Keef

People are going to believe what they want to believe. You have some of the powerful and informed people in government (Harry Reid, Obama, Clinton) saying we have no idea what these ships are and we can't explain them. You have multiple whistle blowers who both ran inquiries into the subject for offices in the pentagon coming forward. Grusch filed a whistleblower complaint through the appropriate channels within the pentagon and the inspector who reviewed his case (and could review the confidential information in support of it) found his claims credible and urgent. He's testified for hours under oath in closed door committee meetings to congress, who is all of a sudden VERRYY interested in this. We have videos, radar sigantures, and all manner of evidence from our military. The military has openly admitted these things exist, we don't know what they are, we can't stop them in our airspace, and we don't think its Russia/China. If you want ride with Mick West and his tired schtick (which he has been doing for years) then so be it.

Mick West is a fuckhead. The notion that Mick West knows more about what happened than the best pilots in our Navy - armed with the most advanced tech we have - and the radar operators on the aircraft carrier is insane.

I'm at a firm similar to Winston and Strawn. Some of the tax partners are $2K/hr. and even senior associates are decently over $1K/hr. The $750/hr. folks were probably first years, as sad as that is to type.

He defered on a lot of the juicy questions to closed door hearings, as its still classified.

Mitch Mustain...that's a name I haven't heard in ages. I remember all the handwringing over Mustain and the other players from Springdale (a two WRs, TE, and OL) that year. None of them really amounted to much of anything aside from one the receivers who had a decent career at USC after transferring from Arkansas.

I mean, I'm 100% cool if we did moneywhip them and no one else could match. Just win baby.

Come the fuck on. People act like there's this long line of get people who've gotten rich giving interviews and publishing a book. How much do you actually think that pays?? He's 36 and has a long career in front of him had he not just torpoded it. He worked on the most classified projects we as a country possess. Do you really think a TV interview with a third rate news organization is more lucrative than transitioning to work as a contractor at Lockheed Martin? And the whistleblower program he's utilizing contains criminal penalties if he's found to be being deliberately untruthful. He's already given hours of classified testimony regarding these allegations to congress and was able to supplement those disclosures with confidential documents that haven't been declassified yet. Do you hear anyone in government disputing what he's saying? Grusch is also represented in his whistleblower complaint by Charles McCullough III who is the original inspector general of the Intelligence Community — this is a serious lawyer. The complaint was signed not only by McCullough, it was also signed by the managing partner of his firm — lawyers of this caliber would be unlikely to sign onto a complaint with these kinds of allegations in it if they did not do something to independently verify the claims, given that failing to do so would open them up to professional consequences. I totally understand people questioning Bob Lazar. I've seen nothing at this juncture to make me question David Grush.

*Shrugs*. That's a theory I heard Lou Elizando mention on a podcast, fwiw. I think its getting hard to ignore that the US government is in the process of acknowledging that there are non-human vistors/ships visting us frequently. There are loads of crazies in the UFO community that give it a bad name. But the Leslie Keans and Lou Elizandos of the world keep delivering the goods, and the US government has openly admitted there are ships visiting our airspace that they can't explain what they are or how they're doing what they're doing. The technology demonstrated in the videos released by To the Stars Academny and the New York Times shows technology that would shift the global power paradigm if it fell into the wrong hands. America would lose its collective shit if Russia or China came out with a airplane that could do what the tic-tacs in the Go Fast video did. But our military has basically just shrugged our shoulders and said "yep, we don't know what it is". Look at the mad scramble to develop AI weapons or, decades ago, the quest for nuclear weapons. That's just not how we operate with game changing new tech unless we already know what it is. So maybe it comes from the heavens. Maybe it comes from our oceans. I have no idea. But if you can't see the gradual, controlled priming of the public going on, you aren't paying attention.

*adjusts tin foil hat* Why does it have to come from outer space? I've heard interviews with Elizando where he hints pretty heavily that at least of the activity may be coming from our oceans. That jives with reports of these things going underwater and solves the interspace travel problem. We know more about the surface of the moon than we do whats underneath our oceans. And agree that with the poster who said we're in the middle of controlled disclosure. I have no idea if Grusch is legit or not, but he's saying some pretty bananas stuff (we have multiple classes of non-human ships, we recovered a UFO from Mussolini, these ships have killed members of our armed forces, we've shot down a few, etc.) and a number of government sources and members of congress are basically all backing him up. The whistleblower program he's taking advantage of has criminal penalities if its found he's being dilberately untruthful, he's being repped by the former inspector general of the intelligence community, and he's already given hours of testimony to congress. If the party line was still to tar and feather all people who utter the word "UFO", the feds would be taking a different posture on this IMO. This feels like its being done with the tacit approval of the powers that be. I think we'll look back on this in ten years as a massive event in human history.

My first thought was omg we're screwed. My second thought was if 90% of white collar jobs are threatened within 10 years (which seems likely), there will be a political solution. My third thought was well, we're terrible at political solutions. So I'm right back at my first thought.

Optically it looks horrible, but (having zero insight) I bet its just unfortunate timing. There's a really important deadline on March 15 for incentive compensation for tax purposes, so pretty much everyone has in their bonus plan that cash incentive compensation has to be paid out by March 15th of the year following the year in which it was earned.

Credit risk isn't really a legal issue, so we're not advising on it. We're as much in the dark as anyone. But, wanted to say sorry for the situation you're in. Can only imagine the stress that you're being put under.

I'm a lawyer at one of the big tech law firms (think Goodwin, Cooley, Fenwick WSGR). Have been getting calls all day from founders wanting to know if they can stick their SVB money in our client IOLTA trust account for safe keeping. Truly wild times.

Interesting, thanks. So its all for show anyway. And would differ with your view on #2, at least outside the governmental employer setting.

Question for the Surly law dawgs - if a state university terminates you for Cause (as defined in an employment agreement) and the employee disputes the finding of Cause and sues the university, is the university protected under sovereign immunity in Texas? Because you could drive a truck through the cause definition that has been shared and I'm curious why Beard's lawyer allowed so broad a provision. He had all the leverage in the world when negotiating.

Did we read different articles? About the only thing reassuring to me in there is the blurb that there isn't much strategic use for the tactical nukes in Ukraine, so it seems unlikely for Putin to use those.

There are a lot of very legitimate reasons in this thread to take a hardline stance against Russia in this thread, but the Russian Scrubs guy said something crazy at a nationalist rally is not one of them.

There is obviously no equating what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan vs. what Putin is doing in Russia. They are not moral equivalents, or even close to that. But my point was we as a population got all riled up about two consecutive wars that, looking back on it, I have a hard time articulating real reasons why we were even there (especially Iraq). And the question that was posed was, if Russia were to use nuclear weapons, should we escalate further (or even respond reasonably in kind, like by directly attacking Russian troops) and risk a global nuclear war. I said no, for the reasons I articulated, and others said yes, for reasons (that are very good reasons) that I appreciate and understand.

That's a fair critique. What I'd say in response is that I think if Putin felt the walls were closing in domestically (dictators don't retire...), I think there's a non-zero chance he'd start a nuclear war to save face. I don't think those pressures exist to attack a NATO member.

I can arrive at the conclusion I don't want a global nuclear war all by myself, thanks. I'm from west Texas, and I can vividly remember the rush up to the Afghanistan war and then the Iraq war (LOL) and how they were painted as moral inevitabilities. A choice between good and evil. I wasn't alive then, but I'm sure Vietnam was the same way. America is my home and I love it, but we have our propaganda too. Putin is an evil evil person, but there are lots of bad people in the world (see, Syria) that Americans don't whip themselves into caring about, and I don't view this an imperative thing for us to be involved in. He's not going to invade a NATO country, and even if he was so inclined, Russia does not have the capacity to wage war on another country in the near future. Whatever gains they hold onto in Ukraine (if any) are going to keep them plenty occupied for years to come. So if I was in charge, which I'm not, we'd be staying out in any militaristic sense. I totally hear Underminer's point, and it's a good one. I just view the risk of pushing your chips into the center of the table to neuter Russia as too high. They've already done a lot of that job for us. It'll take years for them to recover economically, politically (both domestically and internationally), and militarily from this huge gaffe.

If Hitler had nukes, we'd all be dead. Neville Chamberlain was wrong at the time, clearly. But we're playing with a different set of cards now. Absent nukes, we absolutely would have been in a conventional war with Russia, probably several times over. But nukes exist, and we haven't, and I would prefer that we continue to not be in a nuclear war with them.

Look I fully appreciate that this is a thread full of people perfectly willing to match Putin every turn in the hope of crippling Russia. I understand the logic and the rationale. I just don't agree with it, and would prefer we not mess with a cornered and crazed animal over cause that, while I sympathize with deeply, I also have no wish for us to be involved with. Agree to disagree.

I’m reading this and getting an image of some 50 year old guy continuing to give up his lunch money to the grade school bully 40 years later. Why? Because the ultimate goal is to not end up in a fistfight with a bully. Let’s just continue to give him my wallet every day and maybe sometime in the future he’ll leave me alone. He's not taking our lunch money. Or even a close friend's lunch money. He's taking the lunch money of a country that was part of Russia in my lifetime. I'm all for taking every non-military measure in the book against Russia. Decouple our economies. Kick them of SWIFT. Etc. But the bottom line is nuclear war is the worst outcome from the whole world, and I do not support us being the world's police.

Are you willing to risk your entire family on that premise? I'm not. He's paid a grave price for his invasion of Ukraine. Russia is a pariah, both economically and politically. It's not near the price he deserved to pay, but it is a price, and once the seal is off a nuclear warhead, I think we're all toast. If you don't die in the initial blast, you'll starve. That's the choice we're looking at.

I'm all for staring down Putin, standing up for Ukraine, etc. But the ultimate goal of what we do should be this: do not end up a nuclear conflict. If that means giving Russia the annexed lands, so be it. I have no interest in America (and the world) being vaporized over a country half a world a way. Putin needs an off ramp so he can save face, and I'm all for giving it to him. I doubt that he's learned his lesson or anything, but the odds that he actually mount another land grab in his lifetime seems remote. He doesn't have the political capital internally to do it.