Today's News: Hard to believe, isn't it, but Doug Ford seems to be winning

I still find it hard to believe that a lot of people in Ontario are still intending to vote for Ford and the Conservative party, in spite of his awful performance as premier. 

Then again, I also find it hard to believe that so many people in Saskatchewan can keep voting for the Sask Party. But they do. 

It's like people just don't believe that government could be done better. 

But it can be.

Hey Ontario: If you insist on making fun of Sask rednecks and the Alberta 💩 show, I have a mirror for sale.

— 🇨🇦 Citizen Keen 🇺🇦 (@livv_idd) May 20, 2022

Ontario and Quebec experienced a terrible derecho storm on Saturday, causing 10 deaths and millions in damages. Ford did his usual disappearing act on Sunday but Del Duca showed up!

NEW: Ontario Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca suspends his campaign schedule for today to visit the areas of Eastern Ont hit by Saturday’s storm.

Del Duca criticized PC Leader Doug Ford for campaigning in Toronto rather than going to affected areas. #onpoli pic.twitter.com/ZHVu2WkSul

— Colin D'Mello | Global News (@ColinDMello) May 23, 2022

Ford did wander through the ruins today but this is what happened:

The part at the end where the OPP officers put their hand on Sean after Mr Ford is in the vehicle.

Not cool. https://t.co/MNBSjLQHC3

— Mercedes Stephenson (@MercedesGlobal) May 24, 2022

Hey, if you've lost Mercedes Stephenson...

But here's another interesting comment about the PC polling problems:

No show for 4 years, no-shows at campaign appearances/debates. Let the bots and allies at MSM do the rest by pretending. Welcome to the only way Doug can win. #StopVotingForAssholes.

— Dean Blundell (@ItsDeanBlundell) May 23, 2022

And I am hoping this will prove to be correct:

There is a shift happening. The Ontario PC Party knows. Pay attention to what is happening in your riding and vote strategically to ensure the conservative candidate loses. Avoid the split. #VoteFordOut2022

— Tom Whittaker (@whittakertp) May 23, 2022

Moving to Ukraine, here's what we all need to remember now: 

Russia has spent my entire lifetime building its networks of clandestine supporters around the world. Putin is now calling in those chips as he desperately tries to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Ukraine.

Keep this in mind whenever you hear the kind of talk like Kissinger gave at Davos today:

#Kissinger and Ukrainian president #Zelensky both spoke at Davos (via video link). What they had to say was very, very different, and Kissinger’s remarks will make huge waves: https://t.co/SFwhWPfDCZ

— Rajan Menon (@rajan_menon_) May 24, 2022

His talk will give permission to Republicans to flock to Putin's side, so it wouldn't surprise me to hear even more appeasement talk over the next few weeks, regardless of Ukraine continuing to make advances on the battlefields.  

Here's some more reaction to the appeasement idea:

It is time to stop worrying about sparing Putin’s feelings. That is the mindset that led to the Russian invasion. Russia must suffer such a devastating defeat that it will be decades before another Russian leader thinks of attacking a peaceful neighbor. https://t.co/TDnQq9ogkv

— Max Boot 🇺🇦 (@MaxBoot) May 23, 2022

A ceasefire is very nice, but not if it means the Russians use it to regroup and try again.

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) May 23, 2022

There is a danger, a very great danger, that Ukraine is depleted, the international food crisis grows and the alliance frays. But the answer to that is to expel Russians from Ukraine even faster.

— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) May 23, 2022

Kos writes: 

Within the next 4-6 weeks, if not sooner, I fully expect Russia’s offensive operations to fizzle, and for a transition to a full defensive posture. 

Putin will declare victory, claiming all he ever really wanted was a land bridge to Crimea. And then he’ll demand negotiations to cement that new status quo, much like 2014 cemented Crimea and the separatist Donbas regions as Russian territory. 

But why would Ukraine do that, as new armored brigades come online, and the overall size of its armed forces swells from 700,000 today, to over 1 million in a couple of months? What makes the NY Times think that recapturing Russian-held territory is so unrealistic, when Ukraine has already pushed Russia out from over half of the territory it captured at the start of the war, prior to receiving critical offensive weapons from the West? 

Ultimately, Ukraine will decide if and when to head back to the negotiating table. But given the atrocities Russia has committed, compounded by its eliminationist genocidal talk, Ukraine is more than willing to suffer horrendous casualties (50-100 dead Ukrainian servicemembers per day on the Donbas front, according the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy) in order to defend its freedom. 

For Ukraine, the war is existential, and freezing the conflict in place will only guarantee it will need to be rekindled again in the future. There is no scenario in which Russia willingly surrenders Kherson, Crimea, Mariupol, or the pieces of the Donbas it still holds. 

Why let Russia rebuild its army and fix its operational defects? Why scare off potential foreign investment out of fear of continued war? Ukraine really has no choice. 

Now is the time to press its advantage. If the West wants the war the end faster, there’s one way to accomplish that: speed up deliveries of the heavy weaponry Ukraine needs to liberate its territory. The sooner Ukraine can stand up new offensive units, the sooner we can get to the part everyone is desperately waiting for: peace, reconstruction, and the return of normalcy for the Ukrainian people. 

Putin is not the only monster in Russia:

Appearing on Russian state TV, head of RT Margarita Simonyan explained why Russia isn't nuking Ukraine: not because it's wrong, but because it's not practical. They want those territories usable and don't want to kill all inhabitants—only some of them—and need to sort them first. pic.twitter.com/wfe6cgPKiu

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) May 23, 2022

All of the people who think like this must be defeated.

And on a lighter note tonight -- isn't this is a great song?

#UKRAINE: Soldiers fighting on behalf of the entire world for #freedom perform the infamous #Bayraktar song.#WeAreAllUkraine. ✊ pic.twitter.com/reratXwXns

— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) May 23, 2022

Finally, here's something funny: 

Remember two months ago when the Daily Mail created the "half a giraffe" asteroid measurement?

Asteroid half the size of a giraffe strikes Earth off the coast of Iceland https://t.co/x72diJ7q5Q

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) March 14, 2022

Well, now we have Bloomberg News creating the "cook raw salmon" temperature measurement:

"It’s already so hot in parts of South Asia that the air temperatures are blistering enough to cook raw salmon."

What an odd data point.https://t.co/pHfFrVw7rh via @business

— Chris Selley (@cselley) May 24, 2022