22752

I’m wondering do a lot of people wish Angela was still in charge?
As an outsider, I know I do. I suspect it is probably the reverse of the Europeans, looking at Trump and wonder what the hell were the American were thinking.

22753

Forty thousand convicts:

22754

They are really culling their prison population. Sure the economic sanctions are ruinous, but think of the money they’ll save by being able to close hundreds of prisons!

22755

A pro-Russian and optimistic (from the Russian POV) assessment of the war and where it is going:

Make of it what you will. It’s hard time know many things for sure, but I definitely disagree with the idea of a thrusting Russian envelopment. They have shown absolutely no capability for that kind of operational expertise.

22756

Did the 2014 position not include Crimea?

22757

The key difference is that they are mercenaries instead of legally recognized combatants.

If you capture actual soldiers, you can’t prosecute them for murder. You have to treat them as captured enemy combatants.

I guess in this case, they were already imprisoned for horrible crimes in Russia, so who cares?

22758

I don’t know if she would be any different. She was in charge when Crimea and the Donbas happened. She was also in charge while Germany became more and more dependent on Russian energy.

22759

Angela was cautious, and not much of a risk taker, but she was never this indecisive.

22760

Very interesting and unusual to hear a Russian media commentator speak so candidly:

22761

If my memory serves, @alekseivolchok has mentioned before that it’s all part of the show. A guy like this goes out, does his controversial monologue, then it gets torn down. I only ever see clips of the “controversial” part, never what comes after. So maybe I’m misremembering or otherwise have it wrong.

22762

It appears the Russians have launched an offensive in the south:

This seems to be confirmed by both Russian and Ukrainian sources.

22763

Crimea but not anything else.

22764

I’m sorry, but that comparison is just absurd.

Scholtz is a bland, long-time career politician of roughly average competence, in charge of a coalition government. People like him become heads of European governments every year.

His main transgression is to not send German panzers to fight Russians in the Ukrainean plains… Which… Like, yes, I suspect the vast majority of this thread wants it to happen, but we also need to acknowledge the particularly potent and awkward symbolism.

(But I do think he’ll end up the shortest-serving Chancellor in my lifetime. Not because of gross incompetence, but because repeatedly taking stances to try to slow down escalation and then inevitably caving in is just making him appear weak as fuck. There’s just no outcome to the war that will end up showing him in a good light.)

And then on the other side we have Trump. Do I even need to write anything? Just close your eyes, and think back over those years. There wasn’t a day of peace; every day you’d have not one shitshow, but probably multiple overlapping ones.

No, these are not comparable. One of these is a wtf several orders of magnitude larger.

22765

Planning ahead:

22766

On a somewhat related note, Hungary appears to be purging many ov its older, mostly pro-NATO officers:

22767

You are right they aren’t comparable. I fell into the same trap that lots of folks have done on the forum, when they claimed Bush 43 is pretty much the same as Trump.

Still back to my original point and question. I’ll take your word for it Scholtz is an average pol, but Angela Merkle wasn’t. She projected quiet competence and she wouldn’t have been doing this throw up a roadblock and then tearing it down a month later. Merkle, wouldn’t have been leading the charge to give weapons to Ukraine. Her roadblocks would have stayed up longer, and don’t see her putting nearly as many. as Scholtz hence my frustration.

22768

Yes. You may remember that we’ve seen this “change of the narrative” and “desperate propagandists” for months. Yet somehow they continue working and they’re fine.

22769

Heh:

22770

Being played by Sean Bean doesn’t bode well for Germany’s future!

22771

Unless it’s Sharpe Sean Bean. That said, what Germany is doing isn’t soldiering.