Open Thread #30
US Elections, Ukraine in Kursk Region/Russians Advance in Donetsk, Iran's Delayed (or Cancelled) Retaliation Strike
It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these………
I’m back from summer vacation and am tanned, rested, and ready to go.
I’ve had requests from people to put up an open thread to allow everyone to discuss the US Elections, and to hear my thoughts on them. To put it bluntly, I can’t muster up any enthusiasm for this campaign for two reasons:
I don’t find Vance or Kamala or Walz interesting at all
I am already looking ahead to what the next administration will be doing and just want this too-long campaign to be over and done with
Maybe it’s a bit of election cycle fatigue, but JD Vance is insurance for Trump (he needs a lot of it after almost being killed) and isn’t all that inspiring. But then again, he’s just a VP pick. To me, Kamala is a cipher without any real political aims beyond taking power. Walz is a dork, and a wholly uninteresting one at that.
Kamala is a default candidate to keep the party together in a time when the bench for the Dems is quite shallow. Newsom is waiting in the wings for 2028, but seemed to express no desire to toss his hat into the ring this year. Trump is Trump, a very known quantity.
It’s not Labour Day yet, so most people aren’t paying attention to politics or the campaign, and we’re kind of in a silly season where the GOP is accusing Team Kamala of communism while the Dems up until the assassination attempt were equating Trump to Hitler. Many of you are much more passionate about this election than I am, which is why I ask you to leave a comment below:
This Ukrainian invasion near Kursk is another major embarrassment for the Russians, even if it is strategically an error on the part of the UAF. We have seen previous incursions onto Russian soil, but this is a major one that is going on two weeks now and doesn’t appear to be collapsing upon itself. The UAF has taken much needed resources away from the Donbass in order to launch this strike for reasons yet unknown to us (I don’t buy the buffer argument, for example). Some are suggesting that this is a feint to draw Russian forces away from a larger strike that is intended to move Ukraine closer to Crimea. Who knows?
At the same time, the Russians are making steady progress towards Pokrovsk, a major command centre and logistics hub for the UAF in Donetsk Region. This is the first major breakout that we have seen in some time, and it all began with the Russian capture of Avdiivka earlier this year.
Sometimes I call them correctly.
Iran (and Hezbollah) are in a very difficult position in that they do not want a full-blown regional war to erupt, but they must save face somehow. Yet any attempt to save face risks escalation that opens the road to a regional war.
Now, back to finishing up the next entry in the Spanish Civil War series (again).
Alright, back to work for me.
The assassination attempt was further proof that the US is not far behind Ukraine as a gangster state. The relative ease with which regime has moved on indicates how very little is left of the old expectations of civility, legality and good order. The big question is how close are we to seeing any kind of civil unrest?