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Wednesday 12 August 2026

The DSA candidate lost the primary for nomination for governor in Wisconsin. Joe Scarborough is gloating. Crowley (the winner) issued a statement that is the same old Democrat shit. He will be running against a Republican who voted against certifying the 2020 election.

One race and the DSA candidate lost by a small margin and Morning Joe is going to go on about it all morning long. They are terrified by the DSA.

Ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad had been sentenced to death in absentia in Syria.

Tensions in the West Bank increased and resulted in a rare settler-army confrontation near Qusra. The army tried to dispurse settlers from a West Bank outpost set up directly in front of Palestinian homes. The army later withdrew without clearing the settlers. This comes amid a sharp increase in settler land seizures ad attacks on Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s government has spearheaded a rapid expansion of settlements in the territory. The West Bank, territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, is home to some three million Palestinians and 500,000 settlers.

NEWS NOTES

UKRAINE

ARTICLE: Novikov, Illia (8/12/26) “An overnight Ukrainian blitz damages Russia’s Black Sea naval stronghold…” AP News.

· Ukrainian anti-ship missiles and drones blitzed a major Russian naval base on the Black Sea coast overnight. It was the last major stronghold of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.

· Ukraine has limited the once-dominant Black Sea navy.

· Zelensky says that Putin is planning “an additional rapid mobilization of several hundred thousand Russians by the end of the year.

Thursday 13 August 2026

ARTICLE: Cole, Brendan (AUGUST) “How 500,000 new Russian soldiers could shape Ukraine war.” Newsweek.

· Zelensky maintains that these men will be called up after Russians have voted September 18 to 20.

· By Kyiv’s counting Russia has lost 131,000 killed and 93,000 wounded this year alone. Those losses fall heavily on the professionals like drone operators. Cole writes that a “conscript pulled from a provincial town and handed a gun” is not a professional, but a body.

· It may prolong the war but not alter its outcome.

· (Note: Front line charity, Hope for Ukraine.)

· “Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, says Russia is now paying more than 1,000 casualties for every square mile of territory it seizes in Donetsk.”

Friday 14 August 2026

News Shorts:

NEWS AND LIFE NOTES FROM AN OVER-EDUCATED, CHILDLESS ELDERLY LADY (ACCORDING TO JD VANCE) WRITING AWAY IN ONE OF THE SUB-BASEMENTS OF THE MINISTRY OF SNARK.

· Immigration agencies are detaining more than 50 military spouses and parents.

· In a military exercise in Germany earlier this year, U.S. Army troops faced off against Ukrainian drone operators. It didn’t go well for the Americans.

ARTICLE: de Cordoba, Jose (8/14/26) “Cuba throws a birthday bash for Fidel as his legacy lies in ruins.” Wall Street Journal.

· The story line here is this: The Communist Cuban government tries to celebrate Fidel when he has ruined the country.”

· The collapse of the energy grid is blamed on Castro and his policies, when the United States is responsible for the island not having any power. The United States has waged a protracted war against Cuba since 1959.

· A quote from a day laborer: “They are honoring the man who killed the country.”

· Another analyst interviewed was quoted as saying it was an example of “political necrophilia.”

· A retired Cuban ambassador said: “You will hear people say this would not be happening if Fidel were alive.”

· There are no statues of Castro in Cuba, no streets named after him, or government buildings. This is due to a prohibition he imposed shortly after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

ARTICLE: Moinian, Nazee (8/14/26) “Washington’s four wrong assumptions about the Iran war.” The Wall Street Journal.

· Four false assumptions about Iran:

· (1) The regime is a rational actor weighing costs and benefits. Iran is sustained by ideological conviction as much as calculation and “ordinary compromise feel(s) like apostasy, not prudence.”

· (2) There is a fixed pain threshold at which the regime will break. Perhaps so, but Washington is impatient. There may be a fixed pain threshold at which the government will break, but Washington can’t wait for it.

· (3) Battlefield losses become negotiating losses. But, America’s history of success with battlefield wins involves ground-won victories, not air campaigns alone. Even in Kosovo, where NATO prevailed through air power alone, this came about only when ground invasion looked imminent.

· (4) Domestic unrest weakens a government’s hand abroad. “Iran’s Islamic penal code treats domestic unrest as moharebeh, or “waging war against God” an offense that can be punished by death. In January, this standard was expanded to vandalizing public property. “A regime willing to kill its citizens by the thousand has demonstrated that it an absorb and inflict a great deal of pain…”

· “Tehran is wounded, not exhausted.”