Favorite Rejects 2022-02-28

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

The Russians' plan to drive to Kyiv and declare victory is dead. If they're going to win, they're going to have to grind it out.

Guy Elster @guyelster

Latest UK intelligence suggests no big changes in the battlefield after four days of war https://t.co/0cYhQddCcr

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Huh. It looks like some sort of annexation or de facto annexation of Ukraine was the plan.

пані Маруся @sea_inside3

RIA Novosti accidentally published a pre-prepared article for the "end of the operation" on February 26th. Due to the defeat in key areas, the article was deleted, so you can read what kind of future they planned for Ukraine. thread with translation of the article. https://t.co/ZFxXeubSqq

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

This was a (foreseeably) disastrous course of action by Putin; many US hawks (to say nothing of weirdo Putin fanboys like Trump) have spent years overrating his savvy which has just been doing loose poker strategy in a game with unbounded downside.

slowboring.comInvading Ukraine is a really bad ideaPutin should just say no to pointless blunders

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp

I beg people who write this kind of thing to take a single second to think about the problems with lumping all "democracies" and "autocracies" in a single category theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

The War on Cars @TheWarOnCars

"Just remember this. You’ve made a choice, and that choice tells your community that you are absolutely, totally, 100 percent comfortable with killing someone."

slate.comIf You Drive a Giant Truck, You Are Declaring You’re Cool With Accidentally Killing a StrangerWhat do you think happens when those 4,000 pounds strike someone?

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Absolutely. But worth saying that this is not inevitable … like suppose (hypothetically!) the USA were run by a blustery hotheaded egomaniac with compromising Kremlin ties who commands zero respect on the world stage and views every topic through personal enrichment.

Peter Baker @peterbakernyt

In almost every way, Putin seems to have achieved the opposite of what he ostensibly wanted. Instead of pushing the US out of Europe, there are more American troops back on the continent. Instead of driving a wedge into the West, he has unified it. (1)

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Omar Wasow @owasow

How’s this for a counterfactual: — Marshall waits out 1992 election — Marshall dies 4 days after inauguration — Clinton, not Bush, appoints replacement — Flips the Court’s 2000 decision in Bush v Gore — Gore potentially appoints two more liberal justices https://t.co/Zksolylbcd https://t.co/nnrWnORvlq

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

@NateSilver538 The so-called experts in the American intelligence community got this [checks notes] totally right.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Great to see Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer all join Team Normalcy this week while Putin holds meetings at his weird long table.

Seung Min Kim @seungminkim

Per email to White House staffers, the WH campus is lifting its mask requirement effective tomorrow

Michael Kofman @KofmanMichael

Long thread about how I think the first 96 hours have gone, still very early/incomplete impressions. The initial Russian operation was premised on terrible assumptions about Ukraine’s ability & will to fight, and an unworkable concept of operations. Moscow badly miscalculated. 1/

Petri Mäkelä @pmakela1

Actually not a bad idea. Russians need to rise up and this would certainly encourage them, while not offering any free passes away.

Polly P 🇺🇦 @PollyLegend

Now wouldn't it be wonderful for the West to offer to treat those wounded troops. An airlift of injured into hospitals would certainly save lives and message the Russian public in the most stunning way. https://t.co/pY32YJbfyu

Conor Sen @conorsen

“What Russia did in the last few years was basically build buffers that are suited to defend against the kinds of sanctions that came in 2014,” Mr. Kluge said. “But against the sanctions that have come now, there’s simply no proper defense.”

wsj.comThe West’s Sanctions Barrage Severs Russia’s Economy from Much of the WorldIn just days, the country has been all-but-unplugged from a global system that powered its transition from a closed, government-controlled economy to a relatively modern one that yielded Western goods, foreign travel and a middle-class lifestyle.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Right now 55 nuclear plants provide ~20 percent of US electricity. If we had 1,000 then the electrical grid would produce zero emissions with plenty of spare capacity to electrify all our cars and home heating.