Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

...because it does. And while Democrats look like they are actually going to come out ahead in redistricting, that still leaves the more than two dozen retirements of long-time Democratic House members, the latest being Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch.

Florida Rep. Ted Deutch announced on Monday he will not seek reelection in November, the latest in a string of Democratic members of Congress who have decided to retire or seek another office in a challenging political environment. 

Deutch has represented Fort Lauderdale since winning his first election in 2010. He will resign from office this fall to serve as the next Chief Executive Officer of the American Jewish Committee. 

Deutch, the chairman of the House Ethics Committee and member of the Foreign Affairs and Judiciary committees, became an outspoken advocate for gun control measures following the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in his district. 

"Our community was profoundly changed on February 14, 2018," said Deutch in a statement. "Seventeen students and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were killed that day, and I have tried every day since to be there for their families and to help them honor the memories of their loved ones in all the ways they are working to make our schools and community safer." 

"I have also tried to support the survivors in any way I can, though it is their powerful voices that have helped create desperately needed change," he added. "The Parkland families and student survivors inspire me every day." 

Deutch also noted his work trying to secure Iran hostage Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent, and grieving the news of his passing in 2020 alongside his family. "I have been forever changed by serving the people of Broward and Palm Beach Counties in Congress," said Deutch. 

Already 30 House Democrats have decided to retire or seek higher office rather than run for reelection in 2022. While not all of those members serve competitive districts, the exodus is a sign that Democrats are not confident of holding the House majority after November's midterm elections.

 

Redistricting battle or no, House Democrats have lost about 15% of their members before a single vote has been cast, and it's can't be a good thing.  That means primaries are going to be super important, so get involved now and recheck your voter registration.

Vote like your country depends on it. It does.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

As Vladimir Putin and the Russian military is finding out, the old adage of "Your war plan rarely survives contact with the enemy" still holds true here in the digital age.

The war in Ukraine isn’t going Russia’s way.

Videos posted on social media show whole columns of tanks and armored vehicles have been wiped out. Others have been stopped in their tracks by ordinary Ukrainians standing on the street to block their advance.

Lightly armed units propelled deep into the country without support have been surrounded and their soldiers captured or killed. Warplanes have been shot out of the skies and helicopters have been downed, according to Ukrainian and U.S. military officials.

Logistics supply chains have failed, leaving troops stranded on roadsides to be captured because their vehicles ran out of fuel.

Most critically, Russia has proved unable to secure air superiority over the tiny Ukrainian air force — despite having the second-largest air force in the world, Pentagon officials say. Its troops have yet to take control of any significant city or meaningful chunk of territory, a senior U.S. defense official said Sunday.

On Sunday, a Russian attempt to seize control of the city of Kharkiv, less than 30 miles from the Russian border, was repelled. A fresh push toward the capital, Kyiv, came to a smoking end in the suburb of Irpin, where videos posted on social media showed the charred remains of Russian tanks and armored vehicles strewn around the streets while Ukrainian soldiers removed weapons from the bodies of dead Russians.

These scenes of humiliation have played out widely on social media, where the Ukrainians have won a clear advantage. Multiple videos from around the country have portrayed scenes of burned Russian tanks, dead Russian soldiers and captured Russians, some barely out of their teens, making plaintive calls home to their parents.

The Russian military has meanwhile issued little in the way of reporting on the Ukraine war, in contrast to the prolific reporting that came out of its intervention in Syria. On Sunday, a spokesman acknowledged that there had been Russian casualties and losses, while saying they were “many times less” than those suffered by Ukraine.

“Russian servicemen are showing courage and heroism while fulfilling combat tasks in the special military operation. Unfortunately, there are killed and injured among our comrades,” the state news agency Tass quoted military spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying. “The losses of the Russian Armed Forces are many times less than the number of servicemen of the Ukrainian armed forces.”

 

We've gone from Baghdad Bob to Moscow Mikhail. 

 

Meanwhile, on the global finance front, Moscow is getting hammered and sickled.

Russia was scrambling to prevent financial meltdown Monday as its economy was slammed by a broadside of crushing Western sanctions imposed over the weekend in response to the invasion of Ukraine. 

President Vladimir Putin was due to hold crisis talks with his top advisers after the ruble crashed to a record low against the US dollar, the Russian central bank more than doubled interest rates to 20%, and the Moscow stock exchange was shuttered for the day. 

The European subsidiary of Russia's biggest bank was on the brink of collapse as savers rushed to withdraw their deposits. Economists warned that the Russian economy could shrink by 5%. 

The ruble lost about 20% of its value to trade at 100 to the dollar at 6 a.m. ET after earlier plummeting as much as 40%. The start of trading on the Russian stock market was delayed, and then canceled entirely, according to a statement from the country's central bank. 

The latest barrage of sanctions came Saturday, when the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada said they would expel some Russian banks from SWIFT, a global financial messaging service, and "paralyze" the assets of Russia's central bank. 

"The ratcheting up of Western sanctions over the weekend has left Russian banks on the edge of crisis," wrote Liam Peach, an emerging market economist at Capital Economics, in a note on Monday. 

Putin's government has spent the past eight years preparing Russia for tough sanctions by building up a war chest of $630 billion in international reserves including currencies and gold, but at least some of that financial firepower is now frozen and his "fortress" economy is under unprecedented assault. 

"We will ... ban the transactions of Russia's central bank and freeze all its assets, to prevent it from financing Putin's war," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement Sunday. 

The United States also banned US dollar transactions with the Russian central bank in a move designed to prevent it accessing its "rainy day fund," senior US administration officials said. 

"Our strategy, to put it simply, is to make sure that the Russian economy goes backward as long as President Putin decides to go forward with his invasion of Ukraine," a senior administration official said. 

Peach at Capital Economics estimates that about 40% of Russia's reserves are now off limits to Moscow. 

"External conditions for the Russian economy have drastically changed," the Russian central bank said. "This is needed to support financial and price stability and protect the savings of citizens from depreciation," the bank added.

 

Putin has drastically underestimated both the density of Ukraine's collective spine and just how much the rest of Europe truly hates his ass, with Ukraine President Zelenskyy's impassioned plea for help from the European Union falling on very receptive ears. 

As the leaders of the European Union gathered for an emergency summit on Thursday night, momentum was already moving toward imposing tough new sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

But a handful of key leaders, notably including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, were reluctant to proceed with some of the harshest proposals. Scholz told reporters on the way into the meeting in Brussels that he wanted to focus on implementing sanctions that had already been approved before enacting new ones.

After a perfunctory debate, the presidents and prime ministers quickly approved sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and some of Russia’s biggest banks. Talk of barring Russia from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT, however, stalled amid skepticism on the part of Scholz and the leaders of Austria, Italy and Cyprus, according to officials familiar with the deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations.

Then Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dialed into the meeting via teleconference with a bracing appeal that left some of the world-weary politicians with watery eyes. In just five minutes, Zelensky — speaking from the battlefield of Kyiv — pleaded with European leaders for an honest assessment of his country’s ambition to join the European Union and for genuine help in its fight with the Russian invaders. Ukraine needed its neighbors to step up with food, ammunition, fuel, sanctions, all of it.

“It was extremely, extremely emotional,” said a European official briefed on the call. “He was essentially saying, ‘Look, we are here dying for European ideals.’” Before ending the video call, Zelensky told the gathering matter-of-factly that it might be the last time they saw him alive, according to a senior European official who was present.

Just that quickly, Zelensky’s personal appeal overwhelmed the resistance from European leaders to imposing measures that could drive the Russian economy into a state of near collapse. The result has been a rapid-fire series of developments boosting Ukraine’s fight to hold off the Russian military and shattering the limits on European assertiveness in national security affairs.

The actions culminated on Saturday, when the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union announced they would bar several major Russian banks from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT, crack down on Russian oligarchs, and prevent the Russian central bank from bailing out the domestic economy.

 

Putin is suddenly on the losing end of this, or at least his best case now is the Pyrrhic victory end of this. He figured Zelensky would flee, the government would collapse, Russian Quislings could be brought in, and his $630 billion in the bank would hold out for the rough bits.

He's been wrong on all accounts.  This was supposed to be over by now in Kyiv. Vladimir is finding out reality is hard outside the Kremlin bubble.