Fogbow

Same joke different last line by Putin:

Putin: so who is our President?

Bartender: Zelensky.

A violin isn't big enough.

Volkonski wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 12:28 pm

Per Christopher Steele? Color me skeptical.

I'm concerned about his successor, although I don't know who it would be.

June bug wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 12:44 pm Per Christopher Steele? Color me skeptical.

Yeah, I'll hold off on the champagne for a bit.

tek wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 1:31 pm

June bug wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 12:44 pm Per Christopher Steele? Color me skeptical.

Yeah, I'll hold off on the champagne for a bit.

I don't know about the details of this, but Putin is in videos clearly not well. He raises his one leg in an overcompensating manner, he grips onto things tightly, and is puffy from steroids.

I didn't think Steele is unreliable overall; didn't he put a lot of caveats around the one report?

Yeah, I got pretty excited, then I saw Steele's name.

Who would be next up? Is Medved (sp?) still around.

Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 1:45 pm Yeah, I got pretty excited, then I saw Steele's name.

Who would be next up? Is Medved (sp?) still around.

Paging Mr. Trump. Paging Mr. Trump. You are wanted immediately in Moscow. We have a job opening for you.

pipistrelle wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 1:45 pm I didn't think Steele is unreliable overall; didn't he put a lot of caveats around the one report?

Ya, the "Steele Dossier" was clearly marked as unverified "raw intelligence." Gossip and stuff that needed to be checked out to see if it was true. He said he was actually shocked that so much of it turned out to be true.

The other thing is that it was not complete and it was not meant to be published in its current form.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steele_dossier

The Steele dossier, also known as the Trump–Russia dossier, is a controversial political opposition research report written from June to December 2016, containing allegations of misconduct, conspiracy, and cooperation between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the government of Russia prior to and during the 2016 election campaign. Five years later, it was described as "largely discredited", "deeply flawed", and "largely unverified". However, some aspects of the dossier have been corroborated, namely that Putin and Russia actively favored Trump over Clinton, and that many Trump campaign officials and associates had multiple secret contacts with Russians.

The dossier, leaked by BuzzFeed News in January 2017, without its author's permission, is an unfinished 35-page compilation of raw intelligence based on information from anonymous sources known to the author, counterintelligence specialist Christopher Steele. Steele, a former head of the Russia Desk for British intelligence (MI6), was writing the report for the private investigative firm Fusion GPS, who were paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The dossier's 17 reports allege that Trump campaign members and Russian operatives had conspired to cooperate in Russia's election interference to benefit Trump. It also alleges that Russia sought to damage Hillary Clinton's candidacy. BuzzFeed's decision to publish the reports without verifying their allegations was criticized by journalists and defended by a court ruling.

In general I would class the guy as pretty reliable, 5 years of right wing smears notwithstanding. He certainly has the right kinds of contacts to hear the internal gossip that's going around.

Also, the article has several sources.

I can not decide which is scarier... Putin dying during this conflict, or him living. Being replaced by someone more, or less, competent has so many risks associated with it.

neeneko wrote: ↑Wed May 25, 2022 10:12 am I can not decide which is scarier... Putin dying during this conflict, or him living. Being replaced by someone more, or less, competent has so many risks associated with it.

It's tempting to treat Putin as the personification of evil, responsible for changing the behavior of the Russian government from marginally normal to a horrifying, murdering mob. But he's not responsible for that. The rot in Russian government and the culture that allows this goes back centuries. It's the same force that enabled communism, Ivan the Terrible, Stalin and Potemkin villages. Putin is a product of the culture that enables people like him to gain power. He has some unique malevolence in his pathology, but it's not out of bounds for what the culture creates.

If Putin keeled over tomorrow, there would be a significant succession fight among the Siloviki ("security oligarchs") which may or may not be lengthy. The new Tsar may or may not have much in common in personality with Putin but he will probably be similar in the decisions he makes. Because so many of the people he bested to become the new leader will have stakes in continuing the kleptocracy, nothing will really change. It's extremely unlikely that the new guy will look at what the old guy did and say, "gee, invading Ukraine was a huge mistake. We need to surrender, reset the boundaries to pre-2014, blow up the Crimea bridge and commit to pay $500 billion in reparations to rebuild Ukraine to get rid of these sanctions that are killing us."

There's some possibility that a new leader would try to be more hyper-aggressive in threatening the West, but anything in that vein would likely be laughed at because we have now seen how empty their bellicose threats really are. The new leader is not going to say, "we'll put a million troops in Ukraine to crush them utterly" because everyone knows he doesn't have a million troops. He's not going to say "we'll dust off the 15,000 older tanks we have in storage" because everyone knows that those have been rusting with no maintenance or they have had parts stolen and sold on the black market and few, if any, will actually run. Etc.

IF TRUE, this is their best chance...

Although Putin will probably leave orders to assassinate everyone in the hospital if he doesn't wake up.

Time for tougher sanctions.

“Russian oil chief Maganov dies in 'fall from hospital window”:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62750584

“The chairman of Russia's Lukoil oil giant, Ravil Maganov, has died after falling from a hospital window in Moscow, reports say.
Maganov, 67, was being treated at the city's Central Clinical Hospital and died from his injuries, sources told Russian media.”

Putin certainly isn't very imaginative, is he. Though the pattern does have an intimidation factor to it. When his enemies hear someone fell out a window, they know Putin's hit team is on the loose...

Uninformed wrote: ↑Thu Sep 01, 2022 5:28 am “Russian oil chief Maganov dies in 'fall from hospital window”:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62750584

“The chairman of Russia's Lukoil oil giant, Ravil Maganov, has died after falling from a hospital window in Moscow, reports say.
Maganov, 67, was being treated at the city's Central Clinical Hospital and died from his injuries, sources told Russian media.”

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Lukoil board called for the conflict to end as soon as possible, expressing its sympathy to victims of "this tragedy".