He’s not relying on Ukraine’s allies running out of money, he’s betting that they’ll lose interest and/or vote for pro-Russian stooges before he loses the ability to win the war.

Meanwhile Russia’s spraying the country with a firehose of lies, and illegally funneling money in to influence the election. IIRC Johnson got a hefty campaign donation from Russia, which he had to return when it was noticed.

But no, this is clearly the real outrage. Just because he didn’t endorse any politician or party and didn’t appear with any presidential candidate doesn’t mean that this wasn’t obviously election interference. Just look what he’s doing, reminding people that Ukraine exists and shaking hands with American workers who build the shells that are helping to save his country. What could be more sinister?

For real though, the pro-Putin wing is desperate to spin this story because it clearly shows how full of shit they are when they bitch about spending money on Ukraine instead of keeping it in the US. Supporting Ukraine isn’t just good for upholding the international order, safeguarding allies, and degrading Russia’s capabilities for remarkably little cost, but it’s also supporting domestic manufacturing jobs.

And even if these cruise missiles were completely undetectable, it would still fail unless the strike takes out 100% of the enemy nukes. If even one is able to survive, you risk a nuclear holocaust.

Being able to theoretically wipe our all the enemy nukes without using any of your own is strategically nice to have, but on its own it isn’t enough to negate the threat of a nuclear exchange. At best, it should make your enemy more reluctant to retaliate with a nuclear launch, assuming they realize that they aren’t getting nuked and that a launch would potentially change that.

Redoing the election only takes pressure off Maduro. It’s an empty gesture to appease the opposition for a time, which just gives Maduro room to plan for stealing the next election. And it drags things out for longer, which can easily cause some of the energy to be drained from his opposition, because movements like this tend to fade out after a while.

And what could possibly be the point? If he won’t concede this time, next time won’t be any different.

Better to keep putting as much pressure as possible on Maduro and his regime. No reason to make hanging on to power any easier for him, and even if he can’t be convinced to bow out gracefully, if things get bad enough for him, the decision might not be his to make.

Just logically speaking, a do over makes no sense because it was never the voting process that was in doubt. Both sides agree that the votes were all valid, they just disagree on the count… by a lot.

Well, they disagree about that and the need for any kind of transparency at all. Apparently Maduro thinks that elections should be run on the honor system.

Insert “Why is it always you three” meme here.

France on Sunday took a step closer to delivering what was once seen as an unthinkable nightmare: a far-right government taking power in Paris for the first time.

Well… the first time in a while. And just as the last time was exiting living memory.

Although, if we could do that, we could also just beam the Russians out of the country. And beam Putin and pals into space.

And that’s just the high level corruption. There’s more theft, bribery and fraud at every level. With each step in the procurement process, another chunk of that budget is negated.

Also, at least historically, a lot of Russia’s budget goes to things that aren’t playing a primary role in the fight for Ukraine, like their nuclear arsenal, a lot of their navy, and big R&D projects that produce little more than the appearance of a modern military.

This assumes that they only ever have the names they have now. Call me crazy, but I suspect that immigration policies will probably shift a little at some point in the next 500 years.

Hell, I wouldn’t even be willing to bet that any given country would still be around in it’s current form by then, including Japan.

The really frustrating part is that cheap generic stuff skyrocketed too. Walmart embraced inflation enthusiastically, and their knockoff mountain dew went from $0.62 to $1.70. Supply chain issues I’m sure…

I used to get that stuff 10 bottles at a time, and it was one of the few things that made it worth going there. Now I just get whatever is on sale at the local employee owned grocery chain. The price difference is negligible, almost everything else is cheaper, and I get to support some place that isn’t evil.

If every halfway respectable news outlet sounded the alarm and made Trump’s threats to democracy and the rule of law the dominant story from now until election day, he’d still have 85% of his supporters. Some would be OK with it. Some would say he’s still better than Biden. Most would never see it because they live in a media bubble that tells them what they want to hear. And more than a few would call those stories hit pieces and climb into the bubble to be safe and comfortable.

We do need the media and everyone else to sound the alarm. And even a small shift could be enough to make the difference. But as long a large portion of the population is listening to outlets that unabashedly spew extremist propaganda, we’re going to continue have this problem.