at this point, it's relatively clear that the republicans are not going to give putin what he wants and needs, in terms of security guarantees, to pull back from the dnieper. the change of tone from washington has been to be more condescending towards the russians, and that is not helpful. the russians are not quite equals, but they want to be treated with equity and not with disdain and superiority. trump is sending the wrong message and putin is correctly reacting to that wrong message.

putin wants bill clinton back and it doesn't look like he's going to get it, and trump is probably the best he's going to get, big macs and all.

one thing that has changed is that the white house seems to understand the urgency of the situation, and biden did not seem to understand the seriousness of what was unfolding. trump actually appears to have picked up more where obama left off, whereas biden was trying to carry on from the second bush administration. that's a shift in the right direction. however, i'm not convinced they're attaching enough seriousness to the situation.

there is no doubt that the russian response demonstrated deep operational incompetence. they hadn't done anything like this in quite a long time, and it showed; if some older generals in the kremlin, behind some bunker in moscow, thought they could just dust off the world war two manuals, they were misled by their longer concept of history. the whole world, including the russian intelligentsia, could see that the russian defense forces needed some work.

well, they've now had three years to work on it. and i want people to stop to think about that.

biden seems to have been trying to win a final battle in the cold war, so his name would be in the history books as the one that conquered, but it spectacularly backfired and he will instead be remembered as the boob that made a mess of eastern europe right when it was getting itself back on track (helping only his adversaries, the chinese). rather than knock the russians out, it has provided them with a catalyst to rebuild a continental sized military empire with new technology, new weapons capability and new military objectives. biden has awakened the russian bear, and we are beginning to see it start feeding.

the fool biden made the same mistake that hitler and napoleon made before him and he made it because he was ignorant of the history. trump may extricate america, but the real threat lies in a war in europe in the next ten years between germany and russia.