Ever wonder what people read the most on Daily Kos? Here's February's list

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday March 01, 2023 · 2:30 PM PST

2023/03/01 · 14:30

no image description available — February's top story centered on libertarians dealing with Arizona's water crisis

I always enjoy perusing our traffic stats, sussing out what you all are most interested in reading about. Perhaps you guys would enjoy a look as well?

Here are February’s top stories, ranked from the top. Note that there are various ways to measure a story’s popularity—page views, time of engagement (not a great story if people bounce after reading the first line, even if a “page view” is notched), number of comments or recommends. In fact, our various metrics suites will often disagree with each other.

The metric used for this list is “engaged minutes,” which rewards longer stories or those with active and engaged comment discussions. If you like this kind of list, I can play around with what it would look like based on other metrics. So let’s get to it!

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Daily Kos Staff

Monday February 27, 2023 · 2:15 PM PST

2023/02/27 · 14:15

UPDATE: Tuesday, Feb 28, 2023 · 12:32:41 AM +00:00 · kos

#Bakhmut:

Not much more than 1 km (0.6 miles) separates two of the last main supply lines into the city from #Russian forces.

The situation is critical. pic.twitter.com/JB8Hl7ZRzO
— The Cube (@War_cube_) February 27, 2023

Either Ukraine has a counter-attack in the wings to open up some breathing space, or they’re going to have to leave Bakhmut soon.

On Friday, we looked at tankie and MAGA tweets in the run-up to Russia’s illegal and murderous invasion of Ukraine. Today, let’s look at how #ConfidentlyWrong they were in the days after.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday February 26, 2023 · 11:48 AM PST

2023/02/26 · 11:48

A Territorial Defense Forces soldier from Chernihiv, somewhere in Ukraine

Cold War armies were organized around the division. For the U.S., it looked like this:

Field Army. 50,000 soldiers. (last used in Gulf War)
Corps. 20-45,000 soldiers. Two divisions.
Division. 10-15,000 soldiers. 3 brigades
Brigade/Regiment. 2-5,000 soldiers. 3-5 battalions
Battalion/Squadron. 500-1,000 soldiers. 3-5 companies/battery/troop
Company/Battery/Troop. 60-200 soldiers. 3-4 platoons
Platoon. 20-50 soldiers. 3-4 squads
Squad. 5-10 soldiers.

“Batteries” are artillery, “companies” are armor and infantry, and troops and squadrons are used by cavalry units. A regiment is generally units of the same kind—all tanks, all infantry, all artillery. A brigade is combined arms, so it takes pieces from various regiments and melds them together into a unit that can fight as a self-contained force.

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Daily Kos Staff

Friday February 24, 2023 · 1:25 PM PST

2023/02/24 · 13:25

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 29: Fox News host Tucker Carlson discusses 'Populism and the Right' during the National Review Institute's Ideas Summit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel March 29, 2019 in Washington, DC. Carlson talked about a large variety of topics including dropping testosterone levels, increasing rates of suicide, unemployment, drug addiction and social hierarchy at the summit, which had the theme 'The Case for the American Experiment.' (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) — Tucker Carlson isn't the only dumbass being wrong about Russia.

We can call this story #ConfidentlyWrong.

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Daily Kos Staff

Friday February 24, 2023 · 12:10 PM PST

2023/02/24 · 12:10

LVIV, UKRAINE - FEBRUARY 23: Rolls of toilet paper depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin stand on a table for sale at an outdoor market on February 23, 2023 in Lviv, Ukraine. Tomorrow, February 24, will mark the first anniversary of Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) — Russia's image is in the you-know-where.

Just a couple of days ago, Russian state propagandists lamented their lack of allies in their illegal and murderous invasion of Ukraine.

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Daily Kos Staff

Friday February 24, 2023 · 6:00 AM PST

2023/02/24 · 06:00

Ukrainian soldiers prepare for battle somewhere in eastern Ukraine

In the early days of the war, while most reports talked about Russia’s armored and airborne vanguards, pushing in from four different axes and over a dozen lines of attack, I was talking about something else: logistics.

kos

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday February 23, 2023 · 4:18 PM PST

2023/02/23 · 16:18

I’ve tried to stay out of any tit-for-tat with the Daily Kos Guild. You all don’t need to get dragged into what is an unfortunate internal dispute. But I’m not going to let rampant misinformation continue to remain unchallenged.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday February 19, 2023 · 10:10 AM PST

2023/02/19 · 10:10

Soldiers of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces in training

UPDATE: Sunday, Feb 19, 2023 · 8:07:32 PM +00:00 · kos

If a single Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicle, with no heavy armor (i.e. tanks) or infantry support, can operate like this, it means that the Russians being pushed back don’t have the capability to deal with armor. That is, no armor of their own, no anti-armor missiles, no precision-guided artillery, and no air support.

Russians clearly having a problem in the south of Bakhmut because this BMP-2 razes them and pushes them further south.#Bakhmut #Donetsk #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/M75OkVOWzU
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) February 19, 2023

However, it also betrays Ukraine’s own lack of combined arms capabilities. That is what the U.S. and allies are hoping to remedy before the new Western armor is put into play this spring.

UPDATE: Sunday, Feb 19, 2023 · 7:50:32 PM +00:00 · kos

Hundreds of Putin supporters have descended on Washington D.C. to rally in Russia’s support. Speakers like Jimmy Dore and Cynthia McKinney prove, once again, the horseshoe theory of politics—that the ideological spectrum isn’t a line, it’s a horseshoe, with the far right and far left meeting at the bottom.

The vatnik rally in DC is live-streaming and the comments are hilarious. Accusing each other of being feds or hippie vegans, complaining about not having a moderator in the comments, demeaning testicles. If you enjoy watching car crashes check it out. https://t.co/1htmEpEu4X
— Dognerys 🔥and🩸 (@2ug2ug) February 19, 2023

Seymour Hersh delighted tankies and Russians everywhere by writing fiction-mascarading-as-fact story claiming the United States sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline. I’ve already noted Snopes excellent takedown of the story, focused on Hersh’s sketchy sourcing.

Indeed, the entire story hinges on a single "source with direct knowledge of the operational planning." Supposedly, this source was aware of a top secret task force convened by President Joe Biden to destroy the pipeline. This source is also a legal expert, claiming a Biden press conference created a loophole that eliminated the need to brief congressional leaders. This source also knew about Norway’s secret deliberations over this supposed operation. This source was also in the room at the CIA and State Department as they planned the operation. And this source was aware of the conversations happening in the deep sea diver community.

This source got around!

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Daily Kos Staff

Saturday February 18, 2023 · 9:00 AM PST

2023/02/18 · 09:00

The libertarian paradise of Rio Verde Foothills is nestled out in the desert near Scottsdale, Arizona.

It was formed specifically to avoid the rules and regulations required for civilized society, and it is situated in dry, harsh conditions. For example, Arizona law requires developers to plan for 100 years of water use. Every new development has to engage in a process for securing water rights in compliance with the law. Rio Verde Foothills avoided that requirement by exploiting a big loophole in the law: It only requires it for subdivisions larger than five homes. You can guess what developers in Rio Verde Foothills did to circumvent that—they built five-home lots. For them, it was an easy payday, and the self-styled “rugged individualists” who chose to live there could brag about keeping government off their backs and paying fewer taxes. The area doesn’t even have a government.

Problem is, they live in a desert. Humans need water to survive.

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Daily Kos Staff

Monday February 13, 2023 · 12:12 PM PST

2023/02/13 · 12:12

A fighter with Kharkiv's Territorial Defense Force takes a break during training exercises

It just can’t be overstated just what a disaster Vuhledar has been for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

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Daily Kos Staff

Sunday February 12, 2023 · 10:48 AM PST

2023/02/12 · 10:48

Call sign 'Skrepka' of the Territorial Defense Forces: "I survived oncology, so I'll survive the war."

With Russia’s failing big winter offensive racking up massive losses the last few days, why don’t we check in on the tankies and see how they’re coping? You can find previous editions of this irregular feature here, here, here, here, and here. As a reminder, a tankie is someone who believes that imperialism is bad, and only the United States can be imperialist. Everything else, and I mean everything, is the fault of the United States. It looks like this:

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Daily Kos Staff

Monday February 06, 2023 · 12:56 PM PST

2023/02/06 · 12:56

Ukrainian special operations forces, somewhere on the ... well, somewhere

UPDATE: Tuesday, Feb 7, 2023 · 6:27:29 AM +00:00 · kos

Looks like Russia’s latest Vuhledar disaster has shown up in Ukraine’s daily claimed kills:

14 Tanks and 28 APCs.
A large part of that is going to be from Vuhledar. They really are going to need that meter maid.

(Is this the first time it's over 1k liquidated?) pic.twitter.com/4HAE7iJCpL
— Def Mon (@DefMon3) February 7, 2023

Apparently, Ukraine claimed over 1K dead the first few days of the war, but it’s been a long time since.

UPDATE: Monday, Feb 6, 2023 · 10:19:39 PM +00:00 · kos

Here is an example of one of those eight-man infantry assault groups I discuss below (although I think I count nine):

The umpteenth assault group that drifted off after a meeting with the 30th mechanized brigade. pic.twitter.com/ydBNeCpRXL
— NOËL 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) February 6, 2023

UPDATE: Monday, Feb 6, 2023 · 9:47:21 PM +00:00 · kos

Holy shit. You know Vuhledar, where Russian naval marines are getting their ass kicked, time and time again? Well, it happened YET AGAIN.

We had already the news from @Tatarigami_UA that 30 Russian vehicles in the sector of Vuhledar have been knocked out or damaged and this picture from Deep State UA corroborates it. #Vuhledar #Donetsk #Ukraine https://t.co/s7WBY2OylP pic.twitter.com/gzzqFqmbuu
— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) February 6, 2023

Update: More video from that scene above. Viewer discretion advised.

Last week I wrote about the importance of combined arms warfare, and how the U.S. was working to improve Ukraine’s military coordination between armor, infantry, engineering, artillery, intelligence, electronic warfare, and air assets. That skill will be critical to Ukraine’s success, with thousands of new Western armor pieces flooding into the country over the next three months in preparation for a springtime counteroffensive.

Meanwhile, on the Russian side, the supposed “second army” of the world doesn’t give a rat’s ass about combining its military elements into anything even vaguely resembling coordination.

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Ever wonder what people read the most on Daily Kos? Here's February's list

Ukraine update: Bakhmut and Vuhledar updates, plus another year-ago look at Tankie/MAGA tweets

Ukraine update: Russia's 'BTG' was always a joke, and now it's dead

Slava Ukraini: Let's go back and see what the pro-Russia side was saying a year ago

Slava Ukraini: For some reason, no one wants to hang out with loser Russia

Slava Ukraini: The Ukraine war is a story about logistics, and it's still playing out one year in

Daily Kos is following the agreement it signed with the Guild

Ukraine Update: More holes emerge in Seymour Hersh's fanfic story; No Russia in 2024 Olympics

Rugged Arizona libertarians hilariously beg government to bail them out

Ukraine update: The obscure, unheralded weapon that won the Battle of Vuhledar

Ukraine Update: Tankies love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians

Ukraine Update: Russia really can't do combined arms warfare