Jump to content

SmokeyTheBear

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    3665
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by SmokeyTheBear

  1. 3 minutes ago, Walden Ponderer said:

    Don't forget the Arctic, either. The Russian military is building up like crazy in the Arctic circle, taking advantage of warming, while we're still dithering over whether it's real or not. Because we're morons.

    Russia stands to gain the most from climate change. If it warms enough, Siberia could be the most agricultural rich area in the world. Let alone the resources under the arctic. 

  2. For the first time in our history, America could be invaded. We benefited from relative geographical isolation that allowed us to grow to the super power we are with limited checks from adversaries. With the internet, we created multiple entry points into our society that have left us vulnerable. Russia (and others) finally figured out ways to weaken us by using our own ignorance and perceived exceptionalism against us. 

    • Rage+1 1
  3. 1 minute ago, Captainant said:

    will you fucking address my actual response to your bullshit? Or if you're just trolling and shitposting then cool, we can do that too

    That's not his way of doing things though. He dances on the edges without definitively declaring anything so he can come back at some later date and claim some sort of intellectual superiority on any subject. Always in hindsight. It's masterful in its own way. 

    • Haha 1
  4. 3 minutes ago, DonkeyCigars said:

    So I’m hearing that defense of Biden, in the good bad and ugly, is a defensive maneuver against the right wings that want to tear Biden down or erode his brand and reputation, for political reasons. That makes sense. Politics is a war zone with two competing armies in 2021.

    If you want to characterize it like that, sure. This is a message board with random users posting shit that we get to poke at, discuss, add context and perspective to. As users, you start learning about other users and how they view the world and the context to which they post stuff. Some poke at others in that regard. So within this site, yes it's political war. But guess what, this was developed over decades by media companies and political parties with the zenith being Trump, who made it be his supporters as the true patriots and all others as enemies. That hasn't happened before and thinking that the politics of the day are the politics historically (in America), you are gravely mistaken. Trump was voted in to break the system and now we are to believe that the Biden administration is following suit? Based on what evidence? Pee tapes, Russia Russia Russia, whatever BS lens you try to view the opposition thru is perpetuaring that schism by equating Trumps actions to all others and normalizing it. See annies arguments. Biden took sanctions away for an ally yet added even more sanctions to Russia for their misdeeds. Does that sound like Biden is acquiescing to Putin? 

    Personally I think we should sanction the shit out of Russia but I also am not privy to all the info Biden and team have and the pressures from allies. I don't get to sit in the daily briefings but glad that this President is actually doing so and trust that he can strategize how to deal with Russia better than someone who was their most powerful defender.

    Politics is rarely black and white yet there are those trying to make it so. 

    • Hook 'Em 3
  5. Just now, Anastasis said:

    Amazing that you guys just can’t acknowledge the obvious. 

    That Biden removed sanctions but also added even more sanctions and that means he is in Putins pocket just like Trump? But not like Trump because there was nothing between Russia and Trump? 

  6. 2 minutes ago, DonkeyCigars said:

    Why does everything have to be measured and benchmarked against Trump? Is it because when benchmarked against “satisfactory”, it doesn’t clear the mark? So then one must resort to “but it’s miles better and different than what the flunkie was doing!”

    I saw this a lot with the border stuff too with the detainees.

    Is it a thin defense because it’s your team? Is it because GQP is yelling “hypocrite” or “samesies!” every time Biden does something politically mediocre or both?

    It's because a group of people decided to be a blind defender to all of Trump's and GOP's failings, which were immense, especially compared to just about any other President or party ever. So yes, if you were OK with the strategy of ripping families apart and losing who belongs to who, as a strategy against immigrants coming here, and then later make sure to tweet any little gaff the current President makes, fuck that. 

    We hit a major low with Trump. Trying to tear down the next person to try and fix the things he tore apart seems a bit disingenuous 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  7. 10 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    Straw man on top of straw man just cause y’all dipshits can’t recognize Biden acquiescing to Putin’s interests cause it breaks your brains. 

    Speaking of broken brains, explain how adding sanctions to Putin equals acquiescing to Putin? 

    Bonus round: what is the technique of debate you use when consistently bringing up pee tapes? 

    • Haha 1
  8. 6 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    I was told it was all pee pee tapes and Russian leverage but now we appreciate the wide world of diplomacy. Clowns. 

    You created that box for us. No one stated it was purely pee pee tapes and money laundering leverage. That just helps you both sides the argument. However, those could still be in play, along with a wide range of other factors. Again, context matters. But yes, let's disregard how inept the Trump Admin was at just about everything, including diplomacy. Side note : I'm especially surprised that you are a Bolton defender now. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Like 1
  9. Yes, one of our main allies conviced us to remove sanctions that would benefit them. Do we know if we got something for that change? No. But maybe we did. Or maybe we traded sanctions and that was it. Diplomacy and shit. But don't act like the Biden Admin is in some way identical to the Trump Admin in regards to diplomacy with our allies and our adversaries. 

    spacer.png

    • Hook 'Em 2
  10. Wait, did Biden get rid of ALL the sanctions on Russia? Or just one, with the explanation that it was pretty much pointless because the gasline was near finished. Did he also get rid of the sanctions he put on Russia this past April? Remind us when Biden told the world he trusted Putin more than his own government. Let's both sides this Ana. We all like to revel at your MO in action. 

    • Hook 'Em 5
    • Like 2
  11. 12 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    I know right. People will believe just about any nonsense given certain predisposing factors.

    Honestly, I think Biden should apologize to Putin for making up the whole Russia meddling in our election thing. It was all just a MSM and intelligence conspiracy that we all (oops, I mean most, you are obviously the exception) fell for. It's amazing how you stay above the fray. Do you think we should drop sanctions on them too? 

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/us/politics/russian-bounties-nsc.html

    Quote

     In early 2020, members of a Taliban-linked criminal network in Afghanistan detained in raids told interrogators that they had heard that Russians were offering money to reward killings of American and coalition troops.

    The claim, that Russia was trying to pay to generate more frequent attacks on Western forces, was stunning, particularly because the United States was trying at the same time to negotiate a deal with the Taliban to end the long-running war in Afghanistan. C.I.A. analysts set out to see whether they could corroborate or debunk the detainees’ accounts.

    Ultimately, newly declassified information shows, those analysts discovered a significant reason to believe the claim was accurate: Other members of the same Taliban-linked network had been working closely with operatives from a notorious unit of the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence service, known for assassination operations.

    “The involvement of this G.R.U. unit is consistent with Russia encouraging attacks against U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan given its leading role in such lethal and destabilizing operations abroad,” the National Security Council said in a statement provided to The New York Times.

    The statement was originally drafted and declassified to serve as talking points for officials to use in briefing reporters last month about U.S. sanctions and other punishments against Russia. The White House took diplomatic action — delivering a warning and demanding an explanation for suspicious activities — about the bounty issue, but did not base sanctions on it. The Biden administration did impose sanctions for Russia’s SolarWinds hacking and election interference.

    In briefing reporters, a senior administration official noted that the intelligence community had assessed with “low to moderate confidence” that Russia had offered bounties. The official, focusing on other complex issues, skipped over most of the newly declassified information that had been prepared to explain what the government knew about the bounty issue.

    Afterward, some commentators treated the bare line about confidence levels as a new development that amounted to the government walking back its suspicions from 2020. But The Times had reported last summer that different intelligence agencies, while agreeing on the assessment itself, disagreed on whether to put medium or lower confidence in it. The evidence available to analysts — both alarming facts and frustrating gaps — essentially remains the same.

    The release of the full talking points as a statement is the government’s most detailed public explanation yet about how the C.I.A. came to the judgment that Russia had most likely offered financial incentives to reward attacks on American and allied troops. It also sheds new light on the gaps in the evidence that raised greater concerns among other analysts.

    In the world of intelligence analysis, moderate confidence means the judgment was based on information deemed to be credibly sourced and plausible. Low confidence flags significant concerns about the quality of the sourcing underlying a judgment.

    In the case of the bounty intelligence, officials have said the surveillance-focused National Security Agency more sharply discounted its confidence in the assessment — to “low” — because of a key gap. It had not intercepted any smoking-gun electronic communication about a bounty plot. (The Defense Intelligence Agency shares that view, while the National Counterterrorism Center agrees with the C.I.A.’s “moderate” level, officials have said.)

    But the statement reveals that despite that disagreement over how to rate the quality of available information underlying the core assessment, the intelligence community also had “high confidence” — meaning the judgment is based on high-quality information from multiple sources — in the key circumstantial evidence: Strong ties existed between Russian operatives and the Afghan network where the bounty claims arose.

    “We have independently verified the ties of several individuals in this network to Russia,” the National Security Council statement said. It added, “Multiple sources have confirmed that elements of this criminal network worked for Russian intelligence for over a decade and traveled to Moscow in April 2019.”

    The declassified statement also opened a window into American officials’ understanding of the Russian operatives, known as Unit 29155 of the G.R.U. The government has previously resisted talking openly about the group, although a Times investigation in 2019 linked it to various operations, citing Western security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    By contrast, the National Security Council statement identified other “nefarious operations” around the world that the government thought the squad had carried out — to explain why the discovery of its involvement with the Afghan network was seen as bolstering the credibility of the detainees’ claims about Russian bounties.

    “We have a strong body of evidence of the activities of this G.R.U. unit,” the statement said, accusing it of “a plot to violently disrupt Montenegro’s legislative election in 2016,” of the 2018 poisoning of a former G.R.U. officer, Sergei V. Skripal, in Salisbury, England, and of “assassinations across Europe.”

     

    • Hook 'Em 5
    • Haha 2
  12. 8 hours ago, fattyflattie said:

    Eh. That speaks more on society today. So did Jacob Blake. 

    Speaks to the radical right, not society at large. Keep deflecting from the actual perpetrators. 

  13. 12 minutes ago, DonkeyCigars said:

    I don't know if that sounds like a libertarian utopia or not, I'm not a political libertarian. I apologize for using the term as it's one that is obviously very loaded--what I was meaning to convey is that I'm neither pro nor anti-CRT at this point in my understanding of it. I will float on whichever way the current decides to go once the storm is over.

    Your post though helped me to understand why it's such a big deal in June of 2021-- there are things at stake. It's not an academic/framework conversation-- that's a ruse. It's a class war. B_T is right.

    Anyways, I'll float on now.

     

    There is always a war against the powerful, because the powerful are not always looking out for the collective. And often times counter what is good for the collective in furtherance of more power. That's what a democracy should mitigate. America was built so that each individual had their inalienable rights but we currently do not live in a time where that is true for all because the few who are in power. Apathy towards the power, grows the power. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
Ă—
Ă—
  • Create New...