Climate Change

Go ahead and try to make your case for the fucked up air quality having nothing to do with human activity.

We had begun to isolate

at the front end of the pandemic.

Some very large pieces of the economy

were still cranking along.

Yeah, OK - there's a problem with fires,

and those fires are fucking up the air.

So how come all the fires, genius?

Let The Purge Begin

Keep trying to get a peek behind the curtain.

There's a reason - or many reasons - why Prigozhin's march on Moscow met with practically no resistance, and then halted as abruptly as it started.

I think the big one could be that the Russian general staff have had enough of Putin's little war.

• The longer it goes on, the more they look like the incompetent bozos many of them are
• ...the more it's revealed just how deep the corruption runs
• ...the more damage is done to the overall "prestige" of the Russian military
• ...the more likely it is that whole big bunches of them will be integrated into the Siberian biome

So I think one of the weird little wrinkles is that some commanders told their guys to stand down and not interfere with the Wagner gang.

If that's how it went, it had to come as a very loud and very clear message that Putin and Shoigu are not the only power-holders. Putin has the FSB and GRU, and the reason he keeps Shoigu around is that Shoigu has always been willing to pledge his troth to Putin, using Putin's guys to coerce the military.

Now it looks a whole lot like Shoigu's hold on the Russian military is either badly weakened, or that maybe it's all but gone. And that could mean Putin will have to expend even greater time and effort to keep people in line and to re-establish the illusion of his omnipotence.

Like I've said - nobody knows what all is going on, including me.

Russian General Knew About Mercenary Chief’s Rebellion Plans, U.S. Officials Say

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, may have believed he had support in Russia’s military.

A senior Russian general had advance knowledge of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to rebel against Russia’s military leadership, according to U.S. officials briefed on American intelligence on the matter, which has prompted questions about what support the mercenary leader had inside the top ranks.

The officials said they are trying to learn if Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the former top Russian commander in Ukraine, helped plan Mr. Prigozhin’s actions last weekend, which posed the most dramatic threat to President Vladimir V. Putin in his 23 years in power.

General Surovikin is a respected military leader who helped shore up defenses across the battle lines after Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year, analysts say. He was replaced as the top commander in January but retained influence in running war operations and remains popular among the troops.

American officials also said there are signs that other Russian generals may also have supported Mr. Prigozhin’s attempt to change the leadership of the Defense Ministry by force. Current and former U.S. officials said Mr. Prigozhin would not have launched his uprising unless he believed that others in positions of power would come to his aid.

If General Surovikin was involved in last weekend’s events, it would be the latest sign of the infighting that has characterized Russia’s military leadership since the start of Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine and could signal a wider fracture between supporters of Mr. Prigozhin and Mr. Putin’s two senior military advisers: Sergei K. Shoigu, the minister of defense, and Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of general staff.

But the infighting could also define the Russian military’s future on the battlefield in Ukraine, as Western-backed troops push a new counteroffensive that is meant to try to win back territory seized by Moscow.

Mr. Putin must now decide, officials say, whether he believes that General Surovikin helped Mr. Prigozhin and how he should respond.

What happens next? In their first remarks since the revolt ended, Putin tried to project unity and stability as questions swirled about his grip on power, while Prigozhin claimed he wasn’t trying to overthrow the Russian president. With Wagner’s future in doubt, it is unclear if the mercenary army will still be a fighting force in Ukraine.

On Tuesday, the Russian domestic intelligence agency said that it was dropping “armed mutiny” criminal charges against Mr. Prigozhin and members of his force. But if Mr. Putin finds evidence General Surovikin more directly helped Mr. Prigozhin, he will have little choice but to remove him from his command, officials and analysts say.

Some former officials say Mr. Putin could decide to keep General Surovikin, if he concludes he had some knowledge of what Mr. Prigozhin had planned but did not aid him. For now, analysts said, Mr. Putin seems intent on pinning the mutiny solely on Mr. Prigozhin.

“Putin is reluctant to change people,” said Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “But if the secret service puts files on Putin’s desk and if some files implicate Surovikin, it may change.”

Senior American officials suggest that an alliance between General Surovikin and Mr. Prigozhin could explain why Mr. Prigozhin is still alive, despite seizing a major Russian military hub and ordering an armed march on Moscow.

American officials and others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. They emphasized that much of what the United States and its allies know is preliminary. U.S. officials have avoided discussing the rebellion publicly, out of fear of feeding Mr. Putin’s narrative that the unrest was orchestrated by the West.

Still, American officials have an interest in pushing out information that undermines the standing of General Surovikin, whom they view as more competent and more ruthless than other members of the command. His removal would undoubtedly benefit Ukraine.

The Russian Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

General Surovikin spoke out against the rebellion as it became public on Friday, in a video that urged Russian troops in Ukraine to maintain their positions and not join the uprising.

“I urge you to stop,” General Surovikin said in a message posted on Telegram. “The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to worsen in our country.”

But one former official called that message akin to “a hostage video.” General Surovikin’s body language suggested he was uncomfortable denouncing a former ally, one who shared his view of the Russian military leadership, the former official said.

There were other signs of divided loyalties in the top ranks. Another Russian general — Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev — made his own video appeal, calling any actions against the Russian state a “stab in the back of the country and president.” But hours later, he surfaced in another video, chatting with Mr. Prigozhin in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, where Wagner fighters seized military facilities.

“There were just too many weird things that happened that, in my mind, suggest there was collusion that we have not figured out yet,” Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said in a phone interview.

“Think of how easy it was to take Rostov,” Mr. McFaul said. “There are armed guards everywhere in Russia, and suddenly, there’s no one around to do anything?”

Independent experts, and U.S. and allied officials said that Mr. Prigozhin seemed to believe that large parts of Russia’s army would rally to his side as his convoy of 8,000 Wagner forces moved on Moscow.

Former officials said General Surovikin did not support pushing Mr. Putin from power but appears to have agreed with Mr. Prigozhin that Mr. Shoigu and General Gerasimov needed to be relieved of duty.

“Surovikin is a decorated general with a complex history,” said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. “He is said to be respected by the soldiers and viewed as competent.”

General Surovikin and Mr. Prigozhin have both brushed up against Mr. Shoigu and General Gerasimov over tactics used in Ukraine. While the Russian military’s overall performance in the war has been widely derided as underwhelming, analysts have credited General Surovikin and Mr. Prigozhin for Russia’s few successes.

In General Surovikin’s case, that limited success was the professionally managed withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson, where they were nearly encircled last fall and cut off from supplies. Based on communications intercepts, U.S. officials concluded that a frustrated General Surovikin represented a hard-line faction of generals intent on using the toughest tactics against Ukrainians.

Similarly, Mr. Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries achieved some success in taking the eastern city of Bakhmut after a nine-month slog in which, by Mr. Prigozhin’s own count, some 20,000 Wagner troops were killed. U.S. officials and military analysts say tens of thousands of troops died in the fight for Bakhmut, among them Wagner soldiers who were former convicts with little training before they were sent to war. Mr. Prigozhin frequently complained that senior Russian defense and military officials were not supplying his troops with enough weapons.

Russia’s entire military campaign in Ukraine has been characterized by a musical chairs of changing generals. Last fall, when General Surovikin was put in charge of the Russian Army’s effort in Ukraine, he was the second man to get the job, replacing a general who had lasted barely a month. General Surovikin did not last much longer, but performed far better during his weeks at the helm.

Nevertheless, by January, General Surovikin was demoted, and Mr. Putin handed direct command of the war to General Gerasimov, who promised to put Russian forces back on the offensive. General Surovikin’s demotion, military and Russia analysts say, was widely viewed as a blow to Mr. Prigozhin.



This Peter Zeihan guy gets a lot right. He indulges himself in his own hype sometimes, but he's a smart guy and knows some real stuff.

Curiouser

Two small men with a large problem

If you believe a Putin stooge like Lukashenko stepped up and became the key figure in a potentially world-changing series of events - still roiling and nowhere near played out yet - then you have to believe Putin either stood aside and let one of his flunkies take the spotlight, or you have to see Putin as a weak-sister paper tiger who is not actually running the show in Moscow.

But there's a third probability too. And a fourth, and a fifth, and a thirty-seventh - cuz nobody knows jack shit what's really going on or what's going to happen until it happens. We're all just passive observers.

One thing that comes to mind is that Putin doesn't have the strangle hold on the Kremlin we thought he had, and his "magnanimous gesture" is a way for him to calm things down a bit - to buy himself a little time - to get people thinking, "Maybe the Russians aren't quite the maniacs they've been showing us they are. Look, Putin is being all generous and cooperative and shit. Let's all just cool out and see if we can get back to business..."

I'm not saying Putin is playing the game at a level we can't even imagine. He's not. He's a guy who made some really fucked up decisions, tried to bull his way through when the plan blew up, and now he's in a desperate scramble to make it look like he's still got a good handle on everything so he can avoid "retiring to his dacha for a much-needed and well-deserved rest".

One last point:

I don't want to underestimate the guy, but Lukashenko? Seriously?

Lukashenko claims he persuaded Putin not to kill Wagner boss Prigozhin

RIGA, Latvia — When Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko tried to convince Yevgeniy Prigozhin to call off his rebellion against Moscow, the mercenary boss was “half-crazed,” Lukashenko said, pouring out obscenities for half an hour — and unaware, perhaps, that his life was at risk.

The swearing in their phone conversation Saturday “was 10 times more than normal,” Lukashenko said in remarkably frank comments during a meeting Tuesday with his generals. He claimed to have stopped Russian President Vladimir Putin from making a “harsh decision” — a suggestion that Putin planned to kill the Wagner Group chief. Lukashenko’s comments were published by Belarusian state media.

Prigozhin said he wanted to speak to Putin, Lukashenko said, and demanded that frequent targets of his ire — Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff — be handed over to him. That wasn’t going to happen, Lukashenko said.

Lukashenko, perhaps improbably, played a central role in brokering the deal between Putin and Prigozhin that led to the enraged mercenary boss diverting a column of fighters that were advancing on Moscow with surprisingly little resistance. Putin, in exchange, agreed to drop insurgency charges against Prigozhin and to allow him and Wagner to move to neighboring Belarus, all but a client state of Moscow.

Putin also allowed Prigozhin to leave Russia alive — a point that seemed uncertain until Lukashenko on Tuesday confirmed that the mercenary chief had arrived by private plane in Belarus.

Lukashenko’s version of events could not be verified. He is widely viewed as a dictator and an abuser of civil, human and political rights. The president of Belarus since 1994 claimed reelection most recently in a 2020 vote widely viewed as fraudulent, igniting months of protests that were brutally repressed. And he’s known for making aggrandizing, far-fetched and at times bizarre statements.

In September 2020, for instance, Lukashenko claimed that reports of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny being poisoned were falsified. He released a transcript of what he said was a conversation between a Polish intelligence officer named “Mike” and a German agent named “Nick” intercepted by Belarus that confirmed the fraud. Angela Merkel, then German chancellor, announced the findings of a German military laboratory that Navalny was poisoned with chemical weapon personally.

But however checkered Lukashenko’s reputation, the Kremlin confirmed that he was a central figure in the deal. And in his remarks on Tuesday, Lukashenko described conversations with Putin and Prigozhin in unusually granular terms.

While speaking with Putin on Saturday morning, Lukashenko said, he concluded that the Russian president planned to “whack” Prigozhin. He said he convinced Putin that while that option was theoretically available, it risked causing major bloodshed.

“I say, ‘Don’t do this, because then there will be no negotiations,’” Lukashenko said.

Wagner fighters, the Belarusian president said Tuesday, are battle-hardened and “will do anything — these guys know how to stand up for each other.”

“And this is the most trained unit in the army,” he said. “Who will argue with this?” If Putin had taken harsh action against Prigozhin, he said, thousands of civilians and Russian forces would die in the conflict.

Lukashenko’s detailed account of sensitive conversations at the heart of the greatest crisis of Putin’s career was highly unusual. He conveyed the sense of a warm relationship with Putin, who he said addressed him as “Sasha,” a diminutive of Alexander.

At the same time, he offered a complimentary assessment of Prigozhin at a moment when senior Russian officials are trying to sully his reputation.

“Who is Prigozhin?” Lukashenko asked, and answered: “He is a very authoritative person today in the armed forces. No matter how much some would not like it.”

Lukashenko said he had received alarming reports about Prigozhin’s mutiny when he was informed through links between the Belarusian KGB and Russia’s Federal Security Service that Putin wanted to speak. When they talked shortly after 10 a.m., he said, he realized Putin was planning tough action and urged him to wait until Lukashenko had spoken to Wagner.

“The most dangerous thing, as I understood it, was not what the situation was, but how it could develop and its consequences,” Lukashenko said.

“I suggested that Putin take his time,” he said, but the Russian president responded: “Listen, Sasha, there’s no point. He doesn’t even pick up the phone. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

In Lukashenko’s telling, he succeeded in persuading Putin to wait until he reached Prigozhin in Rostov-on-Don, the city in southern Russia where Wagner fighters had seized control of an important military headquarters and airfield.

“A bad peace is better than any war,” Lukashenko said he told Putin. “Do not rush. I will try to contact him.”

“He once again says, ‘It’s useless.’ I say, ‘Okay, wait.’”

Putin also discussed the war in Ukraine, Lukashenko said, claiming that it was proceeding “better than before.”

“I say, ‘You see, not everything is so sad,’” Lukashenko said.

Lukashenko and Prigozhin spoke at 11 a.m., Lukashenko said.

Wagner’s commanders, who had just come from the front in Ukraine, were upset that so many fighters had been killed in the war, Lukashenko said. Prigozhin said some in Russia’s military wanted to “strangle” Wagner. Prigozhin has publicly accused Shoigu of trying to destroy the mercenary group.

“The guys are very offended, especially the commanders. And, as I understand it, they greatly influenced … Prigozhin himself,” Lukashenko said. “Yes, he is such, you know, a heroic guy, but he was pressured and influenced by those who led the assault squads and saw these deaths.”

He said Prigozhin denied that Wagner had killed any Russian service members on the way to Rostov-on-Don — contradicting claims Prigozhin made earlier Saturday on camera to Yunus-bek Yevkurov, when he said Wagner shot down three Russian military helicopters because they had fired at the mercenaries.

Lukashenko said he believed Prigozhin’s assertion that Wagner had not yet killed any Russian service members or civilians. He asked what he wanted.

“Let them give me Shoigu and Gerasimov. And I need to meet Putin,'” Lukashenko said Prigozhin told him.

“I say, ‘Zhenya [the diminutive for Yevgeniy], no one will give you either Shoigu or Gerasimov, especially in this situation,’” he said. “You know Putin as well as I do. Secondly, he will not only not meet with you. He will not talk to you on the phone due to this situation.”

Prigozhin was silent at first, Lukashenko said, but then burst out: “But we want justice! They want to strangle us! We’ll go to Moscow!”

“I say, ‘Halfway there you’ll just be crushed like a bug.’”

“‘Think about it, I say.”

“No,” Prigozhin responded.

“I spent a long time persuading him,” Lukashenko said. He told Prigozhin that he could do whatever he wanted but Moscow would be defended, he said.

When Prigozhin complained about how hard his men had fought, Lukashenko said he soothed him: “I know.”

The conflict, Lukashenko said, was caused by unhealthy competition between Wagner and the military. “An interpersonal conflict between famous people escalated into this fight.”

Today's Tweet

Okay, look, I was an NCAA Div1 student-athlete — I respect physical fitness.

But I don’t choose Presidents based on pushups or pectorals, any more than I’d choose my quarterback based on his economic policies. 🙄

Can everyone STOP BEING STUPID, please?!#VoteBlue #Biden2024 pic.twitter.com/zxs0v6pVZM

— Mindful Primate (@MichellesDude) June 27, 2023

Today's Wingnut

I'm not a racist, but ...

I'm not a misogynist, but ...

We're not creating a theocracy, but ...

Russian Leadership

There has to be more and better people who keep the joint running - as well or as badly as it does.

But let's take a look at the guys at or near the top of the power pyramid as it stands now.

Putin, of course, was a career KGB apparatchik, who cut his teeth on small-time scams in Leningrad, figuring out how best to steal from Russian citizens, and beating up the ones who squawked about it. He's done pretty well for himself, becoming quite possibly the richest man in the world (before his stupid little war anyway). 

Prigozhin (The Butcher Of Bakhmut) is the kind of guy who throws his people into the meat grinder with scant training, no real tactical leadership, and precious little ammo - shooting the ones who are caught retreating - and then angrily rants and raves about "needless casualties", blaming Shoigu and Gerasimov.

Lovely fellow.

And then there's this little beauty:

Dmitry Utkin

Mr Utkin is a co-founder of Wagner, and basically Prigozhin's main guy. Utkin named the gang "Wagner" because Richard Wagner was Adolph Hitler's favorite composer.

Quite a guy.

If Putin is Overthrown, These Five People Could Replace Him

As Russian President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine falters eight months into the conflict, speculation is growing about who could replace the Russian leader should he be overthrown.

The Russian president, who turned 70 on October 7, failed to achieve the swift victory he sought to secure when he announced a special military operation on February 24.

Months later, Ukraine is recapturing swathes of its territory in the south and northeast.

The setbacks have sparked rare displays of criticism among his top allies, including Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, and Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Russian mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, while Ukrainian intelligence has alluded to a possible coup within his military.

Prominent Kremlin officials have been tapped as would-be candidates, as independent Russian outlet Meduza reported that Kremlin insiders are privately discussing a list of potential successors in the event Putin is ousted over Ukraine war.

Dmitry Medvedev

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman and former President Dmitry Medvedev grimases during a meeting on the military-industrial complex at the Kremlin, September 20, 2022, in Moscow, Russia.

The former Russian president, ex-prime minister, and deputy chair of the Security Council is one of a number of potential successors being discussed by Kremlin officials.

The 57-year-old has been extremely vocal throughout the war, making over-the-top, hardline comments on foreign policy issues, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a U.S. think tank, assessed.

On Monday, Medvedev landed himself on Kyiv's wanted list.

Ukraine's SBU security service said he was wanted under a section of the criminal code dealing with attempts to undermine Ukraine's territorial integrity and the inviolability of its borders.

Sergey Kiriyenko

The 60-year-old is the first deputy chief of staff of Putin's office, and he has been credited with launching Putin's career by handing him the top job at Kremlin's principal security agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Kiriyenko is now in charge of overseeing and administering the annexation of Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, a task that comes as the international community decries referendums held in the areas as illegitimate.

"He's constantly in the public eye and says what the president likes [to hear]," a Kremlin source told Meduza.

Dmitry and Nikolai Patrushev

Dmitry Patrushev, Russia's agriculture minister, is son of Russia's head of Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev. The pair's names have been mentioned as potential successors.

Stephen Hall, lecturer in politics at the University of Bath, told Newsweek that the Kremlin have been talking about the pair "for a very long time."

"Nikolai Patrushev has been very good in the past of manipulating what is necessary, and he's very good at playing all sides off and retaining his power. So it is strongly possible [that he could succeed Putin]," Hall said.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who served as head of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 to 2004, also said in July that Nikolai Patrushev, a longtime Putin ally, is the most likely candidate.

Prigozhin (see above), founder of the Wagner Group, has made headlines in recent weeks for publicly ridiculing Putin's military amid a series of successful counteroffensives conducted by Kyiv in Ukraine's south and northeast.

Hall, responding to Russian military expert Oleg Zhdanov's assessment that Prigozhin could turn on Putin, said he may "go behind the scenes as it were, as a puppet master."

Prigozhin could also insert Medvedev as a puppet president while he acts behind the scenes, Hall said.

"We're seeing this possibly, he's got his own paramilitary group, the Wagner Group, and they are a law unto themselves, because he does have a problem, constitutionally and of course, the Constitution can be changed. No one with a criminal record can be president," Hall said.

Could Putin Be Overthrown?

Political commentators are mixed on whether the Kremlin chief will be ousted over his handling of the Ukraine war.

Kasia Kaczmarska, lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Edinburgh, told Newsweek she still sees Putin as "relatively secure" in his 22-year reign.

"I don't think any individual from within the regime is capable of taking on Putin. His allies would have to join forces to challenge his leadership," she said.

"However, continuous and ever louder disputes between the state structures and Putin's client networks hinder the emergence of an anti-Putin coalition."

Florea assessed that if Russia were to lose the eastern Donbas region and/or Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, the prospects for regime change will be much higher.

"With such sweeping battlefield losses, Putin will likely find himself in the position of ordering a large-scale military mobilization which is likely to attract the ire of the large, urban Russian population," he said.

Large-scale mobilization will likely plunge the country into a severe economic crisis, will likely lead to broad discontent and public upheaval, and, ultimately, defections from the regime itself and the periphery—the regional governors who have so far largely remained loyal to Putin—Florea argued.

"Under these circumstances, the power struggle inside the Kremlin will likely intensify," he added.

Today's Keith

People who are prob'ly likely hopefully totally fucked:

• Jenna Ellis
• Rudy Giuliani
• Jeff Clark
• Sidney Powell
• Michael Roman

And also too:

Pro-RFK Jr. Super PAC Has Deep Ties to Marjorie Taylor Greene, George Santos

The Super PAC is just one example of the nominally Democratic candidate running a campaign that's awash in support from backers of Donald Trump

LAST MONTH, SUPPORTERS of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential bid created a Super PAC titled Heal the Divide. On its website, the group — whose name is borrowed from Kennedy’s own campaign slogan — advises voters that “Only Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can unite the Nation to start healing America,” and allows visitors to donate both in dollars and cryptocurrency.

There’s nothing abnormal about a candidate getting a Super PAC, even a candidate making a long-shot bid like Kennedy’s. What is abnormal, however, is that Kennedy is running as a Democrat in the Democratic primary, while the creators of the Super PAC have a deeply pro-Donald Trump bent — including ties to arch-MAGA officials such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, George Santos, and Herschel Walker.

Federal Election Commission filings list Jason D. Boles of RTA Strategy as its treasurer and use RTA’s website and mailing address. In 2022, Greene’s campaign and leadership PAC, Save America Stop Socialism, paid the firm more than $372,000 for work on her 2022 congressional race, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets.

The Georgia-based RTA, founded by political consultant Rick Thompson, also worked for Walker in his failed 2022 Senate race in Georgia. Thompson served as custodian for Walker’s campaign committee and Boles worked as treasurer of the committee, earning the firm roughly $50,000, according to campaign-finance records. More recently, Boles and Thompson have signed on as treasurer and designated agent, respectively, for the embattled Santos after the indicted congressman struggled to find personnel to handle his campaign finances. 

Reached by phone, Thompson declined to comment on the Kennedy Super PAC. “We have a strict policy at our firm that we don’t discuss our clients,” he tells Rolling Stone. And the Heal the Divide site does not advertise its Republican backing. But a mistake on the group’s website gives away its origins: The site’s terms of service appear to have been copied and pasted from MAGA PAC, a Trump Super PAC, and incorrectly refers to the Heal the Divide site as MAGApac.com. 

It’s not just one MAGAfied Super PAC, however, that’s backing Kennedy’s run against President Biden in the Democratic primary. His bid is awash in support from Donald Trump’s allies in MAGA World, conservative media, and some of the Republican-donor elite. Broadly, they’re hoping Kennedy will make Biden look weak in the primary, hurting his chances against Trump — or whichever candidate emerges from the GOP primary.

MAGA influencers and longtime Trump associates such as Roger Stone have praised Kennedy’s candidacy as a way to “soften Joe Biden up.” Former top Trump political adviser and campaign strategist Steve Bannon also reportedly spent “months” encouraging Kennedy to run in order to energize anti-vaxxers who make up much of Trump’s base, according to CBS News.

Kennedy’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the candidate has denied that he’s effectively aimed at torpedoing Biden. He has at times criticized Trump, while also praising the former president on things like his draw among middle-class voters. And he has consistently attacked Biden on foreign policy and other subjects. “Our internal poll numbers are showing me stronger against both Republican candidates than President Biden,” Kennedy claimed to Fox News host Harris Faulkner early this month. “Democrats are going to want somebody who can beat Governor DeSantis and who can beat President Trump.”

But whether he wants pro-Trump support or not — he’s certainly getting it.

At Fox News, three staffers and a producer tell Rolling Stone that some higher-ups have privately discussed how much they value not just interviewing Kennedy on the network, but featuring segment after segment about his candidacy and his unexpected poll numbers in the 2024 Democratic field. “Management loves RFK [Jr.] coverage because it makes Biden look weak. You can expect a lot of it,” the Fox producer says.

 

Before Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox in April, the network’s then-top host would promote Kennedy and argue that the candidate somehow wasn’t an extremist. “So, at this point, the question isn’t who in public life is corrupt? Too many to count. The question is, who is telling the truth? There are not many of those. One of them is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Carlson said on Fox earlier this year.

In the time since, other hosts have praised or interviewed Kennedy, though some not quite as sympathetically as Carlson once did. Still, Kennedy has continued to enjoy a wellspring of backing from influential right-wing media outlets, including among the top tier at Fox. 

Pete Hegseth, another Fox News host who, like Carlson, has privately advised Donald Trump on policy over the years, defended Kennedy in an April segment, saying: “The establishment will do whatever it takes to keep Biden in the White House. You know that. He’s very useful to them.… The deep state gets deeper every day. They work quietly while Joe does other things. They’re already trying to kneecap Joe’s primary opponents. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — he’s surging in the polls.… Now that he’s a threat, [the mainstream media is] going for his throat.”

Meanwhile, Trump and some of his senior aides have delighted in Kennedy’s presence in the 2024 race, viewing him as a useful anti-Biden agent of chaos, according to three sources on and close to the Trump campaign. The ex-president and 2024 GOP front-runner briefly praised Kennedy during this month’s interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, while getting his name wrong, calling Kennedy “very nice” and a “very, very fine person” who Trump knows “very well.”

Members of Trump’s team are also pushing the message that Kennedy’s candidacy is a sign of Biden’s weakness. “The fact is, President Biden is a very weak incumbent. He’s just fortunate more opponents have not entered the primary. Ironically, the last time America had a failed Democratic incumbent president, Ted Kennedy ran against Jimmy Carter. Now, Robert Kennedy Jr. is running against Joe Biden,” says John McLaughlin, one of Trump’s top pollsters. “RFK Jr. is on a mission, and Joe Biden is weak and vulnerable. His poll numbers are extremely soft.”

Wealthy right-wing donors and activist groups have also pitched in to support and amplify the long-shot presidential campaign. 

David Sacks, the South African-born venture capitalist who has donated to Ron DeSantis’ gubernatorial campaign and hosted his campaign launch on Twitter, recently held a fundraiser for Kennedy last week. He was joined by fellow venture-capital investor Chamath Palihapitiya. The event included “Democrats, Republicans, and Independents,” according to Palihapitiya.

The far-right anti-gay group Moms for Liberty has also scheduled Kennedy to speak at its annual summit in Philadelphia next week. In advertising the summit, the group leads with a quote from conservative 2016 presidential-primary candidate Ben Carson: “A lot of individuals in the room have decided to get up and do something about what they believe because that is what is going to save us as a nation.”

Kennedy’s claim that he’s running to defeat Trump contrasts with his stance when the 45th president was first heading to the White House. During the Obama-Trump presidential transition in January 2017, Kennedy visited the then-president-elect at Trump Tower in Manhattan — for a job interview.

According to a former senior Trump transition official, Kennedy “wanted to have some kind of role in vaccine research and the questions he raised about the safety of the vaccines,” and had been following some of what Trump had been saying about vaccines, including regarding the widely debunked theories about links to autism. Just after Kennedy left this meeting, Trump said to staff, “Oh, he’s gonna help us with vaccines,” according to the former official. (Kennedy in 2005 popularized some of his anti-vaccine rhetoric in a since-debunked article in Rolling Stone. He has recently attacked the publication, falsely claiming editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman somehow played a hand in the story’s retraction in 2011 and subsequent removal from its website. Shachtman began his tenure in 2021.)

Kennedy’s senior role on so-called “vaccine safety” never happened in Trump’s four years in office. Several of Trump’s closest advisers during the transition and early administration urged him never to appoint Kennedy to that kind of position, arguing that Kennedy had too much baggage and would be too much of a public-relations nightmare for the young presidency, former White House aides say. “It took longer to talk him out of it than it should have,” says a former senior administration official, who recalls trying to talk Trump out of officially appointing Kennedy in the Oval Office. But ultimately, Trump got talked out of it. In the years since, Kennedy has publicly trashed Trump for helping to launch the “tyranny” of Covid-19 vaccination. 

The 2024 campaign is far from the first time that Kennedy has rubbed elbows with MAGA donors. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Kennedy’s political ecosystem often tilted to the fringes of the left, capitalizing on liberal skepticism of large pharmaceutical companies. But as Trump pushed Covid-19 myths and attacked public-health experts in 2020, the far-right swelled the ranks of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists and offered Kennedy a new audience.

In particular, Kennedy has courted Ty and Charlene Bollinger, two pro-Trump political activists who held a rally outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 to promote Trump’s lies about a stolen election. The couple, labeled as members of the “Disinformation Dozen” for their prominence in posting vaccine myths on social media, have featured Kenendy in an interview on their United Medical Freedom Super PAC, and as a speaker at their Truth About Cancer Live anti-vaccine conference alongside Eric Trump.

David and Leila Centner, two big-dollar donors who forked over $1 million for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign and attended the former president’s Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally on the mall, also briefly served on the board of Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense nonprofit.

But for all of the support and hype from the right wing, Kennedy polls at 14 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics polling aggregator, 50 points behind Biden’s 64 percent average. 

Russia

For me, the big takeaway on this one is that when you put real pressure on Putin, he dives for cover behind his negotiators, and his first move will likely be to buy you off.

Bluff-n-Bluster. But then the problem is: If Putin is exposed as a paper tiger, who's going to step up to take his place? And will that guy be more reasonable and easier to deal with, or will he be determined to show everybody what a hard-ass he can be because that Putin guy turned out to be such a total pussy?

It would seem Mr Putin isn't able to impose his will with anywhere near the certainty everybody (including me) had thought - not anymore anyway.

One other little detail that popped up in the last coupla days: Russian cops raided Prigozhin's HQ in St Petersburg, finding some gold bullion, several passports with aliases, and more than $40M in cash. Now that's probably just one of his bug-out stashes, so maybe it's not that big a deal, but it's not something you leave behind to throw off the bloodhounds either. Mr Prigozhin's exit seems to have been quite a bit more frenzied than I had thought.

If this follows the usual pattern, it's bound to be an Either-or-Neither proposition.

Dictators can't operate for long with a viable - and very popular - challenger waiting in the wings, so Mr Prigozhin is a prime candidate for Peter Pan lessons in the relatively near future.

But Putin has been shown up as having a potentially fatal flaw.

So the "smart play" is to wait for (and to help) Putin as he tries to snuff Prigozhin, then move against Putin - possibly using Putin's "illegal" elimination of the heroic Wagner leader as pretext.

To be sure, I DON'T KNOW - and nobody else knows either. I'm just Magic-Eight-Ballin' here.

Officials question whether truce will hold in Kremlin, Wagner standoff

Many are watching to see if Vladimir Putin sacks his military leadership — and if Yevgeniy Prigozhin remains quietly in exile

As the dust settled on the most serious challenge in decades to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority, Washington and its allies struggled to make sense of a head-spinning series of historic events that saw mercenary forces race up a highway to within 120 miles of Moscow on Saturday, then abruptly turn back after their leader, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, agreed to stand down and go to Belarus for an uncertain exile.

On Sunday, intelligence officials and diplomats — unsure if they had just witnessed an aborted coup or a thwarted mutiny — were left to parse official Kremlin statements and re-watch blurry videos posted on Telegram, the social network that Prigozhin has used to try to convince the Russian people that the war in Ukraine has been a strategic disaster led by incompetent commanders and political sycophants.

Publicly, U.S. officials have highlighted the possible benefits to Ukraine from the chaos in Russia. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that the brief Wagner revolt, and how it was ultimately if tentatively resolved, showed “cracks in the facade” of Putin’s authoritarian leadership.

“Think about it this way: 16 months ago, Russian forces were on the doorstep of Kyiv in Ukraine, believing they would take the capital in a matter of days and erase the country from the map as an independent country. Now, what we’ve seen is Russia having to defend Moscow, its capital, against mercenaries of [Putin’s] own making,” Blinken said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”

“Certainly, we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead,” Blinken added.

Officials in the United States and around Europe said they were unsure of what comes next and were concerned about the instability that could follow an effort by Putin’s rivals, including Prigozhin, to unseat the president at a vulnerable moment.

High on the list of questions policymakers are now putting to their intelligence analysts is whether Prigozhin has managed to shake the foundations of the Kremlin so strongly that Putin will feel compelled to sack top generals or ministers leading the war, as Prigozhin has repeatedly demanded.

Putin rules by showing strength. Russia’s crisis exposed his weakness.

More immediately, though, there’s another question: What just happened? One minute, Prigozhin had taken over a key military headquarters in the south running Russia’s war machine in Ukraine. The next, he had agreed to a truce brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who’s more accustomed to playing second fiddle to Putin than intervening between warring factions.

“Why did it calm down so quickly, and how come Putin’s puppet Lukashenko got the credit?” asked one senior European diplomat, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. “What impact will it have on Russia’s defenses, and are there going to be any personnel changes in the military leadership?”

Western officials also were unsure about what terms had been reached between Putin and Prigozhin to end the rebellion, and whether the peace would hold.

One Western intelligence official was skeptical that Prigozhin would remain quietly in Belarus, echoing speculation that he will either be killed or will continue to challenge Russia’s military establishment from abroad.

Watching the Wagner column head toward Moscow on Saturday, the official had predicted that Russian troops were unlikely to put up much resistance if they had been persuaded by his arguments that military leaders were to blame for the disastrous war. Prigozhin had said on social media that the Russian public hadn’t been told the truth about the setbacks in Ukraine, including about the extraordinarily high number of dead Russian troops. U.S. military figures have estimated casualties in the hundreds of thousands.

Bob Seely, a member of British Parliament who serves on the foreign affairs committee that has been investigating Wagner for two years, wondered if Putin feared his own military might not carry out his orders to stop Wagner forces from entering the capital. Earlier on Saturday, before the truce, Putin had described the Wagner fighters as traitors during a televised address to the nation.

“Would Putin have been able to order a lethal airstrike?” Seely asked. “Could Putin have actually killed Prigozhin on route? Or was it so bad for Putin that he couldn’t,” meaning that his grip on power was too tenuous? If Putin demanded that Russian forces attack and the answer was no, Seely said, “then Putin was in a desperate stage.”

“I can’t see this peace lasting,” Seely added, “because either Prigozhin is unstable and will continue to attack and seek to finish Putin off, or Putin will silence him in some way — financially, politically or physically.”

Yevgeniy Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group on a street in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on Saturday, seen leaving an area of the headquarters of the Southern Military District. (AP)
A Ukrainian intelligence official, who was likewise unsure why Prigozhin had stood down, saw signs that the mercenary leader may not have been confident in his prospects.

“I think he miscalculated in his expectations of military support,” the Ukrainian official said, taking a different view than some of his European counterparts. The revolt Prigozhin may have hoped for in Moscow failed to materialize, the official noted.

He added that there were indications Prigozhin may even have tried to phone Putin directly but received no answer. This sent a “very strong signal” to Prigozhin, the Ukrainian official believes: Putin would not simply acquiesce to his demands.

Another senior European diplomat said that allies hope to understand what Putin will do domestically in response to the unrest, especially with respect to any next steps in the stalemate on the Ukraine war front. The diplomat joked that even as Ukraine’s Western backers raced to decipher what had occurred, Russian intelligence probably did not have much of a head start.

“I think even Russian services are scratching their heads,” the diplomat said. “We will need some time to digest and also to see where things are moving.”

On the Sunday morning talk shows, Republican and Democratic lawmakers agreed that the events had weakened Putin and strengthened the United States’ resolve to continue supporting Ukraine. Later on Sunday, President Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss the current counteroffensive against Russia and committed to continue U.S. support for Ukraine, the White House said in a statement.

But intelligence officials cautioned that it remains to be seen whether Prigozhin’s challenge truly weakened Putin — and if the Russian leader believes it did. U.S. and Western analysts have long described Putin as isolated, surrounded by yes-men and blind to the challenges his forces face.

The Russian intelligence agency primarily responsible for understanding Ukraine, the FSB, failed to neutralize the government in Kyiv and foment any pro-Russian opposition to disrupt Zelensky’s hold on power, The Washington Post previously reported, based on intelligence material obtained by Ukrainian and other security services.

Putin has been misguided by advisers who may now try to convince him that he won in a standoff with Prigozhin, some officials said. That may only embolden the Russian leader, even if he is not as strong as he thinks.

Officials said that, in the near term, they will watch closely for any signs that Putin may replace two of the top leaders who have been the targets of Prigozhin’s Telegram rants: Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff. Prigozhin had demanded an audience with both men as his forces marched across Russia.

Sacking the military bosses might not mean that Putin is giving in to Prigozhin, but rather that he realizes the Russian elite have lost confidence in their leadership. Prigozhin, some Western officials said, was only saying out loud what many around the Kremlin privately think.

“If Putin replaces Shoigu, it will not be because Prigozhin demanded it, but because Shoigu is weak,” the Ukrainian official said.

As for Prigozhin’s next move, U.S. and Western officials were keenly interested in whether the rift with Putin will prompt him to distance the Russian government from Wagner and withdraw support for its extensive operations in Africa and the Middle East, where the group offers security and military assistance and tactics on campaigns to influence governments facing rebellions or instability, in return for resource contracts such as gold in regions that are too unstable to attract Western corporations.

Though Prigozhin’s company seeks to turn a profit wherever it operates, its action often advances a Kremlin agenda and undermines Western interests. For those reasons alone, some Western officials believe Putin will probably continue supporting Wagner’s operations, but recent events may set back its future potential.

“I think Wagner will have their wings curbed heavily,” said a senior European intelligence official. That may come at a cost for Putin. “Prigozhin has been the gateway for Moscow in many places in Africa, and Moscow counts on African support more than ever,” the intelligence official said. But, he acknowledged, the Russian president has more pressing concerns, such as political survival.

“Faced with last weekend’s events, issues like Russian influence in Africa have a secondary weight for Putin.”

What Coup?

I've been trying to do two things

1. Wait for more info - early reports are always wrong
2. Figure out what some of the different alternative story-lines might be

Jake Broe asks a coupla perfect questions:

What the fuck just happened? 

Why Lukashenko?

Warthog Defense

The Butcher Of Bakhmut is celebrated as a conquering hero.

To The Point

We're at a point now where the only sure way to win a Republican primary election is to stake out positions that will all but guarantee you'll lose in the general election.

I'd normally say it doesn't really hurt my feelings to watch Republicans shooting themselves in the foot, but it makes for a very unsustainable political system, so I have to keep trying to convince Republicans to knock that shit off.

Call me Sisyphus.

WASHINGTON, June 24 - Former President Donald Trump said the federal government has a role in regulating late term abortions, but declined to provide specifics on what that role was in a speech to a conservative audience on Saturday night.

Trump has been relatively quiet on the issue of abortion throughout his campaign for a second term, putting him at odds with other Republican presidential hopefuls including his current biggest threat to the party nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who enacted a six week ban on abortions in his state.

When the guy takes every opportunity to go out of his way to brag about how he overturned Roe v Wade, I don't quite get how he's been "relatively quiet" about it, Reuters.

"There of course remains a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life," Trump told attendees at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's annual conference in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night. "We will defeat the radical Democrat policy of extreme late term abortion."

Late term abortions, which take place after 21 weeks, are extremely rare, representing just 1% of all abortions, and are often due to fetal abnormalities or threats to the mother's life.

Trump touted his record of appointing three judges to the Supreme Court, which gave the court the conservative majority needed to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case which created federal protections for abortion.

The issue of abortion is likely to become a defining one of the 2024 election. Republican candidates are wooing far right Christian voters with commitments to ban the medical procedure - South Carolina Senator Tim Scott has said he would ban it at 15 weeks, and former Vice President Mike Pence has committed to signing a federal ban on it entirely.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted April 11-12 found that 56% of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a politician who supports legislation limiting access to abortion, while 28% would be more likely to.