Backstabbing time!

Special Counsel Jack Smith's probe into Donald Trump's mishandling of classified documents has reached the indictment stage, and Trump is losing his mind over being held accountable for his traitorous actions.

Now, we are also seeing the end stages of his other probe into the election interference and attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. This is a much more complex case, with many co-conspirators, and the charges are potentially much more serious. Expect lots of cowardly henchmen who were fooled into conspiring with Trump to flip on him and on each other, and expect feces to be flung every which way.

As for myself, I'm stocking up on popcorn.

Inflation

Citing inflated numbers concerning losses in a war is a common way to paint a pretty picture for propaganda purposes. However, if the lies are too obvious, they tend to backfire. A classic and extreme example is "Baghdad Bob", Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, Information Minister for Saddam Hussein during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Even as American tanks were entering the capital around him, he appeared on live TV and claimed that the enemy was being slaughtered and that Iraq was triumphant on the battlefield.

Vladimir Putin is not far from channelling Baghdad Bob. He claimed that Ukraine has already lost 25 to 35 percent of the tanks sent by its Western allies. This is a heavily inflated number, to the point of being outright silly. The counterattack by Ukraine is still in its early stages, and they have not yet even engaged with more than a small fraction of the tanks available to them. Independent experts assess that the actual numbers are between 1 and 2 percent, which would be a perfectly acceptable and calculated loss.

Ukraine might have engaged 5 percent of their tanks in their initial wide and probing attacks along the entire front, and they might possibly have lost 25 percent of those, but Putin's claim is a desperate overreach in an attempt to deceive and keep up appearances for a little while longer. In his most recent public address, he said nothing about his ongoing war against Ukraine, which is a certain sign that it's all going terribly wrong for him.

Reports of Russian troops holding their ground and putting up a fierce fight are probably true, but other reports of untrained and unmotivated troops abandoning their positions and fleeing in panic are probably also true. The Russian front in Ukraine is not well defended everywhere, and the initial attack from Ukraine is very obviously designed to probe the Russian fortifications all along the front and find the soft spots where the full force of their attack brigades will be most effective. Ukraine has around 60,000 well trained and highly motivated soldiers with a large supply of weaponry, lying in wait and ready to strike. When that strike happens, Putin will no longer be able to pretend that his "special operation" is anything but a huge mistake that has cost Russia dearly and will continue to haunt them for decades.

Vladimir Putin is probably not going to remain in power for much longer. He might not even be able to escape with his life. The damage to Ukraine is horrific, and will require a lot of effort to repair, but the self-inflicted damage to Russia will probably last longer. Putin will go down in history as yet another insane dictator who destroyed his country.

Non-incentives

Russian soldiers are now being promised a bounty for destroying Ukrainian weapons and materiel. Taking out a tank earns you a bonus of around $1,000. It sounds like a joke, but it's true. Disabling a hostile and deadly combat vehicle worth millions of dollars, and getting out of the situation alive, will earn you less than one thousandth of what your feat was "worth" to your employer.

Seriously?

Worst. Incentive. Ever.

Three to One

Vladimir Putin tried to spin his terrain losses in Ukraine as if it involved "devastating losses" of Ukrainian forces and materiel. The problem with his messaging is that he doesn't even try to support his own lies. He bragged about Russia having lost only 54 tanks, while Ukraine lost 160. These numbers are probably heavily inflated, but even if they are true, they do not represent anything abnormal in an attack against fortified positions. It is common to assume that you need an advantage in numbers of three to one to pull off an attack of the kind that Ukraine is now making, and the reason is simple: you must be prepared for significantly higher losses than the people who have had months to dig trenches and fortify their positions. Losing 160 tanks to take out 54 tanks, if the numbers are true, is simply par for the course and a sign of success. The actual numbers are likely a lot less depressing for Ukraine and a lot more dire for Russia, but it's quite telling that by now, not even Putin's lies are bad news for his enemy.

What's more relevant than counting losses is to look at the advances that Ukraine is actually making on the battlefield. They have pierced several long stretches of the front, and sent unprepared and untrained Russian troops fleeing in disarray. In some places the Russian troops retreated through their own mine fields, with lethal result.

Russia is losing. The impact on the position of the front will be slow at first, but the reality on the ground is that after just a couple of days of fighting, Russia is abandoning fortified positions where they have spent months lying in wait, preparing for this attack. The losses are indeed devastating, but not for Ukraine.

Shattered

 "DOJ, FBI, NEW YORK D.A., ATLANTA D.A. FASCISTS ALL."

This is the level of insanity currently seen in the public social media posts from Donald Trump. His mind is shattering from being held accountable for his crimes, and his lawyers are jumping ship. The orange blob once referred to as POTUS (he still insists that his employees call him that) will spend the remainder of his life in disgrace, in court and in prison, and die a broken and forgotten man.

However, we must never forget the damage he did, and how much more damage he could have done if he hadn't been a complete moron. If there is ever another fascist uprising in the US, we might not be so lucky to have it managed by idiots. The system must be better hardened against anti-democratic attacks from within.

Indictments

We are finally at the point where the former pretend president of the United States is going to be indicted for at least some of the many egregious crimes he committed during and immediately after his presidency. One lawsuit concerns his attempts at election interference and the related insurrection on January 6, and another is about his theft and gross mishandling of classified documents.

Both lawsuits are very likely to land him a long prison sentence, and once that starts to sink in with the general public, we will probably be relieved of the media hype about Donald Trump being a candidate for the 2024 election. He is not only senile and in bad health - by election day 2024 he is going to be behind bars for the rest of his pitiful life.

Because these lawsuits against Trump have been kept out of the news cycle for the networks to get more clicks and better ratings (yes, they are that cynical and dishonest), we haven't heard much about the many people who were once Trump's willing henchmen. Such people include most of his cabinet, his legal advisors, his political advisors, his family, and various shady characters with ties to Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. Many of these people have likely cut deals with the prosecution in exchange for leniency, but they are not all going to walk away from this without consequences. Many people besides the trembling orange blob that calls itself Donald Trump (in third person, nonetheless) will go to prison over their role in the failed experiment in racism, bigotry, fascism, evangelical extremism and greed that was the single, horrible presidential term of Donald Trump. And they all deserve it.

For all of you who wondered how some of the horrible people we saw in politics a few years ago could get away with what they did, expect to learn quite soon that they did not, in fact, get away after all. Justice is slow, but it will be served to a lot of human garbage who deserve it. And it will be glorious to watch.

Friendly Fire

The term "friendly fire" is weird, because it's not friendly. People being attacked by weapons wielded by their own side still die. Self-inflicted harm is pretty much the worst thing possible in combat, because it points to incompetence, disarray, or internal conflict. The question is what reasons there are for the mine field which was placed by the Russian army *behind* the Wagner troops, discovered as they were about to leave Bachmut.

It's hard to imagine that these mines were meant to kill Wagner troops. There is no scenario where that would not blow up in Putin's face, figuratively speaking. The explanation that remains is incompetence and panic to the point where one group of Russian combatants has no idea what another group is doing, and where nobody thinks enough to communicate. The fact that Prigosjin accuses Kremlin of malice is telling, however, and it's surprising that he is still allowed to roam free and criticize Putin openly. The internal conflict between Prigosjin and Putin is obvious, and right now it reflects very badly on Putin.