To commemorate Putin groveling before one of North Korea's Kims in exchange for weapons and the phonetic part of my username, I'm back to celebrate. I have spared the homepage activity ticker, because people generally hate anything political from me.

No. 2 is you guarantee both Kyiv’s independence but also its neutrality.

This is what Putin has asked, and a strange thing to ask of a country, to return to the geopolitical state it was in before Russia attacked in the classic "preemptive defense" manner. Finland obviously had the right idea.

But I was partially wrong, in my post above, because Putin obviously didn't ask for

some American security assistance over the long term.

Uhhhh JD? JD, what do you think NATO is? This is either him showing his whole ass, or giving the NYTimes audience a pat on the head for now but then waffling and backing out should it ever actually come to "long term security assistance" during a Trump admin. Probably the latter.

The leverage that we have over the Russians is not, in my view, that we can indefinitely keep the Ukrainians in a successful defensive posture. Let me be clear about this: There is no way with our capacity and what Russia has been doing that we can hold off the Russians indefinitely.

Contentious opinion. But, regardless of outcome, if the Ukrainians want to cripple a geopolitical antagonist, an antagonist worse than perhaps even us, for a remarkably small amount of money, in a righteous defense after an essentially unprovoked attack on their sovereign land, for which they sacrificed nuclear weapons to be given, you let them. You thank them.

There are two big points of leverage that we have. One, they could take over Ukraine, but they can’t govern Ukraine. We’re talking about multiple hundreds of thousands of troops to govern the country effectively as a Russian subsidiary.

The idea that reminding Russia about the logistical troubles of subjugating the Ukrainian people would help deter Putin from seizing the country is pretty funny. Like "ah yeah, JD, Putin might set aside his deeply-ingrained expansionist ambitions if he really thinks about some minor drawbacks of the aftermath to a victorious glorywar".

The second point of leverage that we have is a war economy has its own internal momentum. They’re now at 7 percent of G.D.P. being spent on defense. They have re-engineered an economy around fighting a war instead of around improving the lives of your people. ...

This, from the man of staunch free market convictions only two press conferences ago or so. This, from the man in lockstep with Project 2025, which, instead of an economic motivation, is mostly a plan for creating a white, Christian theocracy designed to wed an anti-human rights "god" to the federal state, in between dismantling those blasted deep state orgs, like NOAA. Boy, that's gonna really juice the economy, when weather forecasts go to shit after Fox Weather (linking to remind everyone that this is already a thing!) can't find any more meteorologists because it fired the last batch for daring to mention climate change and they all got death threats for contradicting the wishes and authority of a tyrant. See: Anthony Fauci's House hearing last week.

New paragraph for emphasis: Ross does not once bring up the GOP's Project 2025, the party's instruction manual for a possible future Trump executive, and it's probably an intentional omission. I suspect that the more people know about Project 2025, the lower Trump's odds of re-election. It is a collection of the most sweeping anti-science US policy ambitions in the modern era. Easily. Forget about even being able to debate appropriate political responses to scientific insight, they're going to handicap our very ability to do and discuss science.

... That has some real problems over the long term.

JD, I am making this post. Please, JD, just read the first sentence. Even the 7% GDP hasn't been enough. Putin is in trouble at this very moment. Long term concerns for the Russian people are something I do actually have, but unfortunately, the Russian people have been taken hostage by a dictator and developed severe Stockholm syndrome. It's in everybody's interest, including the hostages', to disrupt this relationship immediately. I understand, though, JD, I see the business of dictator appeasement is a-boomin'.

By the way, it’s not in our interest, either, for the Russians to have a war economy for the next five years, because then they’re going to be more militaristic and aggressive than they otherwise would be.

My doubts about the plausibility of Russia lasting another five years aside, I think we've already thoroughly tested out whether or not increased military expenditures directly influence relationships between existing nuclear superpowers, and the answer is "not really". Vance does have a point that with a boosted Russian military may be an increased likelihood of Russia conducting a new proxy war, or coup'ing another of the -stans, etc., but if you let a fascist (still!) generally adored by his serfdom run roughshod over another country, they won't stop after a single victory. Speaking of, what Ross and JD could be discussing is the information war front with Russia and China and the coordinated global push towards right-wing ethno-nationalism. Nah, it's probably too relevant. And I'm sure I can just shoot JD an email when he's on the inside about whether or not there are some undisclosed executive orders from 2018-ish about standing down in US intel apparatus attempts to counterprogram inside the Russian infosphere, and whether or not that's contributed to an almost un-moving needle of Putin's domestic approval.

The only question I really have is: What is Vance's actual, his personal position towards Russia, in the possible event that Trump wins but croaks sometime in 2026 or something? Thanks in part to JD's demonstrable lack of consistent principles, there is no way to retrieve or infer that information, or even to determine if an "actual" position is well-formed. At least when I'm like "I think Joe Biden is currently complicit in a genocide", he'll grab the mic and say "I. am. a. Zionist!", and I'm all "Ahh yeah, that makes sense". With JD, I'm left hoping that it isn't politically advantageous for a pseudo-populist reactionary to conduct executive policy favorable towards Russia at an unspecified later date. With Joe Biden, there might be a chance to change his mind, like making him watch you get your face smashed in by local PD for putting up tents on a university lawn. With an opportunist reactionary, I'll find other ways to waste my time.

No, fuck the entire notion of keeping columnists like Douthat employed at a large "liberal" "institution" in the name of perceived objectivity (both readers' perceptions and/or the perceptions of editors/managers/shareholders). Despite Joe Biden's apparent belief (or Garland's, or Durbin's, or really any elder dem/moderate), these are not the politics of the 1980's. In the history books, all of the scholars will wonder why anyone was stupid enough to think that MAGA's coup attempt stopped in the early evening of January 6th, 2021. It has continued to proceed the entire time since, and Douthat, here, gives it oxygen. If Douthat understands that, fuck him, I don't care how he's justified facilitating MAGA with some entirely fabricated fear of how terrible Joe Biden has made America* to himself. If he doesn't understand that, he lacks political astuteness, and has no business writing a column at the NYTimes. By the same logic, the entire company looks pathetic. Like Hollywood, too chickenshit to put out the Trump movie. Silenced into submission by a possible future presidency and the current threat of lawsuits, at best, knowingly complicit, at worst.

*What are people complaining about? The majority of metrics besides Israel-Palestine policy that Joe Biden can reasonably be associated with are positive, and the very people JD is jonesing for love Israel's military actions, if only currently. I don't think Biden engineered a period of global inflation, but he might be at least partially responsible for how quickly the U.S. got out ahead of it, comparatively. Am I supposed to be upset at edited videos showing him being excessively old and ignore when he rode a bicycle two weeks ago? The fake urban crime wave? In a truly shocking turn of events, almost every branch of support for Trump is rooted in lies, ignorance, or craven pursuit of self-interest.

And that is why I'm here today to endorse JD Vance for Trump's VP.