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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s easy for women with low self-esteem to hate AH or justify their prejudice towards archetypal feminine strength/beauty by denying their envy of it. They perceive an afforded power that’s truly a myth, and excuse their own inefficiency at being resilient against misogyny.
AH had to fight for her life, despite her position and assumed privileges. 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.
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.
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.
So the RuAF Bilohorivka crossing was a disaster. As well as yesterday's bridge pics, 6 more here https://t.co/oIsqfP8ICX. Rough count: 31 AFVs in the 6 new pics + 5 more out of view between here and river that I saw in imagery sent to me yesterday + 2 in the water. h/t @DefMon3https://t.co/LResiMG8bxpic.twitter.com/BcqrDsKsiM
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.
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.
