Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

8 is cold. That'll wake your lungs up when you take that first deep breath. It's not unbearable. I can still exercise in that without much trouble. The -30 wind chill shit. That'll rip your skin off.

My blubbery Eastern European ass is far more adjusted to scrotum freezing temps than death humidity.

It's like, 90 degrees and 75% humidity is hot. I don't care what you say. And AA would say, yeah, well, it ain't THAT bad. But when I ride in that weather it absolutely destroys me after a 3 hours. Yeah, after 90 minutes in 10 degrees my extremities are on the verge of hitting that painful numb, but, eh...

I guess what I'm saying is that The Wizard can a giant fucking bag of yuletide dick.

[DaGeezer]

Perhaps. Did Roosevelt consider that when he declared war on Japan and simultaneously joined Britain fighting the Nazis in Europe? In 1942-3 when things looked like they weren't going welll in Europe or the Pacific, should governments have done a cost/benefit analysis of continuing to fight? Obviously they didn't think about that as the costs both human and economic were astronomical. When your talking about reigning in evil that kind of analysis has little to do with achieving an end to said evil.

On the reverse side of that ask yourself if the Japanese or the Nazis considered the cost of the wars they waged in Europe, Asia and the South Pacific Islands would be worth the cost in lives and sovereign treasure lost if they continued to fight the allies and didn't both decide to negotiate a peace deal? This is especially true of Japan after Truman unleashed an A-Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagaskai This is the same circumstance and the same questions we want Putin to face. The way to do that is as I specified above: keep sufficient economic and military pressure on the Russians to force Putin to the bargaining table with Ukraine having the upper hand to force Russian concessions. Failing that, through continued military and economic support to insure that the Ukrainians defeat Russian forces in detail on the Ukrainian battlefield, to force a Russian withdrawal or outright surrender.



This is a rather curious position to stake out given that the Ukrainians are the ones doing the killing of Russians. We have rather conveniently found a way to confront Putin's expansionist war aims in eastern Europe arming the Ukrainians to do just that. I find it hard to justify a position being for killing Russians and not be for arming Ukraine to do that at whatever the cost is.



We might agree to disagree here.



I support that.

It seems to me to be hair splitting debating definitions. You want to rid Russia of Putin through regime change knowing full well he has become a dangerous autocratic, dictator....... the antithesis of freedom and democracy. I see this battle in Ukraine being waged against Putin as a battle between good and evil, democracy and autocracy, freedom and enslavement that follows installation of an autocrat who controls all the levers of power.



Before the Maiden Revolution in 2014 that ousted Russian puppet president Victor Yanukovych, that was correct. After it, not so much. You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity

It is noteworthy that shortly after the sacking Yanukovych, Russian soldiers not wearing uniforms appeared in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts and forced the administrations there to accept Russian officials to administer these oblasts ..... in the end, this became the birth of the DNR and LNR subsequently and just recently illegally identified as Russian territory. Then came the unopposed takeover of Crimea by Russian forces in 2017, another Ukrainian territory claimed to be Russian by Putin just this year. A vast expansion of military and naval bases has appeared there over the last 5 years - a huge threat to shipping via the Dardanelles.

Look, Ukraine is not completely free of bad actors who siphon money off the top or profit from corrupt officials who award contracts to cronies. Neither is any NATO government. I'm aware of action in the US congress that demands audits of funds provided directly to Ukraine. The intent is to weed out corruption. The Zelenski government embraced those efforts. Since the Zelenski government has applied for membership in the EU, there has been a large scale effort to root out corruption and that effort is being monitored by EU and Ukrainian observers who ultimately decide if Ukraine has cleaned up its act to the extent required by the EU for entry.

One has to be blitheringly unaware or uninformed for lack of interest in this part of the world to not know what Putin has been up to over the last decade of his rule in Russia. In the same manner, to not see the threat to freedom and democracy, that Putin's imperial designs represent to eastern European nations that border Russia or are otherwise threatened by Putin's Russia, calling such characterization "BS" is itself unqualified dumbfuckery. Putin needs to be stopped and the Ukrainians can do it with appropriate support from the west.

I guess I should feel honored that you would spend so many words addressing the "dumbfuckery" of what I posted. Where to begin?

1. My position on Ukraine aid is to give them all the military hardware we can so they use it to kill Russians. Great Powers do this nowadays to try to lessen the likelihood of a nuclear war.

2. You want to rid Russia of Putin through regime change knowing full well he has become a dangerous autocratic, dictator....... the antithesis of freedom and democracy. I see this battle in Ukraine being waged against Putin as a battle between good and evil, democracy and autocracy, freedom and enslavement that follows installation of an autocrat who controls all the levers of power.

Hanni deals with this above. Zelinsky has jailed his political opposition and shut down any media he cannot control. We all agree Putin is an evil autocrat. That does not mean Ukraine is "good...democratic...free" as you imply. We support Zelinsky because he is the lesser of two evils and he was attacked by a sworn enemy of the US. IMO, this war would not have happened at all except for the turn-tail-and-run surrender in Afghanistan. We will never know.

3. To compare the situation of Ukraine to that of the US in WWII (for the purpose of supporting interventionism) stretches credulity. I can point to the Vietnam War, Iraq War, Afghanistan War, and even the Korean War as examples of what I mean regarding cost-benefit analyses. How do you picture the world would look today if Russia had won this war in 13 days as our IC predicted? That is what the Biden Administration thought would happen, and they were willing to accept that fate for Ukraine. Their change in attitude now is because the Ukrainians are fighting so bravely and effectively. It does not follow that Ukraine is now "good...democratic...or free". The enemy of my enemy is my friend (think Stalin and FDR).

When the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was debated, only Sen. Gruening of Alaska spoke against it (one other senator voted against it because he opposed all war). Gruening said that the US would be better served in the long run by a united and communist Vietnam as a bulwark against China. LBJ countenanced no such thinking and we fought long and hard for the good, free, and democratic people of South Vietnam. The same BS you are now spouting about Ukraine was said then.


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It would be great for Putin to be put in the position you feel is possible with Ukraine winning the war and forcing Russia to capitulate or pay reparations. IMO, that will never happen because Russia has never done that, historically.

[iam416]

In Columbus, it is currently -5 with a 25 mph wind putting the wind chill at a soul-destroying -30. That's fucking ridiculous.

[Tom W]

Do you really expect the Flint City Council to actually do good stuff for the people of Flint?

Have you ever seen videos of their council meetings?

That's a pretty good chunk of my point. I've only rarely seen ANY city council meetings, but I'll take your's (and Mike's) assertion that the only competent thing to come out of Flint was the passing of the blame on to Snyder and the R's in Lansing.

But really, it could have been fixed at any number of poinst- and done so with less effort, and cost, than what we are doing to help the Ukraine- or for the new scoreboards at the stadium,

[THE_WIZARD_]

In Columbus, it is currently -5 with a 25 mph wind putting the wind chill at a soul-destroying -30. That's fucking ridiculous.

pussy

[iam416]

I know. I just shoveled my driveway in shorts, but I was wearing a winter coat and gloves, and I could only get about halfway through before I took a break. Embarrassing.

[THE_WIZARD_]

wuss

[AlabamAlum]

I got out with the dog for my morning walk in 8F. Normally 2 miles at a decent pace. This morning? 200 yards. Fuck that shit. I have a treadmill.

[iam416]

If your dog is as smart as you claim him to be, then he was probably trying to drag your ass back home 5 yards in.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Mayor of Memphis was just on CNN and he says that part of Tennessee has to do rolling blackouts or they'll overload the system. Everyone will lose power twice a day for about 30 minutes. Comforting.

[iam416]

AA's beloved border collie once sac'd a Queen for a pawn against an IM from Mobile in bullet just to make things interesting.

[AlabamAlum]

If your dog is as smart as you claim him to be, then he was probably trying to drag your ass back home 5 yards in.

He always picks up a scent and tracks something, this morning was no exception, but he didn’t argue when I said “let’s go in.”

[Mike]

Mayor of Memphis was just on CNN and he says that part of Tennessee has to do rolling blackouts or they'll overload the system. Everyone will lose power twice a day for about 30 minutes. Comforting.

They just need to put up a few solar panels. Problem: SOLVED.

[lineygoblue]

Mayor of Memphis was just on CNN and he says that part of Tennessee has to do rolling blackouts or they'll overload the system. Everyone will lose power twice a day for about 30 minutes. Comforting.

I wonder what Tennesseans will do when they're required to buy electric cars.

[AlabamAlum]

AA's beloved border collie once sac'd a Queen for a pawn against an IM from Mobile in bullet just to make things interesting.

You know, I have never admitted this publicly, but he’s solved the Hodge Conjecture. He doesn’t want me to publish the solution until he gets a book deal signed, though. The story of the struggles of a genius dog winning a Noble Prize: “A Beautiful Mutt.”