LinkSwarm for September 9, 2022

Posted on September 9, 2022 by Lawrence Person

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!


  • Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Kharkiv has been extremely successful.
    • 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.

    

  • “Texas Tax Haul Soars By Record 26% in 2022 Fiscal Year.”

    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.

  • “Biden Brings in Professional Bagman John Podesta to Divvy Up the $316 Billion in Climate Change Money to DNC Donors Ahead of Midterm Election.”

    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.

    (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott at Instapundit.)

  • Russia halts natural gas to EU, saying it won’t resume until sanctions are lifted.
  • Related: “European energy trading risks collapse over $1.5 trillion in margin calls.” Seems like there’s a lot of news about margin calls this week…
  • More European fun: Greece and Turkey are slouching toward war with each other.
  • “Teachers’ Union Boss Admits Teachers Have Become ‘Social Justice Warriors.'” Randi Weingarten is the gift that keeps giving. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “California Gov. Newsom Reaped $10.6 Million In Campaign Cash From 979 State Vendors Who Pocketed $6.2 Billion.”
  • 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…
  • “Special Master Order Reveals Biden’s Direct Involvement In Trump Raid.”
  • “More North Texas Teachers Charged with Sexual Assault of Students.”

    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.

  • “American Library Association Removes Webpage Promoting ‘Secret’ LGBT Messaging In Libraries.”
  • Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov says he might call it quits.
  • Chilean voters reject Social Justice constitution. Good.
  • “Germany: Green Politician Resigns After Inventing Nazi Death-Threats Against Himself.”
  • Queen Elizabeth II dead at age 96. As an American, I hold no truck with royalty, but she always struck me as a classy broad. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Stacey Abrams Announces That With A Heavy Heart She Will Succeed Elizabeth II As Queen.”
  • “Clinton nonprofit funneled $75,000 to ‘defund the police’ group.” This is my shocked face. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “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…
  • Russia seems a lot more interested in selling T-14 Armata tanks abroad than in sending them to Ukraine.

  • 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.”
  • “Libs of TikTok returns to Twitter, threatens lawsuit if removed permanently.
  • The Supreme Court is going to bitchslap Eric Adams halfway to Albany: “Mayor Adams vows door-to-door checks on gun permits.”
  • Fat Leonard is on the lam.
  • “Employees Shocked as Lesbian Vegan Doughnut Shop Goes Out of Business.” The landlord hadn’t been paid for months, and the owners bounced paychecks to employees.
  • Take this, low prices! (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “No turkey, however bloated and stupid, could ever be big enough to convey the mesmerising awfulness of Amazon’s billion dollar Tolkien epic.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Amazon is so confident that actual viewers will hate it that they put a three day waiting period on reviews. In any case, here the one-star reviews they allowed to slip through. Makes you wonder what other reviews they’re manipulating… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.
  • “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.”
    • Posted in Austin, Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

    Then: Commercial Investors Are Sucking Up All American Housing! Now: They’re Losing Their Shirts!

    Posted on September 8, 2022 by Lawrence Person

    If you can remember all the way back to pre-Flu Manchu 2020, housing prices were soaring and there were a raft of articles decrying how commercial investors were snapping up housing as fast as they possibly could, pricing ordinary Americans out of the market.

    Now, some two years later, it’s evident that a lot of those commercial investors kept buying right up through the peak of the market, and are now proceeding to lose their shirts on those deals thanks to the Biden Recession.

    Take, for example, OpenDoor, the company that sends out those endless “We want to buy your home” letters. They promised investors they were going to use the Internet to revolutionize home-buying by flipping homes at scale and cut out the middle man. How well did they succeed?

    Now that they’ve had a while to run their system, the answer is: Not so well.

    Takeaways:

  • One thing I was unaware of: Commercial investors in residential real estate fund their purchases through variable interest rate debt.
  • OpenDoor’s outstanding debt balance “has ballooned from $271 million to $6.1 billion.”
  • Every point rise in interest rates costs OpenDoor $40 million more in interest rate payments.
  • “OpenDoor is truly a modern day house of cards. The company’s revenue grew from $1.8 billion in 2018 to over $8 billion in 2021. To grow they scaled, going from 18 markets to 44 markets in the U.S. In those four years, the company went from flipping 7,000 homes a year back in 2018 to now flipping 21, 000 homes most recently in 2021.”
  • “Despite OpenDoor’s top-line growth, the company has incurred loss after loss after loss, each bigger than the last, even in a strong rebound year in 2021. Where the company sold a record number of homes, OpenDoor incurred a record loss of over $600 million.”
  • Some math snipped. “OpenDoor would need to sell roughly sixty thousand homes a year just to break even with how much it costs the company to exist in its current burn rate. Every time the interest rate goes up a single point, OpenDoor needs to sell an additional 2,000 homes in order to offset that additional $40 million.”

    • The end of the video touches on how Zillow lost $881 million by trusting an algorithm that had them paying above-marker prices. We covered that briefly here some nine months ago. Here’s a video with more details:

    But it’s not just OpenDoor and Zillow. Here’s a video that explains why all the large-scale commercial buyers of residential real estate (including those buying to rent it out rather than flip) are screwed by rising interest rates:

    Takeaways:

  • The Fed “is now committing to not only continue increasing interest rates, they’re committing to keeping interest rates elevated for the foreseeable future.”
  • “These real estate investors are going to be losing money in the housing market on their investments, and that they are going to have to fire sale their portfolio as a result.”
  • “Over the last year, the investor profit or the cap rate in America is about 4.5%, which was pretty good in 2021, when interest rates were zero, but now that interest rates are projected to go to 3.8%, we can see that investors who buy real estate in America are basically getting very little premium over buying a short-term government bond.”
  • “As this investor demand continues to go down, home prices are also going to continue to go down in America, because in many markets investors were quarter of the demand, a third of the demand for homes over the last of couple years, and in some neighborhoods investors were 50—60% of the demand.”
  • “A lot of people think [commercial buyers pay] cash, but folks, it’s never cash, it’s always a bank in the background giving these hedge funds and private equity funds money to buy single-family homes.”
  • “They’ll give these hedge funds maybe 70—75% percent of the money to go do it, like a normal loan. The thing is, the loans that these Wall Street investors use to buy homes are often adjustable rate loans, where every time the fed hikes interest rates, the Wall Street investor has to pay more in debt service and interest on their existing portfolio.”
  • “We’re gonna get to a point soon over the next six months where these Wall Street investors are having to pay more to their bank and their warehouse lender than they’re going to receive in income and rent from their tenant. Like, literally, these Wall Street investors not only are going to see the value of their property going to go down, they’re going to begin losing money in terms of cash flow.”
  • So not only will investors have to sell, but frequently they won’t have any choice.

    Because their lender, their bank, is going to do something called a margin call. At a certain point, they’re gonna say “Hey Wall Street buyer who I’m giving money to, the value of the homes has gone down and now you can barely afford to pay interest. You’re gonna have to now just pay us off, or pay us down,” and when the bank does that margin call, these investors are then going to be forced to sell off their portfolio, because they’re going to need the cash, causing a massive, widespread dump of inventory onto the U.S. housing market.

  • He doesn’t mention Austin by name in this video, but he does in another pegging it as the #5 market most likely to see price drops. “This is a market in absolute freefall.” “In the span of just five months, the number of homes for sale in Austin has increased from 1460 and February to nearly 8 000 in July.” He thinks home prices could go down by 40%. Naturally, as an Austin-area home-owner, I think that’s way too much, but I do expect significant retreats from the highs reached early this year.
  • He also thinks inflation is going to get worse (which is probably a good bet).

    • (In another video covering some of the same ground, he mentions BlackRock, one of the biggest boogeymen in public perceptions of buying residential real estate. Guess what? “BlackRock is not a big player in terms of owning, managing and buying real estate in the U.S.”)

    Like the fear of Japan buying everything in the late 1980s, fear that institutional investors will make owning a home impossible for ordinary Americans turned out to suffer from the same recency bias, assuming that what is going on right this minute will continue for the foreseeable future.

    Like assuming that the giant ants are unstoppable, or that Hispanics will always vote for Democrats, assuming that housing prices will always go up and that credit will always be cheap are categorical mistakes that the market will eventually punish you for making, and the companies that made it are now bleeding red ink.

    People who sold during the bubble made out like bandits, and people who bought during it got screwed, but what can’t go up forever won’t. Bubbles pop. Absent government distortions of the market*, supply and demand have a way of adjusting.

    Anyway, if you need to buy a house, nine months from now is probably going to be a great buyer’s market…

    *And yes, lots of cities and states try their damnedest to prevent new housing from being built. I’m looking at you, California.

    Posted in Austin, Economics, Texas, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

    Ukrainian Counteroffensive In Kharkiv?

    Posted on September 7, 2022 by Lawrence Person

    There are indications that Ukraine, in addition to the Kherson counteroffensive, is conducting a counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast, and has apparently captured Volokhiv Yar, Balakliya and Yakovenkove, towns between Kharkiv and Russian-occupied Izyum.

    It’s unclear whether this is a feint, a spoiling attack or a full-blown counteroffensive, but the scale of the initial success suggests it’s too large to be a mere probing attack.

    Says ISW:

    Ukrainian forces conducted a counterattack in Kharkiv Oblast near Balakliya that likely drove Russian forces back to the left bank (north side) of the Severskyi Donets and Serednya Balakliika rivers on September 6. Ukrainian forces likely captured Verbivka (less than 3 km northwest of Balakliya) on September 6. Geolocated footage posted on September 6 shows Ukrainian infantry in eastern Verbivka (less than 3 km from Balakliya). Multiple Russian sources acknowledged Ukrainian gains in Verbivka and reported that Russian forces demolished unspecified bridges in Balakliya‘s eastern environs to prevent further Ukrainian advances. Images posted on September 6 also show a destroyed Russian bridge over the Serednya Balakliika River—a geographic feature behind which the Russian front line in this sector likely lies. Social media users reported that Russian forces withdrew from checkpoints six kilometers west of Balaklia on September 6.

    Russian forces likely no longer maintain their previous positions in Bairak and Nova Husarivka (just south of Balakliya on the right bank of the Seversky Donets River). Russian forces likely abandoned Bayrak and Nova Husarivka in late August. Images posted on August 30 show that Russian forces blew the bridge over the Seversky Donetsk River near Bayrak on an unspecified date. Bridge demolition activity indicates a planned Russian withdrawal. Ukraine’s General Staff reported on September 6 that Russian forces conducted air strikes against Bayrak, indicating that Ukrainian forces may have advanced in the area.

    Russia’s deployment of forces from Kharkiv and eastern Ukraine to Ukraine’s south is likely enabling Ukrainian counterattacks of opportunity. The September 6 Ukrainian counterattack in Kharkiv was likely an opportunistic effort enabled by the redeployment of Russian forces away from the area to reinforce Russian positions against the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kherson Oblast. Obituary data on Russian servicemen indicates that Russia deployed elements of the 147th Artillery Regiment of the 2nd Motorized Rifle Division of the 1st Guards Tank Army to Kherson Oblast no earlier than late August. This is the first time ISW has observed elements of Russia’s elite 1st Guards Tank Army operating in southern Ukraine. Elements of the 147th previously fought in Bucha in Kyiv in March and elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army were active primarily along the Kharkiv Axis after the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv.

    Reporting from Ukraine (a pro-Ukrainian source) breaks down the counteroffensive.

    Suchomimus analyzes the news as of yesterday. There are “reports that Russia is blowing up bridges, a sign that they are in a bit of a panic and expect Ukraine to advance.”

    And here he shows a video of Ukrainian forces entering Yakovenkove further east, from which he surmises that they must have already taken Balakliya.

    Bonus: Ukrainian aircraft shoots down a Russian Su-25:

    Map snapshot, which is already slightly out of date:

    Izyum is the linchpin of Russia’s north-central front. Losing it would not only spell an end to any further Russian advances in Kharkiv for the immediate future, but also put Russia’s hard-won conquest of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in jeopardy.

    With Russia reportedly buying artillery from North Korea (Caveat: This comes from Biden’s Pentagon, so grains of salt are in order) and two separate counteroffensives chewing up units, it’s possibly that Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine have already peaked.

    Edited to add: Reporting from Ukraine has a video up detailing how different thrusts of the counteroffensive developed:

    Posted in Military, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

    When Storage Wars Meets Gun Hoarders

    Posted on September 6, 2022 by Lawrence Person

    Back when I’d visit my parents a decade or so ago, one of my father’s guilty pleasures was watching Storage Wars.

    If you’re unfamiliar with this cable staple, it features competing teams of people bidding on abandoned storage units, then going through the ones they won trying to figure out what things were worth. Storage Wars was infamous for every episode having one or more “surprise items” that the buyer just happened to know an expert who could identify the item and its value. It was a little cheesy, and like all realty TV, was fake and scripted, but was a higher, more nourishing brand of cable junk food, than, say Ice Road Truckers or Deadliest Catch (which is evidently still on).

    Anyway, people still bid on abandoned storage units, and a guy who has a YouTube channel bid a princely $5,786 for a unit because he saw some gun cases in there.

    Did it pay off?

    Boy did it!

    There were a few cheap handguns, but also a lot of expensive hunting rifles, including:

  • A Marlin 1895CB chambered in 45/70 Government.
  • Two Remington Model 700s chambered in .270.
  • A Winchester Model 1894 chambered in 450 Marlin.
  • Etc.

    • But also thousands of rounds of ammo, a whole lot in loaded magazines.

    This video is almost 100% pure gun pr0n:

    Let this be a reminder: If you have a large firearms collection, you want to make sure you have an itemized and notarized will, so your designated heirs end up getting fair value for your collection.

    Posted in Guns, video | Tagged , , , , , | 19 Comments

    Ukraine: Don’t Assume Russia Will Win

    Posted on September 5, 2022 by Lawrence Person

    Defense analyst Anders Puck Nielsen says there’s a tendency for many to believe that, although Ukraine has put up a good fight, a Russian victory in the Russo-Ukrainian War is inevitable. (I assume he’s seeing these on the various MSM channels I stopped watching a long time ago, as the only place I see such assumptions these days is among comment trolls and the occasional ZeroHedge headline.)

    Some takeaways:

  • “When Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine back in February, many people assumed that it was going to be an easy win. It was not only Vladimir Putin who believed that they could finish this war within days or weeks. Many people thought so. And even after it became clear that there would not be a quick victory, many people still carried over this assumption that Russia is going to win eventually because that is the only possible outcome.” (I too thought a Russian victory was the most likely (though not certain) outcome in the first few days, before it become apparent just how badly bungled the invasion planning was, how fragile Russian supply lines were, how poor the communication was between different branches of the Russian military, and how neglected even basic maintenance was for Russian equipment.)
  • “They think of Russia as a giant. And then they think about Ukraine as a small country. But that is not really a good comparison.”
  • Unmentioned by Nielsen is that one reason they thought so is just how much old Soviet military equipment Russia still had lying around. That assumption was somewhat overstated, and, again, a whole lot of that equipment was poorly maintained.
  • Russia’s massive display of incompetence didn’t change the minds of many who still saw Russian victory as inevitable. “The assumption was that this just means it’s going to take longer, and then Russia is going to figure it out, and they are going to win.”
  • “We still have analysts who say that Ukraine could never push Russia back from the occupied territories, and that there has to be a negotiated solution where Ukraine gives something to Putin to end the war. And then these analyst also often seem to take it at face value when Putin or Lavrov or somebody else comes with threats about escalation.” (True, but I don’t think anyone pays serious attention to such people any more, if they ever did.)
  • Nielsen says there are a number of reasons why Russia can’t just carry out a mass mobilization, or start tossing nukes around.
  • Putin launched the war due an entire chain of bad assumptions, including those about the inevitability of Russian greatness.
  • “Ukraine is winning the war of attrition, and they will start pushing Russia backwards.”
  • “That’s why I think this idea that a Russian victory is inevitable is so dangerous. On the Western side, it leads to the belief that it is dangerous to provide Ukraine with heavy weapons. And this can mean that Ukraine won’t be able to finish the war as quickly as they otherwise could. And on the Russian side it means that they won’t be motivated for peace talks, even if the situation on the battlefield is awful.” (Not sure I agree here; The U.S., UK, Germany, and Poland have all transferred significant heavy weapons to Ukraine.)
  • “It will be extremely hard for the Russian leaders to embrace the idea that a defeat is possible. Like, not even that it is going to happen, but just that it could be a possibility. Because that would require them to question everything they believe to be true about Russia and being a great power. So they will be able to live in denial for a very long time.”
  • “If we want the war to end, we need Putin to understand that a defeat is a real possibility. And the best way to do that is to equip Ukraine with the weapons they need to win.”
    • Posted in Foreign Policy, Media Watch, Military, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

    Movie Review: The Beast

    Posted on September 4, 2022 by Lawrence Person

    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:

    Russian brutality is in the news again, with numerous reports of indiscriminate killing of civilians and wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure. But while the Russians have been demothballing old Soviet tanks to send to Ukraine, they haven’t become desperate enough to send T-55s to the front lines, assuming they still have any that are able to run…

    Posted in Communism, Military | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

    The Ukraine War Map Problem

    Posted on September 3, 2022 by Lawrence Person

    When the Russo-Ukrainian war kicked off back in February, I relied on https://liveuamap.com/ to track military action in the war, just as I had used their similar map when tracking the war against the Islamic State. However, after the initial phase of the war, LiveUAMap seemed to update less and less frequently, and it’s been practically useless for tracking progress in the Kherson counteroffensive.

    Today, most video commentators on the war seem to rely on https://deepstatemap.live. Here’s today’s snapshot from Kherson:

    Better than nothing, but not as good as LiveUAMap used to be.

    Here YouTuber Suchomimus compares different maps of the Kherson offensive, and how the differ on territory captured.

    He mentions the War_Mapper Twitter account, which I haven’t been following due to my ongoing Twitter timeout.

    He also mentions the official Russian-sourced map, which I’m not particularly interested in trusting.

    The Institute for the Study of War includes a map with their daily assessment updates, but they’re not interactive or particularly detailed.

    There are also a few YouTubers who do daily map updates. There’s Denys Davydov (“Hello, my friends…”). He’s Ukrainian and upfront about his bias, and covers the various clashes across the entire front (which makes his videos a bit long, and I tend to skip around for the bits I’m interested in). He suffers from “The map is the territory” syndrome, and isn’t a deep tactical thinker or versed in the intricacies of combined arms operations, but he’s useful if you understand his limitations.

    One of the maps he relies on (in addition to DeepState) is the MilitaryLand map, which looks really useful.

    Ukraine News TV relies on the DeepState map, and goes into considerable detail recount the day’s events.

    War in Ukraine isn’t great in terms of voiceover, but seem to have a lot of unit-specific information on his maps.

    For the sake of completeness, I note WeebUnion, who says he’s objective but seems pro-Russian (and his commenters even more so). He’s not a dynamic voiceover talent, and he begins this video with “Hello, comrades,” so…yeah, I don’t follow him.

    This is the map he’s using.

    This is a quick rundown of the map resources I’ve run across. If you know of other useful source, feel free to share them in the comments below.

    Posted in Global Warming, Obama Scandals, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

    LinkSwarm for September 2, 2022

    Posted on September 2, 2022 by Lawrence Person

    Biden goes all Nuremberg Rally, more transexual madness, Gibson’s Bakery wins final victory, states subcontract their energy policies to crazy California, and more really stupid criminals. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • You would think that Biden’s team might have better sense than to dress his set like it’s Darth Maul’s bedroom:

    

  • What happens when people in the federal government are incompetent and refuse to do their job? Usually nothing. Or they get promoted. But in Florida? Governor DeSantis fires their asses.

    On Friday, Governor Ron DeSantis announced that he would be suspending four members of the Broward County School Board for their “incompetence, neglect of duty, and misuse of authority” at Marjory Stonemason Douglass High School.

    In a press release, the governor’s office stated that Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray and Laurie Rich Levinson had been suspended following the recommendations of the Twentieth Statewide Grand Jury. DeSantis has been particularly active in education, going as far as endorsing school board members in their races across the state, and enacting laws on curriculum transparency and parental rights.

    “Even four years after the events of February 14, 2018, the final report of the Grand Jury found that a safety-related alarm that could have possibly saved lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School ‘was and is such a low priority that it remains uninstalled at multiple schools,’ and ‘students continue to be educated in unsafe, aging, decrepit, moldy buildings that were supposed to have been renovated years ago,’” the press release states.

    “These are inexcusable actions by school board members who have shown a pattern of emboldening unacceptable behavior, including fraud and mismanagement, across the district,” the press release continued.

    “It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance,” said DeSantis. “The findings of the Statewide Grand Jury affirm the work of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Safety Commission. We are grateful to the members of the jury who have dedicated countless hours to this mission and we hope this suspension brings the Parkland community another step towards justice. This action is in the best interest of the residents and students of Broward County and all citizens of Florida.”

    In their place, DeSantis has appointed Torey Alston, former Commissioner of the Broward County Board of County Commissioners and President of Indelible Solutions, Manual “Nandy” A. Serrano, member of the Florida Sports Foundation Board of Directors, Ryan Reiter, a US Marine Corps Veteran and Director of Government Relations for Kaufman Lynn Construction, and Kevin Tynan, Attorney with Richardson and Tynan, who previously served on the Broward County School Board and South Broward Hospital District, to take the suspended members’ places.

  • Undercover mom shocked by official transexual propaganda depravity.

    Rachel, a Brooklyn mom with a gender-dysphoric child…went undercover as a pre-teen in the chat, searching for resources for detransitioners. She found none.

    Instead, she opened a “Pandora’s box” of sexually perverse content, aggressive gender re-assignment referrals, adults encouraging minors to hide their transitions from their parents, and many troubled kids in need of psychological counseling. She shared screenshots of the chat with National Review.

    Rachel says she looked to the Trevor Project in desperation, “when I thought my child was going to kill herself.” The organization frequently claims that LGBT youth are more than four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers. It claims to be a refuge for these people with its crisis services including TrevorLifeline, TrevorText, and TrevorChat.

    Under the advice of a “highly credentialed” medical and mental-health team, Rachel and her husband decided to socially transition their child a few years ago, she told National Review. After that, her child was hospitalized three times for self-harm and suicidality, including at least one suicide attempt. In New York, due to a ban on psychotherapy, so-called gender affirmation was the only legal option they could pursue, she said.

    They were at their wit’s end, until her spouse sat her down and presented her with a PowerPoint, showing statistics that people who transition are, by a huge factor, much more likely than the general public to commit suicide.

    “My jaw hit the floor. I said, ‘Oh my God we’ve been lied to’,” she says.

    Since then, Rachel, a lifelong Democrat and feminist, has been dedicated to exposing the child gender-transition craze, which she argues is driven by “predatory medicine” incentivized by the government.

    In TrevorSpace, she got a bird’s-eye view of the progressive non-profit giant that is claiming to save young lives but is really driving them further into existential rabbit holes, depravity, and potential danger, she said.

    She documented kids talking about how to buy binders, an undergarment that constricts breasts, behind their parents’ backs. “I know the way people usually do this is by ordering it to a friend’s house or something of the sort, but I don’t have anyone to do that with,” wrote a girl whose account says she’s under 18. “I have money and know where I want to get it from and all that. I just need a means of getting it.” Another user suggested she have the binder sent to a post office where she could pick it up without her parents’ knowledge. Other users were referred to eBay to purchase a packer, or an artificial appendage meant to mimic a penis.

    When people sign up for TrevorSpace, they have the option of placing themselves within the age ranges of “under 18” or “18-25.” The community is open to people 13-24, according to the site. There is no system in place to confirm a person’s age, Rebecca says and National Review confirmed. She also said she noticed entries from people claiming to be over 25 too, as well as guest accounts with no age listed.

    Other teens, presumably girls transitioning to boys, testified to the effectiveness of Minoxidil, an over-the-counter medication that stimulates facial hair growth. “Can I get and use Minoxidil without my parents knowing?” a girl asked.

    The kids Rachel followed on TrevorSpace spanned a diverse spectrum of gender disorientation, some confident in their belief that they were the opposite sex and some just gender curious. But, as Rachel observed, they were all pointed in one direction: gender transition. In a significant number of cases, adults gave minors this validation.

  • “5th Circuit Rules Govt Cannot Punish Religious Hospitals for Refusing to Perform Abortions, Gender Transitions.”
  • “Queer Theory is Queer Marxism.”
  • Gibson’s Bakery finally wins complete victory in their case, as Ohio’s Supreme Court refused to hear Oberlin College’s appeal. “It means the Gibsons now can collect approximately $36 million.”
  • Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner survives an assassination attempt when the assailant’s gun jams.
  • “Californians Told Not to Charge Electric Cars Days After Gas Car Sales Ban.”
  • Speaking of California’s delusional green agenda, a whole lot of Democrat-controlled states have adopted California’s green insanity by proxy, Virginia among them.
  • Poland is not going to get any recovery funds until they start electing leftwing politicians.
  • “Anti-Immigrant, Eurosceptic Sweden Democrats Set To Become Nation’s 2nd Largest Party.”
  • Another day, another high profile Kamala Harris aide leaving. “Herbie Ziskend, a senior communications adviser, announced that he is leaving Harris’s side for the West Wing, where he will be the new White House deputy communications director.”
  • “Bill Maher Slams Libs Defending Censorship Of Hunter Laptop: ‘He was selling the influence of his father, Joe Biden.'”
  • “Joe Rogan tells listeners to ‘vote Republican,’ bashes Dems’ COVID-19 ‘errors.’” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.
  • “Some people collect Pokemon cards, but this guy collects felonies.”
  • French tax agency deploys AI to find high ranking government official who are embezzling. Ha, just kidding! They’re using it to find and tax unreported pools.
  • Greg Gutfeld is driving the enemy before him and hearing the lamentations of Stephen Colbert. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Texas Applies to Build Molten Salt Nuclear by 2025.”
  • Russian drone hacked midflight by Ukrainians.
  • The last Luftwaffe raid against the UK happened April 21, 1945, less than two weeks before Hitler committed suicide, and some three weeks before VE Day. The planes took off from occupied Stavanger, Norway, and it didn’t work out well for the Germans…
  • Critical Drinker is is not impressed with The Rings of Power. “It’s shiite.”
  • “Harvard To Pay Elizabeth Warren $400,000 To Teach Class On Why College Is So Expensive.”
  • You’d think the recent rains would have washed more dust out of the air…

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

    • Posted in Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Military, Regulation, Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

    Peter Zeihan on The Kherson Counteroffensive

    Posted on September 1, 2022 by Lawrence Person

    For those who think I rely too much on Ukraine updates and Peter Zeihan videos, enjoy this Peter Zeihan video update on Ukraine!

    Takeaways:

  • “Everything that the Russians were bad at before (propaganda, logistics, precision, training, maintenance, equipment), everything they were bad at before, they’re worse at now.”
  • Ukraine has moved from trying to stop the Russian advance with shoulder-mounted weaponry to longer-range heavy artillery, allowing them to hit ammo dumps, logistical hubs and high-value officers.
  • “The degree to which the Ukrainians are able to put targeting information, either from their own human network or signal intelligence that is provided by the Americans, and put it to use has been very impressive, and it has snarled the entirety of the Russian advance in both the east and the south.”
  • “Russia may be running out of ammunition.”
  • Russian doctrine calls for slow advances prepared by massive artillery barrages.
  • “They faced a massive industrial collapse in the 1990s that they never really covered recovered from.”

  • They have fought three artillery intensive wars since the Soviet collapse: two in Chechnya and then one in Syria. So now the Russians are attempting to advance over a front that’s a thousand miles long with a burn rate for their artillery in excess of 40,000 shells a day. Going through a relatively small by Soviet standards arsenal that has been acquired since the Soviet collapse, when the industrial system collapses. Well, any equipment any shells that they’re going to use that are not from that stack are things that were built before 1989, meaning that they’re in excess of 30 years old. We’ve seen reports several a year in Russia going back 30 years that, every once in a while, one of these shells [just] cooks off and the entire ammo dump goes up. It’s entirely possible that some of the explosions were seeing in places like Belograd or Western Russia are not actually being caused by the Ukrainians, but by the Russians manhandling of their own equipment. But regardless, that burn rate 40,000 a day is not something that anyone could maintain at length.

  • Thus Russia has been shooting at big static targets like train stations and malls. “They have the feel of being a little bit more than the Russians shooting at things to demonstrate to the world that the Russians can still shoot at things. Tanks and infantry are not following up on any of these attacks.”
  • “Kherson was the only major city that Ukrainians ever lost to the Russians, the only regional capital.”
  • “All the normal things that plague offensives are appropriate to think about here. They trigger higher casualties among the attackers than the defenders. They require more troops, They require better logistics. They’re more vulnerable to disruption. All of that stands. Also, you have to consider that this isn’t simply Ukraine’s first significant offensive in the war, but this is Ukraine’s first significant offensive ever.”
  • “The Ukrainians have continually surprised to the upside, and the Russians have continually surprised at the downside. So what should have been a wildly unbalanced war that should have been over four months ago all of a sudden, if not a conflict among equals, is suddenly looking like a little bit more of a fair-ish fight.”
  • Summary of the Kherson situation so far, including damage to the bridges, covered here and here.
  • No guarantee that the Ukrainians will win in Kherson, but it obviously offers them the best chance.
  • “If it proves that the Ukrainians are successful [Russian] forces are going to have to evacuate on foot, they are going to have to leave all of their gear behind…this would be the single biggest military transfer to Ukraine of the post-war environment, and certainly of this war…all of a sudden, the Ukrainians might actually have what they need.” Sometimes Zeihan has a tendency to overstate things, and I think he does that here. Yes, they’ll probably capture some usable heavy equipment, but the estimates I hear are some 20,000 Russian troops in Kherson, and I’m not sure how many functional military vehicles will be left in usable condition after such heavy fighting. They might well pick up significant quantities of towed artillery.
  • He talks about the importance of taking Nova Kakhkovka, and controlling the irrigation gates for the canals that feed occupied Crimea.
  • If Ukraine retakes Kherson, they might theoretically be able to take out the Kerch Strait Bridge. (Note that this is only true if they actually have the ATACMS missiles for their HIMARS that the Biden Administration says we haven’t given them yet, as I calculate a distance of roughly 179 miles from Nova Kakhkovka to the bridge.) “Crimea goes from being an incredibly strategically valuable platform that the Russians can use to launch into Ukraine proper, into the most significant military vulnerability that post-war Russia has ever had.” Eh, I think I have to go with the Atomic Bomb between 1945 and August of 1949.
  • “If Ukraine is going to win this war, this is how it’s going to start.”
    • Posted in Foreign Policy, Military, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

    Mikhail Gorbachev, RIP

    Posted on August 31, 2022 by Lawrence Person

    There are some people whose staggering failures are so awesome that they put ordinary successes in the shade. Like Christopher Columbus trying to find a quicker route to India and discovering the New World instead.

    Such is the case with Mikhail Gorbachev, who died yesterday at age 91.

    Gorbachev never meant to destroy Soviet Communism, he merely meant to reform it so that it could run more efficiently, allowing the Soviet Union to compete more effectively with capitalist nations that were stomping their communist counterparts both economically and technologically. Moore’s Law was creating a tech boom racing so far ahead that the Soviets couldn’t even copy technology fast enough to keep up. Reagan’s obvious resolve and the threat posed by SDI scared them even more. To compete with the west, Gorbachev had to reform his stagnant nation.

    His means for doing so were glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reform, or restructuring). Those two methods, meant to rejuvenate Soviet communism, actually ended it. Glasnost made it clear that a majority of Soviet citizens across the various republics hated the oppressive nature of communism. Perestroika was a hard sell to stagnant and ossified state agencies and enterprises. While some well-connected oligarch’s got rich on the first green shoots of capitalist reform, western companies proved unenthusiastic about investing in Soviet co-ventures.

    Politically, Gorbachev’s reforms eventually resulted in the draft New Union Treaty, which would have devolved more power to the constituent Republics. This was deemed so threatening to the status quo that an abortive coup was launched against Gorbachev by communist hardliners the day before it was supposed to be signed. The coup, opposed by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and a large swath of Soviet citizens, collapsed in a matter of days, sealing the fate of the Soviet Union, which would dissolve on December 25, 1991.

    In the process trying to reform the Soviet system, Gorbachev would stop funding communist movements around the world and withdraw troops from eastern Europe. These were great, liberating decisions, but they were committed in support of reforming Soviet communism, not ending it. By that grand mistake, Mikhail Gorbachev did more to make the world a better place than all previous Soviet Premiers combined.

    Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy, video | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments