Coffeesforclosers

Trump won't debate unless he absolutely needs to, and nobody can force him to do a debate if he doesn't want to. If DeSantis is banking on that... ... Can you imagine a fencepost like DeSantis holding his own against Chris Christie and Trump at the same time? That and even if Trump is convicted, and he ***** should be, he still wouldn't be barred from office.

He can't though. DeSantis' brand is all MAGA, all culture war, all the time. That's also Trump's brand, and Trump's way better at it. Ron's turning into just another Ivy League suit to be schooled by Trump. He's had years to figure out how to beat the guy, and so far he's got nothing.

I don't. It's France. They've been through three monarchies, two empires, one facist dictatorship and four republics since 1793. They had a communist coup in 1870 and a military coup in the 1960s. They'll sort themselves out or they won't. There's nothing atypical going on.

Huh. Not a single former Patriots player on that list...

Why should we give a ***** if France can't get it's act together?

Huh. This embedded tweet still works. As of about three hours ago, you have yo be logged in to twitter to read or view anything. Even embedded tweets on other websites. Musk is going to do what he does I guess.

Probably is the best answer.

Well, I guess there was something to that video of Chechen fighters cutting the throats of arrested Wagner PMCs after all.

Huh. So Amazon is co-opting the gig economy's work style. Do your friends work there full-time? A couple hours in an Amazon warehouse is the next best thing to a gym membership.

That's insane. UPS Workers are Teamsters, with Teamster protections and Teamster lawyers to fix there traffic problems. Usually though, you used to have to put your time in as package handler before you get a truck. That's overnight, minimum wage work, at least it was when I was there about seven years ago.

What's the "Western Media"? Sounds scary!

Bill Browder has a very entertaining book. He was a corporate raider in Russia right after the fall of the USSR, I believe he made his fortune selling off the USSR's pacific fishing fleet. But he also got in with early anti-Putin dissidents back in the 00s, and watched while they were all packed off to Penal Colonies and murdered. He managed to escape.

It's easy to make everyone out to be a supervillain, or a super genius. Especially when weird things happen that don't make sense on the surface. It's a lot easier to gin up conspiracy theories that connect dots that aren't there with lines of bull####. That way, nobody has to admit they're wrong, or worse, that they aren't in the know.

It actually sounds like Prigozhin sold Wagner to the Russian MoD in exchange for exil and guarantees of his own personal security. Is George RR Martin writing our current timeline? With pointers from the ghost of Tom Clancy?

I'm not gonna give anybody credit for 5D chess moves in this war. But it wouldn't surprise me if that's where Wagner ends up. The Ukraine-Belarus border is massively fortified, and Wagner are the best Russia has at tackling fortifications.

Wow. And it's all over, just like that.

Posobiec programs people into Red vs Blue twitterbrains. Of course he's going to try and turn this into a Red vs. Blue issue.

I watched that that stream. It was informative. I just tuned out whenever Kimdotcom started talking.

Putin was supposed to give a speech half an hour ago. The news is it will be soon. I half expect it to be a take on The Simpsons "Mayor Quimby declares Mob Rule".

Yup. The other thing being posted by the sources in this thread are: there's no video of Wagner columns on the roads, and there's no videos of Russian v Russian combat.

This twitter account has his manifesto. Backtrack through it and you should be able to find it all. Wagner's saying from what I've seen, that this is more a mutiny than a rebellion. Or a military strike, like what happened in France and Germany in 1917-1918. They want grievances addressed, or so they say, then they'll head back to the front. Ukraine's probing Russian lines around Bakhmut with a couple Marine brigades. My guess is they're trying to figure out what's what, and grab anything that's easy to grab. So it could be a rebellion, it could be a mutiny, could end up being a nothingburger. Nobody's talking about ending the war, but there's still a lot left to play out. We've got the luxury of being able to watch and wait.

I found Prigozhin's video manifesto. Basically the high points are: 1. NATO and Ukraine were never planning to attack. 2. Demilitarization and Denazification were propaganda to spoon feed to the Russian public. 3. The war was started because Putin and his cronies wanted land and cash, and the army wanted a short, victorious war.

So yeah. Is anybody keeping tabs on Russia? Supposedly Wagner PMC is launching a rebellion right now.

I generally hate posting tweets, but Musk lets me without having to join twitter. Good for him I guess. Yevgeniy Prigozhin is the founder and commander of Wagner Mercenary group, "Private Military Contractors" for the politically correct. It's his guys that took Soledar and Bakhmut. He gives a quick summary of Ukraine's operations so far. Watch for yourselves, it ain't that long.

Unfortunately, yes.