks unless America sends Abrams, which has a fair amount of plausibility. If Russia does go apeshit over the move (doubtful), Germany could always go “Hey, we just followed America’s lead!”
Correction: Davydov states that the Abrams requires jet fuel for the turbine engines. This is false. The Honeywell AGT1500 gas turbine engine powering the M1 does not require jet fuel to operate, it can run on jet fuel, diesel, gasoline, or marine diesel (which used to have a higher sulfur content than regular diesel, though I’m not sure that’s true anymore, and is probably not relevant to usage in Ukraine).
He says the Leopard 2s being sent are in active service with the German army, not in long-term storage.
“We have the common decision from many of the Western allies (Norway, Poland, Germany, and many others, UK obviously, and probably United States, will provide the tanks to Ukrainian.” Indeed, Norway just announced that it is also sending leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
As for his predictions that Ukraine will liberate Crimea come spring, and that this will, in turn, cause the collapse of the Russian federation and drive Putin from power, well, let’s just call them highly speculative.
So too Peter Zeihan (him again) is on the tank news as well:
Some takeaways:
As to why the Germans have been so hesitant, I don’t know if you know your history…
…but the last couple hundred years of history [doesn’t] necessarily put the Germans in the best light. And so the idea that the Germans would ever, in a peaceful environment, decide that they should take a leadership position on military affairs is something that is antithetical, not just to the German population in general, but the government of Scholz specifically. His party is the Social Democrats, and they have basically made their bones in geopolitics about making sure that Germany is never an offensive power at all.
The Leopard 2 is good, but “the Abrams should be more accurately thought of as the pinnacle of armored equipment development. This is a system that is not merely a tank, it’s a weapons system that has several integrated programs within it, some of which the Americans still consider top secret so anything that the United States sends from its arsenal is going to honestly have to be dumbed down a significant amount, and that is going to at a minimum take time.” I think he overstates the case here slightly, because the M1A1 isn’t on the cutting edge the way the M1A2 Sepv3 is, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if their are some systems in there the Pentagon doesn’t want anyone outside to take a look at. On the other hand, there several other nation operators, so this is a solved problem. Also, Abrams have been deployed to Europe as recently as 2020 as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve.
“There are over a dozen countries in Europe that use [Leopard 2s], and everyone except for the Germans has been arguing for sending these things for weeks now. So these the Leopards can actually be on the front lines in Ukraine probably within two or three or four months, which means it can actually make a difference in the coming spring offensive, which will happen in May and June.” My caveat would be that it takes about as long to properly train a Leopard 2 crew as an Abrams crew, and if I were the government of the USA, Poland, etc., I would have already been secretly training Ukrainian crews on Abrams and Leopard 2 simulators.
“You’re talking a minimum of the year, probably closer to three, three to build out the physical support infrastructure to get an appreciable number of Abrams in play.” This is either false or only narrowly true in that it might take 1-3 years to train a single Ukrainian technician to master the complete suite of Abrams repair and maintenance skills. It uses the same main gun ammo, the same 7.62x51mm NATO machine gun ammo (though the Leopard 2 lacks the M2 .50 BMG machine gun, but .50 BMG is hardly difficult to get a hold of), and the same fuel as the Leopard 2, and we’re sending spare parts along. The logistical tail is real, but it overlaps heavily with the Leopard 2. A C-5 Super Galaxy can lift two Abrams tanks, so if it was absolutely a top priority, all 31 Abrams could be delivered tomorrow to Rzeszów–Jasionka Airport less than 100 miles from the Ukrainian border. (More likely is something like shipping from Charleston to Gdansk, which would be about 15 days after all the bureaucratic niceties are observed.)
As always, tank crew effectiveness comes down to training. A good tank crew takes a minimum of six months to become proficient enough to be effective in combat (and most would argue it takes longer). Even if you assume you can shave some time off for Ukrainian tanks crews experienced on Soviet equipment, it still takes a good deal of time to become proficient on either an Abrams or a Leopard 2; two to three months would seem to be the absolute minimum. So unless Ukrainians were already training on Leopard 2s and/or Abrams in secret, I wouldn’t expect to see in the field any until (at the earliest) late April.
For most of last year there was a recurring pattern for German military aid to Ukraine:
The German government would talk about sending various types of modern military equipment to Germany.
The German government would actually send Ukraine numerous pallets of Diddly and Squat.
I almost did a post on “What’s holding up the German weapons pipeline?” Now, thanks to Peter Zeihan, we know that clog has a name: Christine Lambrecht, the German Defense Minister, who just resigned.
Takeaways:
Lambrecht is not somebody with defense experience. She’s a politico. She has been up relatively high in Germany’s Social Democratic Party, which is a center-left party for decades. So it’s not that she’s a nobody, it’s just she doesn’t have a lot of skills that are appropriate to her current portfolio. This has not been a problem. In fact her specific, deliberate, intentional incompetence and defense matters in many ways was seen by the SPD as a plus.
Until the Russo-Ukrainian War.
“The general position in Germany as a whole, and specifically in the SPD, was that the Defense Ministry itself is unnecessary, that in the aftermath of the Cold War, the threat to Germany is gone.”
Plus the deep-seated problem of all Germany’s Historical Unpleasantness.
So for the Germans, the post-cold war environment in Europe has been the best it’s ever been. You’re talking about a golden age, because NATO has provided defense, but all the countries that border Germany are either neutral, like Switzerland, or are members of NATO, which is basically everyone else. And in that sort of environment, the Germans can kind of dither and become pacifist socialists. Which, to be perfectly blunt, looking at the long stretch of German history is much, much, much, much, much, much better for everyone than the alternative.
“Lambrecht was put in charge of the Defense Ministry to basically continue slowly sliding it into functional oblivion.”
“That doesn’t work in an environment where the Russians are back on the warpath, and the Germans need to be starting thinking not just about 20th century military strategy, but 19th century military strategy, and Lambrecht was completely unprepared, professionally, personally and ideologically for this sort of shift.”
Indeed, she was a poor fit for a Germany doubling its defense budget. Plus, she hates the U.S.
“The Russians are not just mobilizing, but mobilizing in force. They’re finally beginning significant industrial upgrades. They’re finally starting to churn out missiles and ammo and tanks and numbers. And they are finally doing a full-scale mobilization. This isn’t the 300,000 that they did a few weeks ago. We’re talking about at least another half a million men likely being in the theater within a very few number of months.” Not sure where he’s getting this info, only see references to Russia considering it. (Unless my speculation that Russia was carrying out a full mobilization under the guise of a partial mobilization was on the mark.)
Germany may now finally move on approving other countries transferring Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. “There are a number of countries, specifically Denmark and Poland, who have been pressuring the Germans in order to allow them to take these exported tanks and then send them on to Ukraine. That requires Berlin’s approval, and Berlin at this point has been demurring. But the coalition now involves almost every single country that the Germans have sold the Leopards, to and so all of a sudden with Lambrecht gone, all of this is in motion, and I think we’re going to see the Germans relent.”
Faster, please.
Finally, all of this is just an excuse to embedded this classic Norm Macdonald bit about Germany. “I’m not sure if any of you are history buffs…”
Sometimes you have both pieces of the puzzle right in front of your face and never twig to it.
For months I’ve been watching videos of Ukrainian forces dropping RPGs and grenades from hovering drones onto Russian vehicles. Like these:
I’ve written about the Russian tank cope cages before, and how they were probably ineffective against top-attack antitank weapons like Javelin. But only today, after several months of watching Ukrainian drones drop grenades on tanks and armored vehicles, did the blinding flash of the obvious occur to me that maybe this is the attack the cope cages were designed to thwart. Maybe Russia ran into this tactic and Syria and it was enough of a concern to have the cope cages installed before rolling into Ukraine. Focused on anti-tank weapons and tank-on-tank engagements, maybe we missed the possible effectiveness of the new drone-drop tactic.
Arguing against the effectiveness of this tactic, we saw a lot more cope cages at the beginning of the conflict than we’re seeing now. Maybe it’s an ineffective countermeasure. Or maybe Russia just doesn’t have the time or resources to put it on older replacement tanks being sent to the front.
This is an interesting video of Ukrainian tanks taking out a Russian strongpoint dubbed “Moscow.”
Takeaways:
They had to break off the attack and return to base for more ammunition. “A tank has 22 shells, which isn’t enough for attack.” By contrast the M1A2 holds 42 rounds. The rapid depletion of ammo in the Yom Kippur War was one reason the Israelis designed the Merkava with a rear access door to allow quick ammo resupply.
“They didn’t expect our tanks. They thought it would be just infantry.”
“We used all our ammo up in two minutes.”
Instead of the squadron commander participating in the attack (as per Soviet doctrine), “he used quadracopter drones and could see the combat scenes and command the tanks in real time.”
“Our personnel worked with infantry and special forces. We cleared the way through the forest for them.” That involved clearing lots of mines and booby traps.
They said they cleared the way from Husarivka to Bayrak. Which means they were probably involved in the push on Lyman. Husarivka is just east of Barvinkova in the bottom left of this map.
As has become the norm, retreating Russian soldiers left behind buttloads of ammo. The Russians may have depleted their smart munitions, but they don’t appear to have any shortage of the dumb variety. “A 15 kilometer forest was full of empty ammo boxes.”
Troops breaking and retreating despite plenty of ammo suggests continuing low morale among the invading Russians (or their local conscript cannon fodder).
“There was good coordination between our infantry, tanks and artillery.” Classic western combined arms doctrine, something the Russians have seemed mostly incapable of pulling off.
Also, the Ukrainian military have reported entering Lyman:
This video, covering a scaled down prototype of the Ultra Heavy-Lift Amphibious Connector (UHAC) craft, caught my attention:
The UHAC drives across the water on treads that double as paddlewheel-style water propulsion.
That video dropped this week, but most of the UHAC testing seemed to have happened back in 2014. (Another sign that the video is old is the mention of the USS Bonhomme Richard as though it were still in service, when it infamously burned up in 2020. In fact, the arson trial of Ryan Sawyer Mays, the disgruntled SEAL washout accused of setting the fire, is going on this week.)
If the program is dead, I can understand why. The UHAC seen in the video is only one-fifth of the projected size of the final vehicle, which was supposed to be 84 ft long and 34 ft high. That’s roughly 75% as big as Nazi Germany’s contemplated but never-even-attempted Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte tank, a project remembered for being long on imagination and short on practicality. Things that large tend to be a big magnet for air and artillery targeting.
Another thing probably dooming it: the Marine Corp decision to move away from tanks. An amphibious assault vehicle that (as per the video) can carry three M1A1 Abrams tanks probably won’t be a priority if you don’t have any in inventory.
Like a Marvel crossover comic that features two characters you’re interested in, having both Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons and tank expert Nicholas Moran talk about the .50cal machine gun (and why the Germans never adopted it) did indeed peak my interest.
A few takeaways:
“That the M2 I think is so well known today, it’s so recognized and … is ubiquitous. During World War Two, the U.S. kind of did a like a massive industrial flex on the rest of the world with the M2. It’s a bit memey, but you could think of this as like the classic Uncle Sam painting with like glowing red eyes of fire. Because the US manufactured about 2 million Browning .50 caliber machine guns.”
“We’re going to put them on trucks, we’re going to put them on tanks, we’ll put them on some Jeeps, we’ll put them on half-tracks. We’ll put four of them together in a big mount and put that on a half-track or on a trailer. It’s like Oprah just handing out .50 cal machine guns.”
Because McCollum didn’t know, he asked Moran, leading to the special Gun Jesus/Chieftain Crossover Issue.
Moran’s first cut: “Dunno! Let me ask around.”
For starters, the Germans used small canons instead of big machine guns.
It was a hell of a lot safer to be buttoned up in the tank with aircraft shooting at you than outside it trying to score an unlikely machine gun kill.
“The reality was that aircraft generally were horrible at killing tanks.” (Caveat: I hear the Stuka version with the 37mm cannon was actually pretty good at it, but German tankers obviously didn’t have to worry about that.)
Also, since they thought taking out aircraft with machine guns was unlikely, one light machine gun with tracers was just as good as four heavy machine guns at “giving pilots something to think about” on their strafing runs.
The Germans did have “the MG 131, a 13mm weapon, and thus as close to a caliber .50 as possible. Though primarily an electrically primed aircraft gun, it could be converted to a ground mount and percussion fired. It could thus be mounted on a tank much like an American caliber .50, yet it never was.”
Germans had a doctrinal preference for saving ammo wherever possible if the possibility for effective fire was too low. Americans had a doctrinal preference for turning out giant piles of ammo.
“If you want something which provides a lot of coverage, and has a good chance of actually shooting down a target, especially an armoured one like an IL-2, you’re better off with a heavier gun on a dedicated platform with a trained, dedicated anti-aircraft crew.”
Things in Ukraine are moving so fast that the only thing I can be sure of is that what I post here will probably be obsolete before I press the Publish button.
What was a very successful Ukrainian counter offensive in Kharkiv Oblast is now a massive rout of Russian forces throughout the extent of their northeast line. All of Kharkiv (save a tiny bit east of the Oskil River) has been liberated.
“Ukraine controls all the land west of the Oskil River.”
The Russians left massive amounts of equipment behind, too much for any sort of orderly withdrawal, and they don’t appear to have torched any of it, either. They just turned tail and fled. “This is an armored brigade worth of vehicles. Looking at this, I think Russia has given more military aid to Ukraine than the United States.” Also, Russian civilians are fleeing the captured territories, only to be refused entry at the border.
“Fuck, every one of us can get a tank.”
Rus, Rus, Rus of the Ukraine
Fleeing as fast as he can flee
Rus, Rus, Rus of the Ukraine
Watch out for that tree!
Got to disagree with the first video: it’s damn hard to see if you’re peering out the forward driver’s port, and it’s quite possible the tank driver was unaware troops were falling off.
It looks like logistical problems and those long-documented Russian morale problems have finally intersected to destroy the ability of numerous Russian units to function as effective fighting forces. Here’s a recorded Russian phone soldier’s phone call from back in August illustrating low morale and how much Russian soldiers hate the war:
Russian soldiers don’t seem to be eager to die for a mistake. The extent to which Russian forces in Kharkiv Oblast have been routed and broken makes it an open question whether any can be reconstituted as effective fighting forces and redeployed to Donbas. That may explain why Russia seems to be trying to carry out a stealth conscription mobilization:
On their way out, the Russian army has given Ukraine a parting gift: destruction of Kharkiv’s civilian infrastructure. “Kharkiv and Donetsk regions were cut off. In Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy there are partial problems with power supply.”
Total dick move, but not necessarily a war crime; power generating facilities are usually considered legitimate military targets. Russia obviously held off attacking them because they expected to control the territory.
Now that Ukraine has that territory back, a lot more Russian logistic routes (especially those out of Belgorod) are under threat of disruption from Ukrainian artillery. Indeed, Belgorod now loses a lot of value as a logistics hub, since it’s farther away from the frontlines, on worse roads. Russia may shift to routing everything through Kamensk-Shakhtinsky or Rostov-On-Don.
Ukraine continues to grind out more modest gains in the Kherson counteroffensive. As for the next phase of the war, it’s an open question whether to attempt to push Russian troops out of Luhansk next, or to apply more pressure toward the center of the Russian line and retake Lysychansk and Severodonetsk. But it’s clear that right now Ukraine enjoys the strategic initiative.
Ukraine is carving out big gains in Kharkiv, Texas is in the money, Biden taps Clinton’s bagman to divy up the graft manage climate change funds, more groomers unmasked, and some big changes in the UK. Plus a bit about tanks. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Ukrainian successes on the Kharkiv City-Izyum line are creating fissures within the Russian information space and eroding confidence in Russian command to a degree not seen since a failed Russian river crossing in mid-May.
Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv Oblast counteroffensives advanced to within 20 kilometers of Russia’s key logistical node in Kupyansk on September 8.
Ukrainian forces will likely capture Kupyansk in the next 72 hours, severely degrading but not completely severing Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum.
Ukrainian forces are continuing to target Russian GLOCs, command-and-control points, and ammunition depots in Kherson Oblast.
On Thursday, the state comptroller reported that the Lone Star State’s tax revenue rocketed by 25.6% to a total of $75.21 billion.
It’s only the fifth time since 1988 that revenue grew by a double-digit percentage — and it’s double the next largest increase over that 34-year span.
“Revenues continue to outpace even our most recent forecast as All Funds tax collections closed the fiscal year $841 million above the projection in our Certification Revenue Estimate,” said state Comptroller Glenn Hegar in an official release.
That’s a stark contrast to California, which saw July revenue come in 12% below forecast.
Texas has been a major beneficiary of migration from California: Over the last census cycle, 34% of new Texans arrived from California alone. Meanwhile, New York saw personal income tax collection fall 3.2% from April 1 through July.
Joe Biden has hired John Podesta to be the new Clean Energy Czar, citing his experience in progressive causes….
Bottom line, John Podesta is being now being hired to divvy up the $316 billion in Green New Deal money recently authorized by congress. That is what Podesta specializes in, the distribution of taxpayer money to DNC allied groups and networks in advance of the 2022 midterms. Podesta, Hillary’s fixer, is a bagman, nothing more.
Worse, one of the many bag clients he’s adept at channeling money into Democratic pockets for is China.
President Joe Biden on Friday tapped John Podesta to oversee $370 billion in climate spending, a move that has China hawks on Capitol Hill concerned over Podesta’s encouragement of Chinese investment in American infrastructure and praise for the top U.S. adversary on climate change.
Podesta has called for Chinese investment in American infrastructure, arguing in 2013 that there are “great opportunities for Chinese firms to directly invest in this nation, to build American infrastructure, to create American jobs, and generate steady and handsome returns.” He added, “There’s also the ability for Chinese firms to invest here and learn best practices, and take those home to the tremendous and growing middle class market in China.”
Instead, in the intervening decade, the Chinese government has committed widespread economic espionage—one 2017 estimate found that China steals up to $600 billion in trade secrets a year. Engineers in China, meanwhile, use popular social media platform TikTok to access nonpublic data from U.S. users.
Podesta has also praised China’s efforts to combat climate change, arguing in 2015 that the Chinese “are beginning to do a fair amount.” China, which is the world’s top carbon emitter, went on to dramatically accelerate its coal consumption, which reached a record high in 2020.
That record has China hawks on the Hill concerned that America’s top adversary has a new—and powerful—ally in the White House. Podesta’s role will see the liberal consultant implement $370 billion in spending toward alternative energy, a sector that China dominates when it comes to raw materials. As such, alternative energy companies receiving the Podesta-steered funding could turn to China to secure supplies. The new Biden aide will likely take no issue with that dynamic, given that he has argued the United States and China should “align” on a green economy. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) and Ted Cruz (R., Texas) argued that the move reflects the White House’s soft-on-China stance.
Democratic County Administrator Robert Telles charged in the death of journalist Jeff German, “an investigative reporter with the Las Vegas Review-Journal who had spent the last few months exposing misdeeds and turmoil in the official’s office.” For all Sundown Joe’s dark mutterings about “UltraMAGA,” it seems like Democrats are the ones doing all the killing…
A now-former elementary school teacher previously charged with sexual abuse of a 7-year-old student was arrested again and charged with sexually assaulting a second victim.
Victor Moreno, 28, was charged in July with continuous sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony, and an improper relationship between a student and educator, a second-degree felony.
The accused pedophile’s victim was a second-grade girl in Irving Independent School District, where Moreno was a teacher at the time of the alleged assaults during the 2020-2021 school year.
Snip.
Meanwhile, a teacher’s aide in Mesquite Independent School District was arrested Tuesday after being accused of engaging in inappropriate relationships with students.
Bryan Garcia, 22, was charged with two counts of sexual assault of a child and one count of indecency with a child.
“Higher Ed’s New Woke Loyalty Oaths: A ballooning number of hiring and tenure decisions require candidates to express written fealty to political doctrines.” And you can bet those doctrines have nothing to do with constitutionally limited government based on universal rights…
Indeed, they’re talking about restarting old production lines to start manufacturing older BMP-2s. “The costs and challenges of bringing more modern designs into production are now surely aggravated by Western sanctions cutting access to many basic electrical components, requiring pricey and time-consuming workarounds.”
This is like a scene from a porn movie, only a lot creepier. “Las Vegas landlord requires tenant to sign sex contract in order to lease home.”
“Kim Kardashian Is Starting Her Own Private Equity Company.” Why not? But I’m betting being a genius at self-promotion doesn’t equate to being a genius at investing, especially since she’s starting in the middle of a fierce, widespread downturn…
Easiest way to win Dad of the Year? Pick your son up from school in a tank. Looks like a Scorpion light tank, most likely the FV107 Scimitar reconnaissance variant.
“FBI Drops Investigation After Discovering Trump’s Top Secret Nuclear Documents Were Just Print-Outs Of Hillary Clinton Emails.”
As I did with Fury, here’s a review of another movie that follows a tank crew driving deep into enemy territory. But instead of an American Sherman driving deep into Germany in 1945, it’s a Soviet T-55 taking a wrong turn in Afghanistan in 1982.
Title: The Beast (AKA The Beast of War)
Director: Kevin Reynolds
Writer: William Mastrosimone
Starring: George Dzundza, Jason Patric, Steven Bauer, Stephen Baldwin, Don Harvey, Kabir Bedi, Erick Avari IMDB entry
The movie starts with three Soviet tanks blowing the shit out of an Afghan village, taking down a minaret, slaughtering unarmed civilians and even poisoning a well. One mujaheddin who manages to score a Molotov cocktail kill against one of the tanks is then positioned and crushed to death under the tread of the tank commanded by the hard-ass/borderline insane Daskal. (The genocidal brutality of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is well documented.)
Inside the tank, Jason Patric’s Konstantin play Mr. Christian to Daskal’s Bligh. He’s not a fan of the war, and doesn’t understand the contempt Daskal has for Afghan subordinate Samad (Erick Avari). “He’s doing his best he can, sir.” “That’s what worries me.”
Outside the tank, a posse of Afghans, carrying a lone RPG launcher and intent on Badal (revenge), pursues the tank, which has taken a fatal wrong turn into a long dead-end valley. The tank’s crew has to struggle not only against mechanical breakdowns (a busted radio, low fuel, overheating) and pursuing enemies who know the terrain better than them, but a brutal commander who seems willing to kill any of them to keep his tank moving. Eventually Daskal executes one and leaves another for dead, which turns out to be his undoing…
This is an excellent, taut war drama that delivers on the promise of its setup. Daskal may be insane, but he’s not stupid, and he knows how to use his tank against his enemies. Performances are universally good. Unlike Fury, The Beast eschews cliches and never drags, because it never stops for pithy speeches on how War Is Just No Damn Good, because it’s already shown you. It’s a very solid, small-cast film that runs a sprightly hour and forty seven minutes long, and is well worth tracking down on DVD or streaming.
Here’s the trailer, which is much lower quality than the movie:
The progressive approach to law enforcement in certain major US cities, supported by George Soros and others, has been a complete failure as residents’ quality of life has collapsed. Soaring violent crime and controversial open-air drug markets plague the downtown areas of San Francisco, Cleveland, and Portland, transforming these areas into wastelands.
A recent study commissioned by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California Berkeley found that San Francisco’s downtown activity was only 31% this spring (between March and May) compared to pre-Covid levels. Cleveland was at 36%, and Portland was at 41%.
Meanwhile, after the pandemic, Salt Lake City, Utah, Bakersfield, California, and Columbus, Ohio, experienced the most massive booms in downtown activity.
Oh, Mike Pence, you soft, naive little man. Oh, Tim Scott, you kind and friendly gentleman. I like you both. I really do. I would love you to be my neighbors. If I ran short of sugar or charcoal, you’d square me away. Not so much bourbon, but whatever. If I asked you to help me move or give me a ride to the airport, you suckers would be all in because you are nice guys. And that’s your problem and the problem of Republicans like you. You are nice guys in a time that calls for ruthless killers who want to destroy our enemies and leave them on their backs, figuratively cockroaching on the floor.
We want vengeance and victory. You want hugs. I guess that’s nice. Hugworld would be pleasant, but it’s the hardcore bomb throwers who get us to that stage by pummeling our enemies into submission. You find that unsavory, disconcerting, unseemly. You would prefer a world of comity, collegiality, and unicorns. And that ain’t happening until we warrior cons have broken our enemy – yeah, I used the “E” word – and exacted our payback and thereby ensured that their pain is so great that they will not dare even dream of repeating this nonsense again for a generation for fear of our righteous wrath.
Your problem is that you live on forever in a world that no longer exists, if it ever did. You live in a world where there are norms. You live in a world of rules and guardrails, where the institutions are at least nominally neutral and where we all share some basic premises that provide common ground. But we don’t. They hate America. They hate believing Christians and Jews. They hate the idea of free speech, freedom of religion, the right to due process, and not killing babies three seconds before they poke their heads out. They think kids should be mutilated to conform to gender delusions. They want us normals disarmed, disenfranchised, and, more often than you softies will admit, deceased.
Snip.
It’s time to accept reality and embrace the suck. The suck is that we are in a fight. It’s not going to be over when we pass a few laws or overturn some terrible precedents; those are necessary but far from sufficient actions. No, we are in a long and brutal political struggle where the stakes are our liberty, and while you want to figuratively clutch your pearls and worry about whether this is who we are, we know who we are. And we are the guys and gals who want to figuratively don our plate armor, sharpen our broadswords, and get some, Knight Templar-style.
Mike Pence, Tim Scott, I like you. And I would love to live in your world. But that world exists only in your imagination, and I and the rest of us in the base are stuck here on Planet Earth. You guys can’t be president because you are not wartime consiglieres. You are both Tom Hagan, reliable and soft Tom Hagan, when we are Michael and we need a Sonny to go after the Barzinis and Tartaglias of the left.
It’s sad that your dreams of the presidency in 2024 must die, but you don’t get it, and you can’t fake it. This was a test, and you failed. If you are still imagining that there might be some set of facts awaiting public disclosure that makes it okay to send guys with guns to invade the domicile of your primo political opponent, if you still can’t bring yourself to demand that the disgraced FBI be defunded and dismantled so it can never try to frame another GOP politician, then you are not up to the job. You don’t get to be president because you don’t know what time it is.
One thing about leftist culture that never ceases to amaze is their ability to take a failure and pretend that it was actually a success. This attitude is perhaps an extension of their penchant for propaganda – They lie so much about everything that they end up falling victim to their own disinformation. They tell their enemies they are winning even when they are losing, and then they actually start to believe it themselves.
It’s a bit like the old rule for drug dealers – Everything falls apart when you start smoking the drugs you sell.
For CNN and outlets like them, the problem is that you can’t run from reality forever. If no one wants to watch your content then you can’t force them to do so. Leftists wish they could use force, but they can’t, so instead they try to use gaslighting and shame. This has translated into the typical tactics we see today from the media, which include race baiting and accusations of bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, fascism, etc. These tactics really took center stage from 2016 onward and they haven’t worked yet, but the political left continues to beat that dead horse in the hopes that it will one day win the Kentucky Derby.
They NEED regular consumers to watch their content, but they look down their noses at regular consumers and see them as untouchable peasants. So, they don’t make content for the peasant, they make content for themselves and their friends. This is not a recipe for a successful media network.
In a recent article on the CNN issue, Vox (a far-left outlet) remarked on Brian Stelter being fired and his show being shut down even though he still had three more years on a six-figure contract. David Zaslav, an executive from Discovery, has taken oversight of Warner Brothers and its properties and has been making extensive cuts to save money and streamline the bloated company. Vox’s position really illustrates the deeper problem within leftist media:
“Stelter, who reportedly made close to $1 million a year, was an easy cut: His show, along with his daily media newsletter, was a big deal in media circles…but not a huge draw for normals.”
By using the term “normals” one might conclude that Vox sees themselves and and other journalists as “extraordinary” when compared to the rest of us. Or, maybe they are just “abnormal” – It’s hard to say. The statement is possibly a mistaken admission of how leftist journalists truly view the world, and their view is stunted. They see their work as vital to the masses because their PEERS and Twitter buddies see it as vital to the masses. But mainstream journalists are too far detached from the world and reality to make objective judgment calls. They see themselves as the saviors of humanity, but no one else sees them that way.
The audience numbers talk. The money talks. It doesn’t matter how important you think you are – You don’t own the audience, the audience owns you.
CNN has been a consistent loser in terms of audience numbers and ratings; their ratings have plummeted while their profits continue to slump over the past few years. The CNN+ project was supposed to draw in millions of viewers but only generated 150,000 subscribers, and of those subscribers only 10,000 were regular watchers.
In other words, CNN+ would have been crushed by average YouTuber numbers and their projections for at least 29 million “super fans” were absolutely incompetent. This is why the project was shut down within weeks by David Zaslav – It was an embarrassment from the start, built on inflated delusions of grandeur.
Forget “delusions of grandeur,” CNN suffers from “delusions of not being widely loathed.”
And what is CNN really built on? What has been the company’s foundation for years? It’s only product has been anti-conservative agit-prop. That’s it. That’s all they have. This might work financially if the extreme left was as prevalent as they pretend, but if we look at the numbers and the cash flow, they are actually a tiny portion of the population puffed up and screaming as loud as they can to appear big and formidable. CNN is failing because there is an unsustainable audience for their product.
Federal court strikes down Texas gun law…and for once its good news. “A federal judge has struck down a Texas law preventing individuals aged 18 to 20 years from carrying handguns in public, in the first major court ruling on Second Amendment rights since the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.” Cudos to Judge Mark Pittman for getting it right.
Remember how the left slobbered all over Gravity Payments CEO for giving everyone a $70 salary? Well, he just resigned after a rape allegation. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Democratic State Rep. Sergio Munoz Jr. to pay $1.2 million in damages for legal malpractice. Namely not mentioning that he and the judge presiding over a divorce case he was involved with had previously been law partners.
