#russian stooge

[liberalsarecool]

Probably the CIA.

Typical MAGA 'alpha'.

Imagine making being a performative cospatriot your entire personality and then being exposed as a Russian stooge. 😂😂😂

[muddypolitics]

(via Trump Media Company Taking Money From Russian Cutouts? No, No, That Can't Be Right! - Wonkette)

...The Guardian reporter broke the news this morning that Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of his janky knockoff Twitter platform Truth Social, is under SEC investigation for an $8 million cash infusion from a Kremlin-linked entity that appears "to be controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin."

[tomorrowusa]

The Sukhoi Su-57 is Russia's most advanced stealth fighter jet. Only about two dozen are operational. It is known that Russia has used these jets to launch Kalibr missiles into Ukraine.

So Ukraine became the first country ever to destroy a Su-57 – and there's reason to believe that it may have taken out TWO of them.

It’s increasingly clear a Ukrainian drone badly damaged, and possibly destroyed, a Russian air force Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter in a Saturday raid on Russia's Akhtubinsk State Flight Test Center in southern Russia 365 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border. And it’s possible a second Su-57—out of around two dozen Su-57s the Russian air force has acquired since the type’s first flight in 2010—was also damaged in the raid. “There is preliminary information that there could be two Su-57 aircraft affected,” Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian intelligence agency, said in a Sunday interview.

The Su-57 is roughly the equivalent of the US F-22.

As recently as 2019, there were at least six twin-engine, supersonic Su-57s at Akhtubinsk. Ground crews routinely parked the radar-evading jets out in the open—eliciting a bitter protest from the Fighterbomber Telegram channel, a popular forum for Russian airmen and their boosters. Fighterbomber asked why, 28 months into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, the air force hasn’t built hardened shelters for its most precious aircraft—including the Su-57 that Fighterbomber itself confirmed suffered shrapnel damage during the Saturday drone raid.

You read that correctly. These very expensive and relatively rare planes were parked outside in the open during wartime when Ukrainian drones have already struck more than twice the distance into Russia of the Akhtubinsk air base. The Russian military continues to prove that it simply is not very bright.

Meanwhile, Ukraine gets increasingly resourceful and innovative.

But the Ukrainians strike Russian airfields more effectively than the Russians strike Ukrainian airfields—thanks in large part to Ukraine’s growing inventory of long-range strike drones and the relative sluggishness of Russian decision-making. Ukrainian air force commanders frequently, sometimes more than once a day, scatter their jets across a vast network of small airfields and even highway airstrips—all in a preemptive effort to complicate Russian raids on parked planes. Russian air force commanders do no such thing. When Russian jets change bases, it’s usually the result of a long-planned move—often in response to particular bases repeatedly coming under attack by Ukrainian rockets or drones.

Here are before and after satellite photos of one of the wrecked Russian Su-57s.

^^^ Date format is DD/MM/YYYY. The Ukrainian captions simply identify the aircraft and point out burn marks and debris from the explosion. You don't have to annihilate an expensive aircraft to make it unusable.

Russian disinformation, as parroted by both extreme right and extreme left in Europe, often goes like this...

"OMG, there's no way Ukraine can ever defeat Russia with its unlimited resources."

We know that those "unlimited" resources are unable to provide almost a quarter of Russia's rural population with toilets. 🚽

Those Putin stooges want you to ignore how Russia has suffered frequent military humiliations, demonstrated bizarre military incompetence, and has lost hundreds of thousands of troops in the past 28 months. Russia, or rather its predecessor the USSR, lost the 1979-1989 Afghan invasion. Russian incompetence certainly did not vanish 35 years ago when that war ended.

[kyliaquilor]

You don’t tend to join an alliance with a power halfway around the world...unless you think your neighbor is going to invade you.

[simply-ivanka]

Democrats, Blame Yourselves

Voters on Tuesday repudiated the results of progressive policies.

By The Editorial Board Wall Street Journal

If Democrats want some sage counsel on how to recover from their electoral drubbing on Tuesday, we suggest they recall that classic relationship breakup line from Seinfeld’s George Costanza: “It’s not you; it’s me.”

The temptation after a defeat this humiliating is to hunt for scapegoats—fading Joe Biden, untutored Kamala Harris, Russian disinformation, benighted and racist voters. They’d be wiser to look in the mirror.

The defeat was less a resounding endorsement of Mr. Trump than a repudiation of progressive governance. America rejected the consequences of left-wing policies. Democrats lost ground from 2020 across many demographic groups, according to the exit polls. Even women moved percentage points closer to Mr. Trump. How could Democrats possibly lose like this to a man they think is Hitler? Allow us to offer a list for liberal reflection:

• The failure of Bidenomics. Democrats once understood that private business drives growth and higher incomes. Sometime in the 21st century, they came to believe that government spending creates wealth—via the “Keynesian multiplier” and other nostrums.

Thus they passed, on a party-line vote, a $1.9 trillion pandemic-relief bill that wasn’t really needed, fueling the highest inflation in decades. This robbed millions of workers of real wage gains, which haunted Democrats on Tuesday as two-thirds of voters said they were unhappy with the state of the economy.

• Cultural imperialism. Democrats took their 2020 victory as an invitation to turn identity politics into woke policy. They stood with transgender activists instead of parents who don’t want boys to play girls sports or elementary teachers to pass out pronoun pins. Republicans hammered Democrats with ads that attacked Democratic votes against tying federal funds to transgender school policies.

Democrats also began using the term “Latinx,” which sounds to many Spanish-speakers like illiterate cultural imperialism from elites. Could that and other woke policies have played a role in Mr. Trump winning 46% of the Hispanic vote and 55% of Latino men, according to the exit polls?

• Regulatory coercion. In pursuit of their climate obsessions, Democrats pushed coercive mandates, including an EPA rule effectively saying that by 2032 only 30% of new car sales can be gas-powered models. The EV mandate caused layoffs among auto workers in Michigan that Mr. Trump attacked in TV ads and on the stump.

• Lawfare. Democrats used Mr. Trump’s divisiveness to escalate against him at every turn. After calling him a Russian stooge and impeaching him twice, Mr. Biden labeled him a “fascist” and Democrats tried to bar him from the ballot.

They criminally indicted Mr. Trump—four times—and targeted his family business with a civil suit. They convicted him in New York, under an elected Democratic prosecutor who stretched the law to turn misdemeanors into felonies, in a case that wouldn’t have been brought against another businessman.

The strategy turned Mr. Trump into a martyr to GOP voters and cemented his support in the Republican primaries.

• Breaking democratic norms. Democrats decided to use taxes from plumbers and welders to forgive college loans for lawyers and grad students in grievance studies. When the Supreme Court struck Mr. Biden’s effort down as an abuse of power, he tried again and taunted the Court to stop him.

Democrats tried to override the Senate filibuster to seize control of the nation’s voting laws and impose practices such as ballot harvesting, as Mr. Biden raged that his opponents were creating “Jim Crow 2.0.”

They tried to override the filibuster to pass a national abortion law that would go beyond Roe v. Wade. They promised to override the filibuster in 2025 to bulldoze the High Court. They ran Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema out of the party for disagreeing.

All of this and other progressive preoccupations caused Democrats to lose sight of the larger public interest. They came to believe, backed by the mainstream press, that voters would tolerate it all because Mr. Trump was simply unacceptable.

This opened the door for Mr. Trump to remind voters that they were better off under his policies four years earlier. Mr. Trump won more than 72 million ballots. He improved his standing with minority voters. He gained votes even in Democratic states.

Voters were telling Democrats on Tuesday that the party has wandered into ideological fever swamps where most Americans don’t want to go. Winning those voters again will require more than firing back up the anti-Trump “resistance.”

[darkmaga-returns]

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, legacy news networks were already sliding toward 2016 levels of melting down about the increasingly definite prospect of a presidential victory by Donald J. Trump. For them, Harris’ stinging defeat is personal — because it’s just as much a defeat for them as it is for her.

The corporate media industrial complex has spent Donald Trump’s entire political career trying to destroy him. Hand-in-hand with triple-letter government agencies and Democrats, they ran a hoax painting Trump as a Russian stooge based on ridiculous rumors commissioned by his opponent’s campaign in 2016. They continued to spread the lie for the duration of his presidency, awarding each other Pulitzers for it. And they’ve only ramped up their efforts since then.

The problem they’re reckoning with tonight is this: those efforts didn’t work. They’re no longer able to control Americans by controlling their information intake, because their credibility is farther deep-sixed than the Clinton family’s enemies list.

A TV executive anonymously fretted last week that “If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form.”

Even before the election results were in, that was true of the corporate press. Jeff Bezos knew it when he reportedly ordered The Washington Post to withhold an endorsement of Harris. But now, they can’t avoid it.

Since the last presidential election, the media have screeched incessantly about Trump “inciting an insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They made documentaries comparing Trump to the Ku Klux Klan. They portrayed Trump as the ringleader of a terrorist attack and not as a president who gave a speech and urged his supporters to protest peacefully.

Tuesday night’s results are a resounding indication that Americans didn’t buy it.

[fabiansociety]

watching russia target black precincts for bomb threats is a good reminder that white supremacy is an international community and that fascism crosses the borders they swear have to be impenetrable

also that trump is a russian stooge, but we knew that

[liberalsarecool]

Democrats are loyal to Democracy/America.

Republicans betray all for a Russian stooge.

[creature-wizard]

For anyone who isn't aware, studying culty and scammy type stuff is a thing I do. In fact, my Tumblr here is mostly about that kind of thing.

If there is one thing that I have learned, it's that when someone tells you that everyone else is corrupted and evil, and then presents themselves and whatever they have going on as the alternative that will save you, they are full of shit. At the very best, they genuinely just don't understand the world all that well, and don't realize just how much they don't know. But more often - far more often - they're actually running some sort of scam or cult, and they're looking for someone new to take advantage of.

This is why third party presidential candidates should not be trusted so easily, no matter how progressive they're painting themselves up as. Scammers and cult leaders target the marginalized all the time because they know that these are the most vulnerable people, and therefore the easiest to pull into whatever it is they have going on.

Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a conspiracy theorist, and there's a lot that points to Jill Stein being a Russian stooge. I don't know each and every third party presidential candidate out there so I can't tell you what's suspicious or worrying about the rest, but I can say - do not trust people just because they present themselves as the third option and tell you what you want to hear. In fact, that's often all the more reason to be wary, especially if they're often emphasizing how nobody else cares about you or can help you, and makes themself seem like your only choice.

[scrapironflotilla]

the Russians carried fixed bayonets on the march, and this proved a source of danger to mounted men in their neighbourhood, some of whom were blinded by unexpected movements of infantrymen alongside.

christ this is some three stooges shit

[hero-israel]

American Muslims throwing away their vote on pro-Putin Russian-stooge Jill Stein will go down in history as one of the dumbest decisions in coalition-building history:

https://x.com/JewishWonk/status/1833508960600535133

Congratulations, idiots, now you have no place at the table with the Democrats or the Republicans. You're officially politically homeless. And at a time where Islamophobia among the rest of Americans is at 2016-levels, rapidly approaching post-9/11 numbers of Muslim-distrust, broadcasting to everyone that you're willing to risk the well-being of every woman and minority in the country to a second Trump presidency because you're too busy throwing a temper tantrum that Biden won't allow the Arab League to wipe Israel off the map is certainly A Choice.

.

[tomorrowusa]

Right now is the time to get involved in the defeat of America's most dangerous enemy since the Cold War.

The traditional election season, starting on Labor Day, is a thing of the distant political past. And considering the magnitude of the threat to democracy, even waiting for the end of the primary season may be too late.

The worst president in our history is, arguably, stronger within the leadership ranks of the Republican Party than he has ever been. He is now the most dangerous presidential candidate in U.S. history. As a consequence, the great question before the rest of us is whether enough of us are ready to do whatever is necessary to defeat this threat as we have all those that have come before. Sadly, there is reason to believe that this time we may not meet the challenge. Right now, Donald Trump is one of two people who could be our next president. The race, at the moment, between him and President Joe Biden, is too close to call.

The people with their heads up their ass over Biden's age are either hypocrites or dissemblers. On Inauguration Day 2025, Donald Trump will be 95.66% of Joe Biden's age. And Trump will also be older in January of 2025 than Biden was upon assuming office in 2021. Biden may have a lifelong stutter but he is still grounded in reality in a way the narcissistic nepo baby Donald Trump never was.

Joe Biden by any objective metric has been one of the most successful presidents in modern U.S. history. He has led the creation of more major legislative initiatives benefiting the American people than any president in 60 years. He oversaw the creation of more than 14 million jobs during his first three years in office. He has brought down inflation and reduced the prices of vital medicines to affordable levels. He has restored American leadership worldwide, expanded our vital alliances like NATO, and stood up to our enemies. All presidents face challenges and make missteps. But it is hard to deny that in the wake of the U.S. economic recovery, the passage of the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the CHIPs and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, the expansion of NATO, and the creation of new Indo-Pacific alliances, Biden’s record is formidable. That a president with this record is in a horse race with a candidate who is a menace to the country, who led an insurrection, who is a pathological liar whom courts have found to be a fraud and a rapist, and who has no real ideas, no credible policy proposals, no record of actually ever achieving anything for the American people is chilling.

In normal times, over 40% of US voters would NOT pick a notorious sex offender for president. But these are not normal times.

You would have thought that the sight of mobs carrying Trump flags and weapons and chanting for the death of Vice President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021, would have been alarm enough. You would have thought the same of Trump’s Access Hollywood tape, in which he confessed his impulse to abuse women. You would have thought the two dozen women who accused him of abuse would have had that effect. Even if none of those things were quite warning enough, you would have thought the findings in the E. Jean Carroll case would have been enough. After all, respected federal judge Lew Kaplan wrote, “The fact that Mr. Trump sexually abused—indeed, raped—Ms. Carroll has been conclusively established and is binding in this case.” It should have been enough. But so far, it has not been.

And who would have thought that the party of Ronald Reagan is now led by a stooge of the Evil Empire?

You would have thought that Trump reaching out on national television to our Russian adversaries for aid during the 2016 campaign would have been enough. You would have thought the conclusive findings of every major U.S. intelligence agency that Russia sought to aid Trump’s campaign would have been enough. You would have thought that Robert Mueller’s finding 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by Trump would have been enough. You would have thought Trump kowtowing to Vladimir Putin and taking his word over that of our intelligence and law enforcement communities would have been enough. You would have thought his illegally withholding aid to Ukraine to seek dirt on Joe Biden would have been enough. You would have thought his impeachment for that would have been enough.

Are you willing to spend more time and money than in previous election cycles to end a major threat to Western democracy and to undermine homegrown fascism for at least the rest of this decade?

So, ask yourself, is that enough to make you do more than you have done? Is that enough to commit for the next 10 months to do more than you have ever done during an election year? To give more? To canvas more? To spread the word more? To help get voters to the polls? To ensure every member of your family, your friends, your co-workers do the same? The stakes are too high to do less than everything you can.

I rarely quote Margaret Thatcher and would probably disagree with at least 90% of her views. But she did know something about winning elections and combating the USSR. If she was good for just one thing, it's for this observation in a speech made in her retirement.

[N]o battles are ever finally won; you have to go on winning them by example and by being prepared to defend your way of life against those who would attack it.

If we learn just one thing from the Trump threat, it's that we can never rest on our past laurels. A slacker democracy is one which will not outlast a determined demagogue.

Civic involvement by pro-democracy citizens is absolutely necessary to maintain freedom.

[rosered2018]

My Take on the Current Election

Those of you who follow my blog have probably noticed that, while I do reblog political stuff, I rarely comment on it. And I've decided considering what's going on, I need to.

At this point, the Republicans' political platform is anything that appeases Donald Trump's whims and feeds his already massive ego. They have nothing constructive to offer us, and everything they are offering involves taking us back to a point in time where the only people who could have any kind of substantial power were straight white male Protestants.

If Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic candidate, she will blow the Republicans' arguement that their candidate is too old out of the water. Considering that Trump is the same age as Biden was during the 2020 election, she could theoretically turn that arguement back on him, especially considering his apparent mental decline since he left office.

On the Republicans' part, we will now get to see exactly how racist and misogynist they really are. There will be people arguing that she was chosen only because she was black, rather than because of her long record in California politics as a prosecutor and attorney general. There will probably be people wanting to repeal the Civil War Amendments and the 19th Amendment because they don't want a woman - much less a black woman - in the White House. Essentially, it will be the Obama years on steroids.

The Republicans have made it clear what they intend to do to this country if they get even half a chance. You all have to have heard about Project 2025 and what it proposes for this country - gutting social services, elimination of the civil service in favor of putting people personally loyal to Donald Trump in place, elimination of the Department of Education and anything arguing that anyone other than straight white men should have a voice in society, permanently lowering taxes on the stupidly wealthy, and basically turning this country into a Christofascist dictatorship with Donald Trump as the dictator. That's just the bare bones.

And that's on top of what they've already done - overturning Roe v. Wade, overturning affirmative action, gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965, overturning the Chevron doctrine, and granting the president total immunity from prosecution for any "official acts" while he's in office.

Basically, if you like having rights that don't depend on your willingness to swear personal allegiance to a would-be dictator, vote Blue this time around, and keep voting Blue in the future. These people are not going away, and they will not stop until they get what they want.

TL;DR, get up off your asses and vote. If you're not registered, get registered. In some states, you can even do it online. If you don't know if you're registered, check. The website for your secretary of state should have a page where you can do that. The fate of our country literally depends on everyone voting, and every vote does matter. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either an asshole, an idiot, or a Russian stooge.

[pennsyltuckyheathen]

MAGA Corncob Comer continues to show everyone what an ass-kisser and bootlicker he is for #TraitorTrump

Making himself and all MAGA look like idiots and stooges. These 'men' have no integrity and no allegiance to our country and its citizens.

Another "impeachment inquiry" intended to smear Biden backfires on MAGA as they continue to push Russian lies and propaganda.

[mariacallous]

Reflecting the instincts of a cold war veteran, Joe Biden’s strategy was familiar: contain the conflict. When the US president spoke in Warsaw in March 2022, a month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he drew a red line at Vladimir Putin’s toes. “Don’t even think about moving on one single inch of Nato territory,” he warned.

The western allies would provide weapons and aid to Kyiv, impose sweeping economic and financial sanctions on Moscow and reduce the rouble to “rubble”, Biden vowed. Though not a Nato member, the US would help Ukraine win this symbolic battle for freedom and democracy. But it would not directly confront Russia unless Russia first attacked Nato.

Thirty months on, Biden’s containment strategy is failing miserably. Like an untreated cancer, Ukraine’s crisis metastasises uncontrollably. Far from being confined to the mud and ice of the Donbas, the war’s spreading, toxic fallout grows more globally destructive by the day. It contaminates and blights everything it touches. True, a “hot” war between Russia and Nato has been avoided so far. Yet Polish and Romanian territory has been affected by stray missiles and maritime attacks. The entire Black Sea region is embroiled, as is Belarus. Putin claims that the west is already waging war on Russia and threatens it with nuclear weapons. Propagandists vow to vaporise Poland.

The crisis has triggered US-Europe splits in Nato and within the EU. Rows flare over sending troops and long-range missiles to Ukraine, inviting Kyiv to join the alliance, and forging a separate European “defence identity”. France’s newly hawkish stance is cancelled out by German caution.

Neutral Sweden and Finland were panicked into joining Nato. The Baltic republics fear renewed Russian aggression. Hungary and Serbia appease the Kremlin. Italy wavers. No one feels safe.

The war is fuelling right-left political extremism as support surges for Putin’s paid-for populist apologists. In Moldova, last weekend’s EU membership referendum was grossly distorted by what its president, Maia Sandu, called a huge bribery operation by “criminal groups working together with foreign forces” – namely, Kremlin stooges.

Now Moscow is eyeing this weekend’s elections in Georgia where it covertly conspires to ensure pro-western parties lose. Such hybrid warfare – subversion, disinformation, influence operations, cyber-attacks, scams, online trolling – has mushroomed worldwide since 2022, as authoritarian regimes follow Russia’s lead.

Failure to contain the war is encouraging seismic geopolitical shifts, most notably the China-Russia “no-limits” partnership. China’s president, Xi Jinping, gets cheap oil; ostracised Putin gets sanctions-busting dual-use tech plus diplomatic backing. But it’s so much more than that. At last week’s Brics summit – hosted by Putin – Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa were joined by Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela and, alarmingly, Nato member Turkey (among many others). Putin envisages a global anti-western alliance, Xi a post-American, China-led 21st-century new world order.

These are no idle dreams. For many second-tier countries, the west’s condemnation of Russian aggression in Ukraine and its refusal to condemn, and active facilitation of, Israeli aggression in Palestine represents an intolerable double standard. Some are switching sides.

What better illustrates the unbounded nature of this inexorably expanding conflict than the startling news that North Korea, in a breath-taking counterpoint to US and UK military intervention in the Korean war nearly 75 years ago, is deploying troops to the Ukraine theatre?

And how appalling that Donald Trump can cynically use Ukraine’s “forever war” to persuade US voters that Democrats like Kamala Harris cannot control a chaotic world, Nato is a con-trick run by freeloading Europeans and the UN is useless.

The war diverts attention from other grave conflicts, from Sudan to Myanmar. Attacks on Kyiv’s grain exports have caused food shortages and price spikes hurting poorer countries. It disrupts cooperative action on climate; indeed, it has greatly increased greenhouse gas emissions While Putin, indicted for war crimes, goes unpunished, respect for international law and the UN charter plummets. Impunity flourishes.

The war’s enormous economic costs are escalating. The World Bank estimates that the first two years caused $152bn (£117bn) of direct damage in Ukraine. The UN predicts $486bn is needed for recovery and reconstruction. Each day, the totals rise. Meanwhile, Russia constructs shadowy international networks – an officially approved black market – to circumvent sanctions and undermine dollar hegemony.

The cost in lives is heartbreaking. Conservative UN estimates suggest that about 10,000 civilians have been killed and twice that number injured. More than 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers may have died. Russian military casualties are an estimated 115,000 killed and 500,000 wounded. The cost to Russian society of intensifying authoritarianism, corruption and suppression of dissent and free media is immeasurable.

Ukraine has not lost the war, which is a remarkable feat in itself. But it is not winning, either. Western support is weakening, despite the rhetoric; Russian forces advance. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “victory plan” has few takers. Winter is coming.

How much of this could have been prevented? Some developments, such as the China-Russia axis and rising rightwing populism, were happening anyway. The war simply accelerated them. But a lot of the wider damage was avoidable, wholly or in part.

In Warsaw, Biden was candid, almost boastful: back in January 2022, US intelligence knew that the invasion was imminent. He said he had repeatedly warned Putin it would be a big mistake. Yet, given his passionate belief that Ukraine’s fight for democracy and freedom has vital universal significance, surely what Biden should have done is told Russia’s dictator bluntly: “Forget it. Don’t invade. Or else you will find yourself fighting a better-armed, more powerful Nato.”

It’s called deterrence. It’s what Nato is for. Containment was never enough. Putin might still not have listened. But coward that he is, he probably would have – and saved everyone a world of pain.