The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘HORRIFIC’ MASS SHOOTING

Posted on | May 15, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘HORRIFIC’ MASS SHOOTING

Inexplicable violence:

A mass shooting in downtown Milwaukee left 17 people wounded late Friday shortly after fans left a nearby NBA playoff game, according to the Milwaukee Police Department.
The shooting took place around 11 p.m. just blocks away from Fiserv Forum, where thousands of fans attended the Bucks’ Game 6 loss to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinal playoff series hours earlier.
The victims range from 15 to 47 years of age, police said in a news release. All are expected to survive, it said.
It added that 10 people had been taken into custody and nine guns recovered.
The shooting followed two other nearby incidents, police said at a news conference Saturday. One happened just after 9 p.m. when three people were injured in non-fatal shootings. Police said one person was in custody and a gun had been recovered.
In another incident around 10:30 p.m., one person was shot and injured. No arrests were made in that shooting.
Police said Saturday they do not believe any of the three shootings are connected.
Because of the weekend violence, a state of emergency was declared and Mayor Cavalier Johnson issued a city-wide curfew for anyone under the age of 21. . . .
The Milwaukee Bucks, which lost 108-95 to the Celtics, called the shootings “horrific” and said it was canceling Sunday’s watch party on the plaza.

But perhaps this isn’t the “mass shooting” you were looking for.




 

Category: Crime, Wisconsin

Ukraine’s Victory in the Battle of Kharkiv

Posted on | May 14, 2022 | 2 Comments

Bikini model Leanna Bartlett is a native of Ukraine with more than 3 million Instagram followers and I thought she’d make a better illustration for this post than the usual maps clipped from the Internet.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessment:

The Russian military has likely decided to withdraw fully from its positions around Kharkiv City in the face of Ukrainian counteroffensives and the limited availability of reinforcements. Russian units have generally not attempted to hold ground against counterattacking Ukrainian forces over the past several days, with a few exceptions. Reports from Western officials and a video from an officer of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) indicate that Moscow is focused on conducting an orderly withdrawal . . .
Ukraine thus appears to have won the Battle of Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces prevented Russian troops from encircling, let alone seizing Kharkiv, and then expelled them from around the city, as they did to Russian forces attempting to seize Kyiv.

The ISW has been very cautious in its analysis, and they wouldn’t be declaring a Ukrainian victory at Kharkiv if weren’t a fait accompli. They further point out, however, that tactical considerations (e.g., the difficulty of crossing the Donets River) likely prevent Ukraine from pushing eastward past Pechenihy and Malynivka to threaten Kupiansk, a crossroads on the supply line of the Russian forces at Izyum.

When you look at a map (instead of looking at Ukrainian bikini models, who are of limited utility in understanding tactical considerations), you see that the Russian salient at Izyum appears as the most obvious target of the next Ukrainian counteroffensive. Why haven’t the Russians in that salient been destroyed? The most probable explanation is that Ukraine has limited military resources, deployed in defensive positions around the country, and that they simply lack the reserve capacity to mount multiple counteroffensive operations simultaneously. Their first order of business was to repel the Russian invaders at Kyiv, which they accomplished by early April, and now, by mid-May, they’ve repelled the Russians from Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. They’ve done this while keeping the Russians largely stalemated in the Donbas area, and also preventing Russia from advancing on Odessa in the south.

Don’t get distracted by Ukrainian-born bikini model Leanna Bartlett, as the important question remains: What next in Ukraine? We can only speculate, but it is likely that the forces that scored Ukraine’s victory at Kharkiv will be redeployed to supply offensive firepower somewhere in the eastern and southern theaters. As obvious as it would be to strike next at the Izyum salient, that may not be Ukraine’s top priority. The city of Kherson in the south — which just happens to be Leanna Bartlett’s hometown, I might add — could instead be the target of the next Ukrainian counteroffensive. On the other hand, the main battle front in the Donbas, in the vicinity of Lysychansk, continues to be very active. Thursday, I blogged about Russian forces attempting a river crossing near Bilohorivka, east of Lyman, that went disastrously bad for the Russians. There are reports that the Russian invaders tried to cross the same river again on Thursday, with similarly disastrous results.

You can click on the map below to see the image full-size.

Yes, I know it’s less interesting than a Ukrainian bikini model, but this map shows the crucial points on the northeast sector of the Donbas front. Severodonetsk is on the eastern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River, across from Lysychansk on the west bank. Bilohorivka is about 12 miles west of Lysychansk, so if the Russians could cross the river there, they would threaten the flank and rear of the Ukrainians at Lysychansk, and force them to pull back from Severodonetsk. However, about 25 miles west of Bilohorivka, the Ukrainians still hold Lyman, from which they could advance eastward to threaten the Russian forces attempting to flank the position at Lysychansk. Therefore, if the victory at Kharkiv has freed up Ukrainian troops to fight elsewhere, this region between Lyman and Severodonetsk may present the most pressing emergency.

All this is merely speculation, of course, but the point is that the best defense is a good offense and, having pushed the Russians back from Kharkivk, we can expect Ukraine to mount another major counter-offensive somewhere else in the next week or so.




 

Category: Russia, Ukraine

In The Mailbox: 05.13.22

Posted on | May 13, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.13.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: HOAs Are Evil (Part 487)
EBL: Bad Orange Woman Moves From White House To MSNBC
Twitchy: Abbott Labs Torches Bad Orange Woman, also, Lincoln Project Busted For Using Fake DeSantis Email
Louder With Crowder: Rand Paul Puts Temporary Hold On More Ukraine Funding
Vox Popoli: Protecting The Filthbloods, also, Contemplation
According To Hoyt: Doom! Doom! Doom! also, Don’t Jump Off That Ledge
Monster Hunter Nation: The DOFYJS
Stoic Observations: Law Enforcement & The Martial Stoic

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: A New President In The Philippines, also, The Bone-Locker’s Speech
American Greatness: Two Top Twitter Managers Fired Ahead Of Musk Purchase, also, Surging “Ultra-MAGA” Candidate Kathy Barnette Answers Questions About Her Background
American Power: Democrats’ Electability Argument Falling Flat In 2022
American Thinker: There Will Be Blood
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Exasperated Americans Friday
Babalu Blog: The Castro Dictatorship Is Helping Push Russian Disinformation
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For May 13
Behind The Black: SpaceX Successfully Launches Another 53 Starlink Satellites, Today’s Blacklisted American, and NASA’s Corrupt Safety Panel Blathers On & On 
Cafe Hayek: From The Mouths Of Baby-Formula Bandits, also, Who’s Really Gouging Consumers?
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Media Matters & The White House – Laugh & Laugh At These Clowns
Don Surber: 52% Have Trouble Paying For Groceries, also, Netflix Tells Woke Employees To Leave
First Street Journal: Administration Cancels Massive Oil Lease Sale, also, Poll Shows Majority Against Giving Kids Transgender Surgeries & Puberty Blockers
Gates Of Vienna: Sometimes I Have A Great Notion, The Bloated German Media Monster Demands More Money, and Turning Off The Tap
The Geller Report: Rand Paul Holds Up $40 Billion Aid Package To Ukraine, also, Democrat County Supervisor Indicted For 82 Counts Of Election Fraud In Virginia
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, I’m Not Making This Up You Know, and Dictionary Update
Hollywood In Toto: The Innocents – These Kids Aren’t All Right, also, Game Changer? Indie Doc 2000 Mules Reportedly Snags $10 Million
The Lid: Biden’s Corrupt FBI Labels Parents Who Speak Against School Boards “Terrorists”
Legal Insurrection: Federal Prosecutors Seek Lenient Sentences For Molotov Cocktail Lawyers, WaPo Grudgingly Admits Protests Outside Justices’ Homes “Appear To Be Illegal”, and Elon Musk’s Twitter Purchase Temporarily On Hold After Report On Fake Accounts
Nebraska Energy Observer: Scattershot Friday
Outkick: Hornets Interview Frank Vogel, Yankees GM Cashman & Astros Owner Crane Keep Pointing Fingers At Each Other, and Jerry Jeudy’s Attorney – “Bad Things Happen To Good People”
Power Line: A Mule Of Our Own
Shark Tank: Jackie Toledo Caught Lying About Patronis Endorsement
Shot In The Dark: Just Remember, also, How Are You Going To Fight A Tank With An AR-15?
STUMP: Top Causes Of Death For 2021
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – Where Do We Go On Immigration?
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, RIP SGM Canley, Medal Of Honor Winner
Transterrestrial Musings: Elon Musk, also, Old English
Victory Girls: Knives Out For Kathy Barnette, also, Fisher-Price Offers RuPaul Drag Queen Set For Kids
Volokh Conspiracy: How Bad Government Policy Is Fueling The Baby Formula Shortage
Watts Up With That: Net Zero? India Plans To Double Coal Use By 2040
Weasel Zippers: Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) – Killing Babies Is Good For The Economy, Incoming WHPS Says Fox News Is Racist, and Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA)  – Bill To Legalize Abortion Doesn’t Go Far Enough
The Federalist: Sen. Cotton – Army’s Affirmative Action For Women “Is Going To Get People Killed”, Left-Wing Teachers Ditch Teaching In Favor Of Indoctrination, and Texas Supremes Allow Child Abuse Investigations Over Mutilative Sex Surgeries To Proceed 
Mark Steyn: Live Around The Planet, also, The Wasteland

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 05.12.22 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | May 13, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.12.22 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

To be sure, they’re pretty nifty weapons.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The Left Is Sad About Anti-COVID Lawsuits
EBL: What Did Babies Rely On Before Formula? also, Manchin Slaps Schumer
Twitchy: White House Tweet Debunked By Previous White House Tweet, also, DGB Czarina Nina Tells How Men “Burst Violently Into Your Mentions” Like The Kool-Aid Man
Louder With Crowder: Twitter Updates TOS With Unintentionally Hilarious Warning About Mean Tweets
Vox Popoli: Stupid People Doing Stupid Things, Blacks & Women Hardest Hit, and Coexistence Is Impossible
Gab News: Gab’s Pennsylvania Primary Endorsements

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Against Athleisure
American Greatness: Senate Fails To Pass Abortion Bill, also, FBI Whistleblower Says Agency’s Direction Troubles “A Vast Majority Of The Agents”
American Power: Biden’s Incoming Mouthpiece Laughs When Asked Who’s Handling The Baby Formula Crisis
American Thinker: The Left-Wing Insurrection
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Insurrection News
Babalu Blog: AMLO & His Dangerous Sympathy For The Castro Dictatorship, also, The Dictatorship Has Spent $1.5 Billion On Luxury Hotel Construction Since 2020
BattleSwarm: Ukraine Artillery Gets A GPS Boost, also, Disprove #BLM Statistics? That’s A Pink Slip
Behind The Black: Pushback – Arizona Parents Sue School Board For Attempting To Intimidate & Silence Them, Boeing & Aerojet Rocketdyne Fight Over Cause Of Starliner’s Valve Problem, and Zhurong Data Suggests A More Watery Martian Environment Than Previously Thought
Cafe Hayek: Samuel Adams And The “1619 Project”
CDR Salamander: LCS Just Cracks Me Up
Chicago Boyz: Of Agriculture & Ideology
Da Tech Guy: Five Thoughts Under The Fedora, also, The Civility & Tolerance Of The Political Left
Don Surber: Poll – Harassing SCOTUS Justices Backfires, Journalists Try To Hide Their Abortion Views, and Biden’s Sanctions Make Russia Great Again
First Street Journal: Pro-Aborts Don’t Like It When Someone Uses Plain Language, also, Senator Bob Casey Lies Through His Scummy Teeth
Gates Of Vienna: The Corona Deception, Putting Words In Her Mouth, and The Kosovo Question Applied To The DPR & LPR
The Geller Report: Baby Sex Education, also, Biden Cancels Massive Oil & Gas Lease Deal As Prices Hit All Time High
Hogewash: The Frustration Of Fauxcahontas, When THE Science Follows THE Narrative, and Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Eleven Withering Responses To Stephen King’s Pro-Nina Jankowicz Tweet, also, Top Gun: Maverick – No Woke, Just Thrills & Nostalgia On Steroids
The Lid: California’s Ban On Long Gun Sales To 18-20 Year Olds Struck Down
Legal Insurrection: Symone Sanders Debut On MSNBC Flops, Jordan Peterson Rejoins Academia, and CNO Removes Woke & CRT Books From Reading List
Nebraska Energy Observer: I Don’t Think I’ve Done This Before
Outkick: Larry Bird Talks Some Smack After Finding Out NBA Playoff Award Named After Him, Five-Star Julian Phillips Commits To Tennessee, and Phil Jackson Wants The Lakers To Trade LeBron James – And There Are Worse Ideas
Power Line: Scandals In The NIH, The O’Keefe Project – Whistleblower Edition, and  Loose Ends
Shark Tank: Rep. Ramon Alexander Outed, Resigns After Sexcapade Uncovered
Shot In The Dark: I, Philistine, also, Sacked
The Political Hat: Rent Control Fail – Minnesota, Stockholm, & Berlin
This Ain’t Hell: The Newest Airborne Division, also, Democrat Senators Send Abortion Letter to SecDef
Transterrestrial Musings: Imagining The Unimaginable, “Human Rating”, and RIP Randy Weaver
Victory Girls: Beyond The Cringe, AG Garland Finally Orders Protection For SCOTUS, and Baby Formula For Illegals But Not For American Moms
Volokh Conspiracy: No, SCOTUS Is Not Going To Reconsider Bans On Interracial Marriage
Watts Up With That: We’re Going To Get You To Eat The Bugs, Peasant, also, What’s Below The Greenland Ice?
Weasel Zippers: Fauci Downplays Increase In ODs, Suicides, Abuse & Violence – “Not Sure The Lockdowns Did It”, Biden Goes On Another Unhinged Rant Against “Ultra MAGA”, and Bay Area Startup Offering $800/Month Pods For Idiots To Live In
The Federalist: “Supply Chain Disruptions” Are Not an Accident, The FDA Was Making It Hard For Moms To get Formula Long Before The Supply Chain Imploded, and Bipartisan Majority Rejects Democrats’ Radical Abortion Bill
Mark Steyn: The Big Shut-Up, also, Formula Zero

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Category: Linkagery

Amber Heard and the Man-Haters Club

Posted on | May 12, 2022 | 2 Comments

If only Johnny Depp had asked my advice before he got mixed up with that evil bitch Amber Heard, I could have saved him a few million bucks.

NEVER TRUST A BISEXUAL!

How many times do I have to repeat this before guys start paying attention? The problem is, some of you guys — and I’m looking at you, Mr. Depp — think you can go chasing your wildest sexual fantasies in which being involved with a bisexual woman gives you a golden ticket to kinky threesomes. Good-bye to the boring, normal life of bourgeois heterosexual monogamy, hello to the wild carnival of “swinging.”

Or so the fool believes, until he discovers to his eternal dismay that there is a reason why these things are called “fantasies,” because if you try to do that stuff in real life, it turns into a nightmare. Let me tell you that I once knew a young man — a promising young software programmer, from a fine family — who was living the America Dream, with a wife and kids, a good job and his own home in a nice neighborhood, all before he was 30. Alas, the American Dream can get boring after a while, and this young man decided that he and his wife should start “swinging.” Also, he developed an appetite for cocaine and methamphetamine, and before you know it, he had lost everything — the house, the family, his career. Indeed, he lost his sanity for a while, and it took a lot of rehab and antidepressants for him to keep going. But I digress . . .

Johnny Depp made the mistake of marrying Amber Heard, a “bisexual” who had previously been in a lesbian relationship with photographer Tasya van Ree, a woman 10 years her senior. What kind of result did Depp expect? Happily ever after, ’til death do you part? Was he vain enough to imagine that he had somehow “cured” Amber Heard of whatever needs had led her into the sapphic lifestyle?

Y’know, on the one hand, if a bachelor wants to have a wild fling, it would probably be intrusive and unncessary for him to do a complete background check on the object of his concupiscent interest. If you’re just going to hit-and-run, who cares? Like the old song says:

Yesterday is dead and gone,
And tomorrow’s out of sight,
And it’s sad to be alone.
Help me make it through the night.

The cold light of dawn finds you in a cheap motel room, reeking of gin and lying next to a complete stranger. You get dressed quietly and try to sneak out the door before she wakes up, hoping she doesn’t remember your name. In such a scenario, you don’t care about her biographical details. On the other hand, however, if you’re looking for a relationship more enduring than a one-night stand at the Ramada Inn, yesterday is never really “dead and gone.” Human beings are creatures of habit, and when a wise man finds himself evaluating a woman’s potential as a wife, certainly her past behavior should be considered the best indicator of what can be expected of her in the future. Johnny Depp had been one of the biggest teen idols of the 1980s and, as I’ve said, “cut quite a swath through Hollywood, dating actress Winona Ryder and supermodel Kate Moss before settling down in 1998 with French actress Vanessa Paradis.” You might suppose his extensive experience as a ladies’ man would translate into superior wisdom as a judge of women’s character, but when a guy’s in his mid-40s and the object of his interest is a 23-year-old as good-looking as Amber Heard . . .

Amber Heard in ‘The Rum Diaries.’

Well, Johnny wasn’t thinking with the correct organ, eh? The fact that Heard had already publicly “come out” did not deter his pursuit.

Remember what I said? Human beings are creatures of habit. If Amber Heard had wanted to be with a man — if she were emotionally capable of truly loving a man — certainly she had never suffered from a shortage of opportunities and yet, a couple years after her arrival in Hollywood, she was in a lesbian relationship. When you think of all the possible alternatives — really, a pretty young blonde like that could have had just about any man she wanted — doesn’t it seem not entirely random that she chose instead to be with Tasya van Ree?

Tasya van Ree and Amber Heard in 2010.

Is my point sufficiently clear? Some people might be willing to dismiss this as a “youthful indiscretion,” but would you roll the dice and marry a woman with a track record like Amber Heard’s? Would you advise someone you cared about — your brother, your son, your best friend — to take such an enormous gamble? The odds against Johnny Depp in that relationship were so overwhelming that it’s fair to say he never stood a chance. The whole thing was doomed from Day One.

NEVER TRUST A BISEXUAL!

Guys need to wake up and smell the neurosis here. If a woman can’t even decide which team she wants to play for, why would you think she has the emotional stability to make a relationship work? And you can bet, when she gets tired of you, she’s not going to blame herself for the failure of the relationship. No, sir — she’ll go badmouthing you to all her friends.

Wait, did I say “friends”? Because I am not so stupid as to imagine that Eve Barlow and Amber Heard are “just friends”:

Amber Heard’s close friend Eve Barlow blasted women who support the actress’ ex-husband, Johnny Depp, in their court battle for being driven by “envy” and their own “low self-esteem.”
Barlow, a British music journalist, argued Tuesday that women “hate” Heard, 36, in part because of their jealousy over her appearance.
“It’s easy for women with low self-esteem to hate AH [Amber Heard] or justify their prejudice towards archetypal feminine strength/beauty by denying their envy of it,” Barlow tweeted Tuesday. “They perceive an afforded power that’s truly a myth, and excuse their own inefficiency at being resilient against misogyny.”
Barlow — who made headlines at the start of the sensational $50 million defamation trial between the former couple when she was dramatically ejected from the Virginia courtroom for texting and tweeting in the front row — argued that the actress has “had to fight for her life,” despite her celebrity status.
“She still wasn’t afforded a savior. It’s much easier to get behind a woman who plays the damsel in distress than it is to empathize with a woman who has had to liberate herself,” Barlow wrote. . . .
Barlow has been using her public platform to target Heard’s numerous critics, among them women, who have accused the “Aquaman” star of lying about being abused by Depp during their turbulent marriage.

See? Women must either take Amber’s side or else be condemned as envious and deluded by “misogyny,” according to Eve Barlow, who is merely Amber’s “close friend,” IYKWIMAITYD.

It’s an invitation to join the Man-Haters Club. While I haven’t followed testimony in the trial very closely, there seems to be plenty of reasons to believe that Johnny Depp was at least as much a victim of domestic abuse as he was a perpetrator of such abuse. Moreover, Amber Heard hasn’t exactly established herself as an exemplar of honesty. The fact that the Washington Post op-ed column which appeared under her byline — and which Depp says defamed him — was ghost-written by ACLU staffers certainly doesn’t help her defense. What does it say about someone’s integrity that they would outsource the writing of such a column to a bunch of hacks at a tax-exempt left-wing operation. Well, Johnny Depp may yet win this lawsuit, but it won’t be enough to compensate for all the misery he suffered because he didn’t ask my advice.

NEVER TRUST A BISEXUAL!

Don’t say you haven’t been warned.




 

Category: Celebrities

In The Mailbox: 05.12.22 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | May 12, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.12.22 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

You are here

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The Organized Destruction Of The Criminal Justice System
EBL: Kathy Barnette For U.S. Senator From Pennsylvania
Twitchy: Amy Siskind Mocks Moms Who Can’t Find Baby Formula, Gets Rekt
Louder With Crowder: Latino Reporter Torches Biden’s Refusal To Take Responsibility For Inflation
Vox Popoli: Ukraine Shuts Off Europe’s Gas, also, Holy Nationalism

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Trump’s Idiotic Economic Policies
American Conservative: The War On Smoking Is A War On You
American Greatness: Trump’s Endorsement Record Now 58-1, also, Transgender Child Molester Charged With Murder
American Thinker: Why Aren’t We Allowed to Question The 2020 Election?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: This Is what “Latin” Solidarity With Cuba Looks Like, also, Mexico Celebrates “Democracy” In Cuba
BattleSwarm:
Behind The Black: The Future Factions In Space Become Clearer, Orbex Reveals Full-Scale Prototype Of Prime Smallsat Rocket, and Virgin Orbit To Expand Fleet Of 747s Used With Launcher One Rocket
Cafe Hayek: Yet Further Evidence – From Another Legitimate Historian – Against The “1619 Project”
CDR Salamander: Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) Gives A Congressional Oversight Master Class
Da Tech Guy: Don’t Be Sad Because 58 Out Of 59 Ain’t Bad
Don Surber: The Sex Scandal The Florida Media Is Ignoring, also, NYPD Arrests Woman Selling Mangoes
First Street Journal: Authoritarians Seem Upset Over All The COVID Lawsuits, also, Hot Take – Pro-Life Feminists Say It’s Not Time To Overturn Roe
Gates Of Vienna: Knife Jihad In Marseille
The Geller Report: NM Audit Identifies Feature In Dominion Voting Machines That Allows Machine To Fill Out Ballots Itself
Hogewash: A Supernova
Hollywood In Toto: Dave Rubin – Maher, Chappelle, & Rogan “Sound Like Conservatives”
The Lid: Hey, Liberals – Read The Alito Opinion Or SHUT UP!
Legal Insurrection: Conservative Kathy Barnette Surging – Upset Candidate In PA GOP Senate Primary?, FDA Chief Asserts “Misinformation” Is Leading Cause Of Death In America, and Inflation Up Over 8.3% From Last Year, Still Highest In 40 Years
Michelle Malkin: The Hunting Of Texas Campus Conservative Kelly Neidert
Nebraska Energy Observer: On The Matter Of Freedom
Outkick: Deion Sanders Blasts NCAA On NIL – “You Have A Problem”, ESPN & NBA Mum On Playing Games In Nation Where Gays & Transgenders Face Death, and Cleveland Announcer Hilariously Curses On Air
Power Line: “Don’t Blame Me – It’s Not My Fault”
Shark Tank: Scott-Appointed Judge Blocks DeSantis Map
Shot In The Dark: One Evening, Somewhere In A Blue City
This Ain’t Hell: Navy Scuttles “Woke” Books
Transterrestrial Musings: The Vaunted Russian Military
Victory Girls: Yes, Dare To Call It Grooming, also, Ron DeSantis Kicks Communism Right In The Yarbles
Volokh Conspiracy: More SCOTUS Leaks To Politico
Watts Up With That: The Recent Decline
Weasel Zippers: Biden Law forces Cars To Be Built With Kill Switch, also, The Washington Post Says The Name Washington Is Racist
The Federalist: Americans Don’t Want War With Russia But The Uniparty Is Forcing It Anyway, Alaska’s Special Election Is A Template For How The Left Wants To Rig The Vote, and Artist Steve Ditko’s Mystical Vision Comes To Life In Doctor Strange Sequel
Mark Steyn: Making A Desert Out Of Paradise

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Category: Linkagery

Ukraine Wipes Out Russian Battalion at Attempted Pontoon River Crossing

Posted on | May 12, 2022 | 1 Comment

Just because a war can be described as a “stalemate,” it doesn’t mean there’s no action, and the failed Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine is an example of how bloody a “stalemate” can be. Attempting to cross a river near Bilohorivka, east of Lyman, a Russian mechanized battalion got blasted out of existence by Ukrainian artillery:

The better part of a Russian army battalion — 50 or so vehicles and up to a thousand troops — in recent days tried to cross a pontoon bridge spanning the Siverskyi Donets River, running west to east between the separatist provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian artillery caught them at the river bank — and destroyed them. The rapid destruction of around three dozen tanks and other armored vehicles, along with the bridge itself, underscores Russia’s deepening woes as its troops try, and fail, to make meaningful gains in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
“We still assess Russian ground force in the Donbas to be slow and uneven,” an unnamed U.S. Defense Department official told reporters on Tuesday. The Russians’ inability to cross rivers might explain their sloth.
The Siverskyi Donets, which threads from southern Russia into eastern Ukraine then back into Russia, is just one of several water barriers Russian battalions must cross in order to advance west into Ukrainian-held territory. According to the Ukrainian armed forces’ general staff, the battalion that got caught at the pontoon bridge apparently was trying to strike at Lyman, a city of 20,000 that lies 17 miles west of the doomed crossing.
The Ukrainian army’s 17th Tank Brigade spotted the bridge, perhaps using one of the many small drones that function as the army’s eyes over the battlefield. The 17th is one of the army’s four active tank brigades. Its line battalions operate T-64 tanks and BMP fighting vehicles. But it was the brigade’s artillery battalion with its 2S1 122-millimeter howitzers that apparently got first crack at the Russian bridge.
The 17th’s shelling destroyed at least seven T-72 and T-80 tanks, 17 BMPs, seven MT-LB armored tractors, five other vehicles and much of the bridging unit itself, including a tugboat and the pontoon span.
It’s unclear how many Russians died or were wounded, but it’s worth noting that no battalion can lose three-quarters of its vehicles and remain capable of operations. In one strike, the Ukrainians removed from the battlefield one of the roughly 99 Russian battalion tactical groups in Ukraine.

The Russian advance on this sector of the front in eastern Ukraine has been almost completely stalled for weeks. The Ukrainian forces fighting near Rubizhne, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk have a supply line running west through Slovyansk. The Russian attempt to cross the river near Bilohorivka was clearly an intended move toward Slovyansk, so the destruction of that Russian battalion at the pontoon crossing was of strategic importance to maintaining the Ukrainian defensive position. You can click the map below to see it full-size.

However, if the Russians can’t safely cross the river, the same is almost certainly true of the Ukrainians, which means the opposing forces are dug in on either side of the river, hence the “stalemate” that exists. Because the Russians have numerical superiority, they are able to threaten the Ukrainian positions from several different directions, but the Ukrainians have the tactical advantage of interior lines, and can more easily shift their forces to meet these threats. The most significant factor in enabling Ukrainian forces to hold on, however, is the effectiveness of their light anti-tank weapons like the Javelin missile system.

If it weren’t for this factor, the Russian advantage in armor would enable them to roll over the Ukrainian defenses, but any Russian armored vehicle that exposes itself on the open road is at risk of getting blown up by Javelins or other anti-tank weapons. Ukraine claims that the Russians have lost 1,195 tanks and 2,873 other armored vehicles in the war so far, as well as more than 25,000 Russian troops killed. Of course, these claims probably overstate the extent of Russian casualties, but there can be no doubt that Russia has lost a lot of tanks in this war, and this is a major reason why the “stalemate” in Ukraine continues.




 

Category: Military, Russia, Ukraine

In The Mailbox: 05.11.22

Posted on | May 12, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.11.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Got busy with a lot of stuff yesterday and ran out of time to do links. Will catch up tomorrow for sure. Meanwhile, Stacy & I are working out the details of the upcoming Smittypalooza. Will it be in Frederick County or Loudoun County, or some even more exotic location? Stay tuned, sports fans!
Silicon Valley delenda est.

Yes, this is how ignorant they are.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Pro-Crime Policies Have An Impact
EBL: Beware Of False Prophets, also, Dueling Joe Biden
Twitchy: Science Teachers Association Has Tips On How To Queer Your Classroom, also, Democrat-Controlled House In No Hurry To Investigate Baby Formula Shortage
Louder With Crowder: PETA Lashes Out At Elon Musk – But Not For Buying Twitter
Vox Popoli: On The Correction Of Others, also, Countdown To World War 3
Stoic Observations: Threepers & The Confrontational Politics Of black Activists, Part One

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Bits & Bobs
American Conservative: The Threat Of Polish Intervention In Ukraine, also, Of All Nations, Kindred, & People
American Greatness: There Is No Honor In Abortion, also, Future Misery & Joe Biden
American Power: How Mariya Alyokhina Of Pussy Riot Escaped Russia
American Thinker: If We Cannot Secure Voting, We Will Die, also, Demographics – Deglobalization Will Fix Climate Change
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Great Land News
Babalu Blog: Death Toll From Hotel Saratoga Explosion Reaches 40, also, DeSantis Signs Bill Establishing “Victims Of Communism” Day, Requiring Teaching Of Communism’s Evil In Fla. Schools
BattleSwarm: Russia’s Decline & Existential Crisis, also, I Heard The Grifters Singing, Each To Each
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted Americans, New ROK President Wants Bigger Space Effort Closely Tied To U.S., and Rogozin Tweets Threats To Musk, Musk Shrugs
Cafe Hayek: Bernard Bailyn’s History And The “1619 Project”, also, More From Bernard Bailyn
CDR Salamander: What Is Really Going On In Eastern Ukraine?
Da Tech Guy: The Media Attack A Christian Republican In Pennsylvania, also, $6 Diesel! The Left’s Plan To Slaughter The Middle Class Advances
Don Surber: Party Like It’s 18-94!, Kavanaugh-Hating Judge Caught DWI, and Herschel Walker Learns From Biden
First Street Journal: White House Predicts Doom On Fall/Winter WuFlu Infections, also, Bidenomics – Making You Poorer & Your Retirement Plan Worth Less
Gates Of Vienna: Viktor Orban – The Red Line Is The Energy Embargo, also, The Evacuation Of The Last Citizens From Azovstal
The Geller Report: Woman Finds Box Of Over 100 Mail-In Ballots On Hollywood Sidewalk, also, Mo. Senate Passes Election Integrity Bill
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, A Field Guide To Galaxies, and Controls All The Branches?
Hollywood In Toto: Did Chet Hanks Pull Off What ScarJo & Stephen King Couldn’t? also, Here’s Why 2000 Mules Is Getting Aggressively Fact-Checked
The Lid: The Three Stooges Who Helped Write The Steele Dossier, also, NYT Editorial Lies That Interracial Marriage Is On The Chopping Block
Legal Insurrection: Pro-Abortion Activists Target Justice Alito’s Home, Parents Revolt Against Equity Agenda In Barrington RI Schools, and NYC Workers Won’t Come Into The Office Because Of Crime, Not COVID
Nebraska Energy Observer: Eschatology Video Thoughts, also, It’s A Plan
Outkick: Oakland A’s Tony Kemp Makes Incredible Catch, Jeanie Buss Is Growing Impatient With The Lakers, and NBA To Stage Games In United Arab Emirates, Where Being Gay Is Punishable By Death
Power Line: “You Will Pay The Price”, also, Race-Baiting & Disinformation In The White House
Shark Tank: Team Rubio – Demings Supports Abortion Up Until Birth
Shot In The Dark: “Bloody Christmas”, also, An Interview With George Orwell
The Political Hat: India – Mother Nature Can Sue & Be Sued
This Ain’t Hell: Puerto Rican Naval Officer From Both World Wars Might Get Upgrade To Medal Of Honor, More Navy UFO Talk, and Veteran Complains The Late Sen. Hatch Not Entitled To Military Honors
Transterrestrial Musings: NASA’s Artemis Branding Problem, also, Certifying Commercial Space Stations
Victory Girls: Violent Protesters, Like Cockroaches, Only Emerge After Dark
Volokh Conspiracy: Can States Ban Residents From Getting Abortions In Other States If Roe v. Wade Is Overturned?
Watts Up With That: Power Grid Operators Warn Green Energy Could Cause Blackouts, Extreme Weather During The Maunder Minimum, and The Intended Consequences Of Climate Policy
Weasel Zippers: White House Understands The Passion Of Protestors Who Disrupted Masses On Mothers Day, also, Elon Musk Says First Thing He’ll Do As Twitter CEO Is Reinstate Trump’s Account
The Federalist: Federal Judge Eviscerates russian Collusion Hoaxer Marc Elias For Attempting To Undermine NY Elections, Planned Parenthood Profits Hugely From Getting Kids Hooked On Transgender Hormones, and Mayor Groot Calls For Insurrection Against SCOTUS
Mark Steyn: Disinformation Unto Death, also, The Canadian Gaslighter

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