Tuesday, March 01, 2022

It's MARCH, and Town Meeting Day in Vermont!

If you are not watching President Biden’s State of the Union Address,
you are missing something we haven’t seen in years…
…repeated standing ovations from BOTH sides of the aisle. 
Ukraine is uniting the United States. 
🇺🇦 Glory to Ukraine! 🇺🇦


                                                                                           Photo by Kevin O’Connor/VTDigger, 2018

15 comments:

  1. I read last night that the Ukraine technology minister tweeted Elon Musk asking him to provide Starlink internet service to Ukraine. Musk tweeted back in about ten hours advising that Starlink service was active in Ukraine and more ground stations were on the way, no charge for service or equipment. That speaks well for the man, I think.

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    1. Definitely a good thing.

      And has Russian technology been disabled?

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  2. Our youngest is a great fan of Musk and ordered up a Starlink for the mainland house. The dish took about two months to be delivered, but did arrive before son moved in this week. It needs to be set up in an open space, so that will take a bit of doing, given the oak canopy.

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  3. Russian Convoy ‘Stalled’ Outside of Kyiv
    March 1, 2022 at 1:35 pm EST By Taegan Goddard

    A senior U.S. defense official said that the 40-mile-long column of Russian tanks and combat vehicles outside of Kyiv had “stalled,” the Washington Post reports.

    The convoy effectively has not moved in a day and the Russians “appeared to be regrouping six days into their invasion while dealing with fierce resistance and fuel and food shortages.”

    “The United States has seen signs that Russian soldiers, especially young conscripts, did not know they were being sent into combat.”

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    1. NPR now says they are getting closer to Kyiv. 🙁

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    2. They don't seem to be going through particularly hilly or forested areas, but I still think the method used by the Cuban revolutionaries against Batista's motorized columns ought to work--as Fidel said, you kill a snake bu cutting off its head. Batista's heavily armed columns would go into the Sierra Maestra looking for the revolutionaries, who would be waiting in ambush for them. They would attack the head of the column, halting the entire column and throwing it into chaos--then melt away into the forest with the supplies the government troops had brought them, opportunity permitting. It shouldn't take more than five RPG rounds to bring the whole 40-mile column to a halt for a good bit. It seems to me.

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  4. WASHINGTON [NYT] — Plagued by poor morale as well as fuel and food shortages, some Russian troops in Ukraine have surrendered en masse or sabotaged their own vehicles to avoid fighting, a senior Pentagon official said on Tuesday.

    Some entire Russian units have laid down their arms without a fight after confronting surprisingly stiff Ukrainian defense, the official said. A significant number of the Russian troops are young conscripts who are poorly trained and ill-prepared for the all-out assault. And in some cases, Russian troops have deliberately punched holes in their vehicles’ gas tanks, presumably to avoid combat, the official said.

    NYPost: ‘Morale is flagging’ among desperate Russian soldiers in Ukraine [Click]

    NY Post: Russian Marines reportedly rebelled and turned back warships to avoid assault on Ukraine beach
    By lee brown

    Terrified Russian Marines defied orders to storm a mine-filled Ukrainian beach — and instead forced their fleet of warships to turn around and flee, according to local reports.
    Members of the 810th brigade of Russia’s Marine force allegedly told Ukraine’s Dumskaya paper that they had been ordered Monday to carry out an underwater assault on Luzanovsky beach in Odessa.
    But at the last minute, “a real rebellion took place” and the crews managed to turn around their ships and flee the bay, according to the report also shared by the Odessa Journal Tuesday.
    The “large group” of Russian warships “suddenly withdrew” just as Ukraine’s military was about to “shoot back,” retired Ukrainian diplomat Olexander Scherba also tweeted.

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    1. "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"

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  5. Re the repeated standing ovations for the SOTU speech--that certainly IS remarkable. My first thought was that they must have plumbed joy juice into the water fountains. I just might have to watch it; thanks for the heads-up.

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    1. The first third of the speech was about Ukraine. I am so enheartened that even the Republicans are mostly getting behind Ukraine. Some are using it to blame Biden (huh??), but that just underscores that he's been doing a banner job of uniting the NATO behind Ukraine.

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  6. President Biden gave a good, robust speech.

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