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Harrison Bergeron

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Posts posted by Harrison Bergeron

  1. 16 hours ago, F250 said:

    But it's the economic interdependence that is most likely to keep us from going to war with China. Plus from a capitalist perspective it's not the government's place to interfer with the market because we are not communists.

    Globalization isn't going away.

     

    To play devil's advocate, European leaders had that POV in 1913.

  2. 1 hour ago, LTbear said:

    Since the vast majority of other sports had been wearing the "yellow" gold for so long, the AD's goal was to unify all Baylor sports under consistent colors for branding purposes. Many Baylor fans agree with your preference for the true gold helmets. 

    I did not like the move away from Old Gold in the Briles era, but I did like the gold chromes! I generally hate the multiple helmets.

  3. 2 hours ago, texifornia said:

    I'm biased, but the A's have my favorite baseball uniforms with two different spins on green and gold, and it's weird that Baylor isn't on the same level. Oregon's vintage uniforms also have a great pairing of green/gold shades.

    Green has always been my favorite color, and I love the A's Kelly Green uniforms. In college football, gold helmets are rare and very cool - no idea why Baylor would move away from gold in favor of whatever it is sporing now ... and the olive and yellow just likes like vomit (and those Packers unis above).

  4. On 8/13/2021 at 9:29 AM, texifornia said:

    Political correctness aside, these teams have got to stop picking weird meaningless "mascots" that are more a general concept than a thing a kid can identify and draw.

    Agreed, but virtually every mascot can be found to be problematic. For the life of me I cannot understand how the 49ers have not been forced to change their name.

    I'm not even going to post because they're so fugly, but Baylor's move from green and gold to mustard and olive is the worst change I can remember. Basically looks like giant condiments. The good old days:

    image.png.bdc3527834c707ad788ce1ae199e82f0.png

  5. 8 hours ago, blacklab said:

    I'll be monitoring as well. Please report political posts in this thread. I'm not going to move, just going to delete. If I delete more than 2 of your posts you'll be taking a day off.

    If you want to discuss what biden/trump/obama/bush should have done or who's fault it is please go to the CR.

    Please post news/stories about the evacuation here.

    I made the mistake of peeking inside the rubber room. The only thing more predictable was how the Afghanistan withdrawal would turn out.

  6. Just now, dcar00 said:

    I asked the same question earlier (not being a dick) - seems like a lot of NGOs, humanitarian workers, religious groups, etc. I too was shocked there were so many excluding government / military personnel.

  7. 30 minutes ago, Santo89 said:

    Reading the numbers of the Afghan army were greatly inflated and it was confirmed by an inspector generals report. 

    As Afghan army routed, officials say Pentagon vastly overestimated its power | The Times of Israel

    And barely 60% of the Afghan army troops were trained fighters, the West Point analysts said.

    A more accurate estimate of the army’s fighting strength — once the 8,000 air force personnel are taken out of the equation — is 96,000, they concluded.

    I heard somewhere that maybe 50K have been killed fighting the Tallies ... not this week but since 2002 - that may be completely wrong. It sounds like the core problem was its army was setup assuming U.S. support via logistics, air, supplies, etc., and we pulled all of that. It is pretty shocking that they did not put up more of a fight.

  8. 1 hour ago, lateshow said:

    I think he's just old school and cheap. Kinda like Junior still living in the same old shitty house. Remember him sitting and clipping coupons?

    Also, he was more of a street guy and never got into the stock schemes and other higher level scams the family was involved in during their run. 

    I noticed in my re-watch his flaunting his wealth (him and Carmela) did not sit well with the Capos or the soldiers. At noted earlier, he and they are all just dumbfucks. Despite his high IQ, he's got zero EQ.

  9. 33 minutes ago, Parliament said:

    I did the same.  He served in the Navy and planned air strikes.  My dad is a Vietnam veteran, and I'm worried about how similar the images from Kabul are to the fall of Saigon.

    Sounds like the evacuation of foreign nationals is not going well.  We have the airport secure, and flights are fine.  But right outside is a gong show, and folks can't get in.  That's what has me most worried.

    That's the concerning part. I am pretty shocked we would just pick up and leave with that many left behind. Not something I had paid attention to before this week, but I was surprised there were so many non-military folks there. Not sure if those are all government folks or private. I would not want to be an American in Kabul right now. I am praying we do not get a public execution(s).

  10. 55 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

    One subplot to the mafia/drug gangs is that unless you're at the top of the pyramid, there's not that much money.  Paulie is a capo and he lives in a modest apartment it seems but Tony lives in a giant house who has a wife that sucks up cash like a vacuum cleaner.  Most criminal orgs are like that.

    We just finished a rewatch.  My 4th prolly but it's been a while and the wife's first.  What I had forgotten or never realized is how Chase wrote all these characters to be bad people.  Even Silvio (who has fairly likeable) had moment where you realized he was a bad person.  (Hitting strippers and whatnot.)  Bobby might have been the only decent person.

     

    That was one of my favorite chapters of Freakonomics ... the one about the low-level drug dealers.

    Tony's lifestyle did not make sense during round two ... at the beginning he's a capo, and not obvious he's the highest earner but got his stripes via his father and Uncle Jun ... but he has most of the accoutrements season 1 and season 6, and during one of the early (season 3?) raids he obviously has lots of cash stowed away in the vents and with the chlorine. It is an add juxtaposition his season 1 lifestyle vs. the other capos in later seasons (even Silvio as consigliere). Maybe that was just laziness on Chase's part, but Tony seemed to be living like a 5F Boss in S1.

    Regarding Paulie, that never made sense. Given the Tony proforma, seems like taking care of his mom would not have been difficult given no kids, no wife. He's obviously not blowing it on $5K hookers and blow. Maybe a plot hole if we want to nit-pick. Even Johnny Sack's post-boss place seemed awfully modest compared to Tony's pad as capo.

     

  11. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1231636.shtml

    The US troops' withdrawal from Afghanistan has led to the rapid demise of the Kabul government. The world has witnessed how the US evacuated its diplomats by helicopter while Taliban soldiers crowded into the presidential palace in Kabul. This has dealt a heavy blow to the credibility and reliability of the US.

    Many people cannot help but recall how the Vietnam War ended in 1975: The US abandoned its allies in South Vietnam; Saigon was taken over; then the US evacuated almost all its citizens in Saigon. And in 2019, US troops withdrew from northern Syria abruptly and abandoned their allies, the Kurds. Some historians also point out that abandoning allies to protect US interests is an inherent flaw that has been deeply rooted in the US since the founding of the country. During the American War of Independence, the US humbly begged the king of France, Louis XVI, to ally with it. After the war, it quickly made peace with Britain unilaterally and concluded a peace treaty with Britain that was detrimental to France's interests. This put Louis XVI's regime in a difficult position, giving cause for the French Revolution.

    How Washington abandoned the Kabul regime particularly shocked some in Asia, including the island of Taiwan. Taiwan is the region that relies on the protection of the US the most in Asia, and the island's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities have made Taiwan go further and further down this abnormal path. The situation in Afghanistan suddenly saw a radical change after the country was abandoned by the US. And Washington just left despite the worsening situation in Kabul. Is this some kind of omen of Taiwan's future fate?

    Tsai Ing-wen, who had sent a message of condolence to the US president for the death of his dog, did not mention even a word about the change in the situation in Afghanistan. Other DPP politicians as well as the media that tilt toward the DPP downplayed the shocking change as well. But they must have been nervous and feel an ominous presentiment. They must have known better in secret that the US is not reliable.

    The geopolitical value of Afghanistan is no less than that of Taiwan island. Around Afghanistan, there are the US' three biggest geopolitical rivals - China, Russia and Iran. In addition, Afghanistan is a bastion of anti-US ideology. The withdrawal of US troops from there is not because Afghanistan is unimportant. It's because it has become too costly for Washington to have a presence in the country. Now the US wants to find a better way to use its resources to maintain its hegemony in the world.

    Taiwan is probably the US' most cost-effective ally in East Asia. There is no US military presence on the island of Taiwan. The way the US maintains the alliance with Taiwan is simple: It sells arms to Taiwan while encouraging the DPP authorities to implement anti-mainland policies through political support and manipulation. As a result, it has caused a certain degree of depletion between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits. And what Washington has to do is only to send warships and aircraft near the Straits from time to time. In general, the US does not have to spend a penny on Taiwan. Instead, it makes money through arms sales and forced pork and beef sales to the island. This is totally a profitable geopolitical deal for Washington.

    Once a cross-Straits war breaks out while the mainland seizes the island with forces, the US would have to have a much greater determination than it had for Afghanistan, Syria, and Vietnam if it wants to interfere. A military intervention of the US will be a move to change the status quo in the Taiwan Straits, and this will make Washington pay a huge price rather than earn profit. 

    Some people on the island of Taiwan hype that the island is different from Afghanistan, and that the US wouldn't leave them alone. Indeed, the island is different from Afghanistan. But the difference is the deeper hopelessness of a US victory if it gets itself involved in a cross-Straits war. Such a war would mean unthinkable costs for the US, in front of which the so-called special importance of Taiwan is nothing but wishful thinking of the DPP authorities and secessionist forces on the island. 

    In the past two decades, the Kabul government cost over 2,000 US soldiers, $2 trillion, and the majesty of the US against the "bandits." But how many lives of US troops and how many dollars would the US sacrifice for the island of Taiwan? After all, the US acknowledges that "there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China." Will the US get more moral support from within and from the West if it fights for the secession of Taiwan than it did during the Afghan War? 

    The DPP authorities need to keep a sober head, and the secessionist forces should reserve the ability to wake up from their dreams. From what happened in Afghanistan, they should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island's defense will collapse in hours and the US military won't come to help. As a result, the DPP authorities will quickly surrender, while some high-level officials may flee by plane. 

    The best choice for the DPP authorities is to avoid pushing the situation to that position. They need to change their course of bonding themselves to the anti-Chinese mainland chariot of the US. They should keep cross-Straits peace with political means, rather than acting as strategic pawns of the US and bear the bitter fruits of a war.

     

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  12. 22 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    Privilege and wealth usually wins out in the end. After the powder keg build up for 5 episodes, it ends with the rich people continuing on their normal paths in life, while the working class flails/drowns in their wake. 

    Entertaining show, but don't think they quite nailed the landing. 

    IMHO therein lies the genius of the satire. The meta-theme of the show was the upper class' relationship with the working class:
    - Shane / Armond
    - Paula / Kai
    - Stifler's mom / Belinda
    - Shane's Mom / Rachel

    Quinn was the only one who authentically rebelled and chose happiness over materialism. Yes, he likely ends up as a bellboy at the resort, but I want to believe he found his tribe. If I want to really go uber-optimistic maybe there is a message there about "tribe" (not literal but figurative, your people) transcends race and class - a rich, privileged white kid found his true home among working class Hawaiian guys and they mutually accepted each other despite society telling us they should not.

     

    Spoiler

    WTF is wrong with me ... I'm making an HBO summer show out to be Citizen Kane ... and I'm not even drinking.

     

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  13. If we actually have any hope we can continue as an rational, intelligent, reason-based country we should all be able to agree that Biden made the most embarrassing and historic foreign policy SNAFU maybe ever. I am not talking about the entire Afghanistan campaign, as plenty of mistakes to go around, but this particular withdrawal likely will be his legacy. We should all be able to be adults and call a spade a spade versus trying to count the number of angels on the head of a pin.

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  14. 7 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

    European Descendants have this self image that our ancestors weren’t a bunch of religious fanatics intent on subjugating their  neighbors and hated foreigners. 
     

    What the fuck do you think the 30 years war and the Inquisition was?

    Best answer to "How long will it take Afghanistan to adopt democracy? 800 years." More or less the time it took the Britons to get to the Magna Carta.

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