
SL Xpress
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Addison Gaido, 6’4 (maybe 6’5) opposite out of Georgetown HS and club Austin Skyline announced her commitment. With libero Krueger and OH Vander Wal that brings the 2025 class up to 3
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The only thing he's missing here, IMO, is that Putin doesn't value competent leadership in charge of the military. He values a military that won't plot a successful takeover. Shiogu's incompetence isn't a bug. It's a feature. No one wants to install Shiogu as the leader of Russia. That makes him extremely valuable to Putin in ways that go beyond being a successful military leader.
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He already gave his explanation when he met with the African leaders. Russia voluntarily withdrew because they (air quotes) signed a treaty with Ukraine through negotiations with Turkiye that Ukraine promptly reneged on. Just more horseshit.
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The official 2024 GOP Presidential Candidate Clown Car thread!
SL Xpress replied to horn4life's topic in Cloak Room
But no one did that. -
The official 2024 GOP Presidential Candidate Clown Car thread!
SL Xpress replied to horn4life's topic in Cloak Room
I didn't ever venture to cloak room until late last year. It takes a while for any of us to recognize names and associate them with specific opinions. Of course I recognize a lot of the handles from reading their posts on the sports boards, but it's not the same. Usually they have to be pretty extreme or else voluminous with their positions to even make an impression. I'm just going by what I'm seeing here now. I don't see what I consider reasonable conservative views being espoused very much, and when they are, they're generally buttfucked. I'm not criticizing that. Maybe conservative views should be dismissed outright for legitimate reasons. Certainly I don't pass many of the litmus tests that tribe sets out. Or, I could very well be wrong. I absolutely don't have enough information to make an informed judgement, as you're making clear. So all I have is my uninformed one. But in my uninformed opinion, the cloak room has an echo chamber feel to me. I would imagine people who share similar political views to mine would agree, even if you would not. -
I don't have a strong opinion on RFK Jr's electoral chances. He seems like a complete whacko to me. But then it's amazing how many of the candidates on both sides seem that way. It's hard to find one who seems remotely reasonable most of the time. I credit the Democrats for nominating what I consider some of the more middle leaning candidates, and I feel like they've been rewarded for that with Bill Clinton, Obama, and Biden. I was simply commenting on the idea that third party candidates never make an impact. They ALMOST never do, but the almost is still an important distinction to me.
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The official 2024 GOP Presidential Candidate Clown Car thread!
SL Xpress replied to horn4life's topic in Cloak Room
To be fair, he's not getting a dime from the vast majority of people on this forum. It's dominated by people with progressive views. It's as much of an echo chamber here as any forum with conservative leanings. And both sides are guilty of the same kind of demagoguery and demonization of the other side. That said, I do feel like IF it's important to determine "well, he/she started it!" I would say the conservative side is guilty. But one of the things that can be the most dangerous to a representative government, IMO, is when one side creates a monopoly on power. To me, the strength of a representative government is to give both sides the chance to fuck things up. Because they will. But at least if they're both getting an opportunity to do so, there's not the disenfranchisement that exists in repressive systems. FDR was brilliant in creating his New Deal coalition. So brilliant it ruled the legislative body for 60 years. When Newt Gingrich made it to Washington D.C. in 1979 as the first Republican representative from his congressional district ever, he looked around at the bipartisan spirit Congress embodied back then and said hogwash. When the Reagan coattails brought in even more freshmen Republicans, he gathered an assortment of like minded party members who chose a much more confrontational style of representation. Unfortunately, this resulted in 1994 in the Republican takeover of the house, and it's been going back and forth ever since. But the same style generated over decades of not being in power, exacerbated by successful gerrymandering campaigns and the echo chamber inducing mechanics of social media (Edit - the impact of the partisan and highly successful Fox News cannot be exaggerated, either), has resulted in the destructive polarizations we see today. Most legislative outcomes are the result of prisoners dilemmas to one degree or another. Unfortunately, through a variety of circumstances, the Republican party has been rewarded over and over for being more willing to send the United States over a cliff in various ways. But there's certainly a mirroring aspect that goes on, too. Regardless of who started it, there are huge swaths of progressive groups who characterize anyone not of their tribe as an existential threat. (I just want to say that the whole idea of approving a debt ceiling is ridiculous to me - Congress has the power to pass whatever budget they want. If they don't want to raise the debt ceiling, don't pass a budget that will require that. Lifting the debt ceiling to me should be part and parcel with passing a budget that extends beyond it in the first place. Instead we play this incredibly destructive and artificially induced game of chicken every few years.) I remember when I had a bunch of communist and socialist friends back in the 80s and 90s, and they'd lament the lack of difference in the two main parties, along with the absence of a legitimate third party. And that was certainly fair. We still see the same lamentations, especially among the most progressive who feel like we haven't even approached going far enough in a complete reworking of an inequitable and unsustainable economic system. One of the problems I see it is that you can't have a country with world hegemony making radical shifts in how they view the world from one administration to another and still maintain that hegemony. Maybe the price isn't worth it any more. Maybe the world and the people of this country would be better off if we threw in the towel, and chose a more isolated expression of our values, whatever those end up being. I don't believe that, but the course we're on is going to make that choice for us, and then we'll get to find out. In any case Will Hurd preaches a form of inclusiveness, whatever that ends up looking like. He has a respect for science, that many Republicans proudly discard and use their love of ignorance as a litmus test for whether you're one of them or not. He has an outlook on foreign affairs (and an expertise in doing so) that in many ways dovetails with mine. It's honestly difficult for me to find any Republican I actually like, but the Democratic field doesn't exactly have me doing cartwheels, either. The only reason I voted for Clinton and Biden is because the alternative was so destructive and odious I refused to do so. I'll likely vote for Biden because I'll still believe the Republican nominee is more dangerous for the future of democracy than the Democratic candidate unless the Republican party shocks me. There's a great line in the movie Cocktail Party that I constantly use. "The party wouldn't end unless it ends badly." I thought maybe 2008 would represent the end of the party, but the central banks got together and printed out money like nobody's business, propped up zombie banks with underlying negative asset classes that were never realistically valued as such, and everyone pretended on some level everything was hunky dory until we sprinkled enough magic fairy dust that it was. So whatever is going to change the course we're on with enough pain and misery, death, suffering, and starvation, hasn't happened, yet. We still have whatever Titan-esque implosion we have coming to us in our future. My hope is that I somehow shuffle off this mortal coil before that happens. I mean, I hope it doesn't happen at all, but history shows that the kind of demonization we're creating amongst ourselves only has one result. A whole lot of repression and/or mass executions. We managed to avoid it on some level in the 30s, although the people who died in WWII might disagree. But representative government is way more fragile than the average person wants to realize. No one has tried to build a multi cultural, multi racial society like the United States in world history. Those who have even come close didn't exist long term based on a sharing of a power. They existed by one group dominating the others, whether as a majority or a minority. In any case, anyone who represents someone who is willing to even look towards the middle as either a Republican or Democrat gets some kind of token support from me. Because otherwise we're heading off the cliff. It's only to be determined which side will be doing the pushing, and which side will be doing the falling. -
Ummmm.... That's not necessarily true. I wish it was, but sometimes Sauron wins.
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The Ukrainians became my favorite people in the world back in 2014.
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I can give you my sincere view as someone who leans conservative and is horrified by the transition. The first thing I'd say is that there is always a strong isolationist bent in the American public. REALLY strong. Both sides of the aisle, and independent, too. It's historical from the beginnings of the republic, first widely documented by Alexis de Toqueville in the early/mid 19th century in Democracy in America. The US is really a reluctant world power. We've mostly been driven there by necessity and by elites. The American public in general has no appetite for the kinds of activities the US has involved itself in post world war II to maintain world hegemony. We don't have a good understanding of the costs/benefits, or what kind of price we'd pay for isolation. I'm not saying the country would not be better off if we were more isolationist - I don't agree with it, and I think it would have been a world disaster, but it's not like we can go back and run some kind of real world re-creation to see how things would have worked out instead. Invariably pretty much every political town hall I've ever attended, whether a Democrat or Republican representative, if the budget is brought up, or a lack of funding for domestic services, someone points out all the money spent on foreign countries, and how if we just eliminated all of that, we'd have all the money we need. Which isn't even remotely true, but that's the narrative a large segment of Americans have always wanted to believe. Second, there's a bit of an isolationist bent in the Republican party historically. Eisenhower famously argued against robust military spending on conventional forces, choosing instead to focus on the relatively cheaper threat of nuclear annihilation as a defense of the country. He won the election in 1952 by a landslide in part because of the involvement in Korea started by the Democrats (although, let's face it - Eisenhower would have won regardless whatever ticket he chose). Richard Nixon won in 1968 in part on his promise to get the US out of Vietnam. In actuality Nixon and Kissinger further entangled the US in all kinds of foreign involvement, but the message to the electorate was less of confrontational engagement and more one of detente and political maneuverings. It was only with Reaganism, the massive expansion of US conventional forces under him, and then its use under Bush I and II, that the Republicans went full foreign adventurism, although the party has certainly been filled with plenty of war hawks, and its traditionally virulent anti communist views - to the point of abuse - are well documented. Third, I think Russian disinformation campaigns found early on a ripe audience for their tactics within the alt right. Russia depends on using armies of social media warriors who look to exacerbate any division in any culture. They'll espouse left or right wing positions. They don't care. The main purpose is to create wedges in the fabric of a society to then exploit those wedges for their purposes. They found their money and support went a long way by funding nascent white nationalists and helping them gather followers. As those leaders gained prominence, they often echoed themes aligned with the Kremlin. This isn't just in the US, by the way. Throughout Europe the arch conservative circles are often infused with pro Kremlin sentiment. Le Pen's movement in France. Orban in Hungary. I got in trouble on the Daily Texan Ukraine thread by saying that Putin has positioned himself as something of a white savior, as well as a traditionalist. But he also tries to build ties with autocrats where ever he can, repeating the message over and over again that they can't trust the US as a reliable ally, which is true to an extent. Fourth, you have the emergence of Trump. Now, I'll tell you as a conservative I see populist movements on both sides of the aisle. I don't think of Bernie Sanders as intrinsically dangerous for democracy as I do Trump, but he's certainly radically antithetical in my eyes to market economics. I understand that's seen as a feature, not a bug in the eyes of many of his followers. It's not my intent to dissuade anyone from that point of view, even if I could. Which I can't. To me this is an extension of the anger and polarization we'd already seen, often times of the same forces. Tea Party on one side. Occupy Wall Street on the other. Populist candidates are channeling that anger and outrage successfully in their campaigns. But when Trump won the election it galvanized the voices which are sympathetic to Putin and his supporters, and Trump has been feeding it directly and with dog whistles ever since. The fact that the Republican establishment has absolutely caved to him with notable exceptions has been a naked lust for power and a continued need for relevance at the expense of the future of our democracy, in my opinion. I will say there is still a great deal of bipartisan support for Ukraine. Texas Republican McCaul has been unabashed about it. Mitch McConnell is ready to pass a supplemental defense budget and authorize more spending on Ukraine right now. Lindsay Graham appeared on Al Franken's podcast a month ago where they jovially talked about their common ground regarding supporting Ukraine. But there's no doubt that the Trump wing of the party along with avowed isolationists like Rand Paul, are in favor of either shutting down support completely, getting some kind of agreement in place along current lines of control, or at the very least making it difficult for Ukraine to obtain further funding, "no blank check." This dovetails with the base, which, because of rabid gerrymandering begun in the 90s and accelerated with every census, is the only group important to reach and gain support from in the vast majority of the districts we've redrawn. This strain is always going to be present, in both Democrats and Republicans. Back in the 80s it was the Democrats who were the isolationists, but the Clinton presidency didn't end up reflecting that. I would argue Obama's presidency did, just not as successfully as the rank and file would have preferred. Just yesterday I saw an interview where Obama was defending his administration's inactions following Crimea and Donbas in 2014. I'm not trying to delegitimize his rationale. I'm merely saying that his administration won a mandate in part on the idea he was going to get us out of conflicts, not into new ones. Right now there's still a significant segment of Democrats who feel like we should be spending less on defense and less on Ukraine, and more on domestic needs and progressive agendas. But because their party is the one in the White House, they've circled the wagons to provide support for the president's agenda. For which I'm grateful. Anyway, I don't know if any of that is helpful or makes sense, but that's my view of it.
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Some of that is society building, but some of that is simply pushing society in the direction they already lean into. A reading of any kind of Russian literature, both in the past and contemporary, reveals a sense of fatalism which might as well be the chief characteristic of the Russian identity. Along with every character possessing 12 names used interchangeably. To me that’s the biggest yoke Ukraine is in the midst of breaking away from (the fatalism, at least). I’m with you on the double down on internal repression and becoming even more calloused regarding war casualties. Russian society equates fear with respect, ruthlessness with strength, and values stability over freedom. And Putin values staying in power over anything else. My problem with all the 1917 comparisons - and there are plenty of lessons to draw from - is that the revolutionaries were true believers on a crusade. That’s something both Putin and Prigozhin lack. It felt like Putin was trying to speak in those types of tones as he galvanized the public for popular support of the conflict in Ukraine, but as you’ve stated, he wants a submissive citizenry, not zealots.
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I already posted about the additional 45 Gepards Germany will supply by the end of the year, but this is big for more robust air defenses as well.
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After this debacle of an invasion my biggest fear is that Russia actually finds someone competent.
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This is really big news if true on the air defense front. Everything feels a little anticlimactic right now after the past 24 hours. I'm also following reports (already posted here) of Ukraine crossing the Dnipro River at the Antonivka bridge. Don't know how true they are, either.
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I don't know how Prigozhin dies, but I would personally like for it to involve a sledgehammer.
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I want to give a shoutout to @atomheartbevo. One of the things I love about this thread are the people giving their perspectives of what they're seeing, and one of the people whose perspectives I enjoy reading even when (sometimes ESPECIALLY when) I don't agree with him is atomheartbevo. It's not like he was the only one pointing out the craziness between Prigozhin and the MOD, but he is the one who emphasized it the most. The rest of the news sources I read were like me, "well, Russia." I mean, sure it's fucked, but everything about Russia is fucked. But atomheartbevo kept insisting that yes, it's Russia, and yes, it's fucked, but this is especially fucked even for Russia. I feel like he helped emphasize to me how this wasn't going to end well. I kept figuring Putin would step in one way or another, but he didn't. Even here he turned to Lukashenko to mediate. And I'm convinced there's no way this is over. I don't know where it goes from here, but there's still plenty of drama left in this whole episode. Anyway, just a bit of a tip of the cap to atomheartbevo. Thanks for your contributions, and in particular, thank you for emphasizing just how crazy everything always was between Prigozhin and the MOD. Not that you were the only one, but you were the one who emphasized it the most from the very beginning.
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We're not going to escape our hardwiring. The remarkable thing is that we're able to overcome it as often as we do, not that we lapse into following it so often. Tribes. The competition for hierarchy. People best suited genetically for various roles. The yearning for freedom and independence, which to many means power over the people around them so they can experience relative freedom compared to others. Our oldest tales are all about this. Our newest tales are about it. Every religion and lifestyle approach. High school can be such a good petri dish because we're often rawer, but those dynamics never go away. Why should they? It's in our DNA. It's the story of human history and prehistory.
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My experience has always been that foreigners who have never been to the US don’t truly fathom how little we give a fuck about anywhere else. I mean, they think they know it on some level, but unless you’ve been here for a period of time and tried to engage Americans on events beyond our border, there’s no way of gaining an understanding of how little we give a fuck. The Canadians and wealthy Mexican nationals are my favorite, because they kind of know? And yet they’re still flabbergasted. The ones who are completely blindsided tend to be people who’ve spent a great deal of time in refugee camps before coming to the States. They form their initial impression of Americans based on American relief workers, but that’s a special breed of human being for the most part. It’s like we’ve managed to create the ideal American tinder profile regarding foreign interest, but the reality is we don’t give a shit That said, I will say I’ve received several phone calls/text messages asking me about unfolding events in ways I haven’t before, so that makes me a smidgen hopeful. I still think the dam sabotage justified a bigger reaction than I found it received, but I understand that in some ways this is way more dramatic and exciting.
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Place your keys in the bowl as you enter. Edit: too slow
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I don’t see it that way - even remotely - but I appreciate the discussion nonetheless. It’s my strongest opinion you’d need buy in from more than just Putin and Prighozin to make this work, and it would be difficult to keep it secret. But we’re not going to convince one another otherwise. In any case we’re both agreeing that’s not a likely scenario regardless of the difficulties involved. It makes for fun conjecture. I don’t see any harm in it, and I’ve enjoyed the back and forth. Thanks for the clarification.
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All I can say is this reminds me a lot of when UConn won the national championship in basketball. The similarities are eerie.
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Maybe might have led to a divorce without multiple homicides, but I’m with you on the general concept.
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Here's my theory: Convicted criminal and opportunist who makes connections with Putin while Putin is on his way up. Putin likes him and sees him as useful. Makes him a billionaire, places him in his inner circle. At some point Prighozin approaches Putin with the idea of starting up a private army, and how they could do the dirty work around the world that would be productive for Russia without the Russian military having to get its hands dirty. A Russian equivalent to Blackwater, only even more active and tied to the state. Wagner proves to be exceptionally useful in both Africa and Syria. They get shit done. The operation is competently run. They spend a lot of money on their personnel, making sure they're equipped extremely well. There's an esprit de corps among members that they're the best of the best. They're valued for their ruthlessness. The best soldiers in the Russian army often sign up with Wagner for the higher pay and the feeling of being with the best. In the meantime Wagner becomes a major source of revenue and power for Prighozin. Putin values him as an asset outside the normal chain of command who is loyal to him. Other members of the inner circle are way of Prigozhin but feel helpless to do anything about it with him having Putin's personal blessing. Also, they see the value in what his organization brings - just wary of the risks but no way to communicate those to Putin in a way that makes sense. Putin decides to invade Ukraine. The swift military action planned for goes to complete shit. The airborne units are left to be massacred after taking over the Antonov airport. The regular forces can't get their shit together, are bogged down by terrain, horrible logistics, and the internal corruption that pervades the regular army. Hence the need for something like Wagner in the first place. Wagner troops in general create better results where ever they are deployed compared to the regular army. Again, they're better equipped, better trained, better morale. They're a private version of the most elite VDV units. The offensive bogs down. Prighozin is out of his mind with the incompetency of the Russian army, and being forced to work alongside these fools. They're lazy, stupid, have no sense of professionalism, and everyone is out to save their own skin. He somehow convinces Putin, whether directly or through a third party, to put Wagner in charge of an offensive and let him show how to effectively carry one out. The offensive chosen was in the direction of Bakhmut. As part of this effort he's given permission to recruit convicts out of the penal system to be used as meat. Prighozin is very charismatic, and as a former prisoner himself, he knows how to speak to these people in a compelling way. He signs up tens of thousands to supplement his forces. Lacking armor and sufficient artillery under their direct control, Wagner develops the strategy of sending in convicts in waves of 5 or 6 at a time, ferreting out the placement of Ukrainian defenses and weak points. After either the convicts secure a point, or the defense is softened up sufficiently, they then send in the regular Wagner shock troops. This is done over and over relentlessly, in Soledar and then in Bakhmut itself. Given that this is the only spot along the entire front where any progress is being made whatsoever, it's seen as a success. At some point Prighozin is cut off from access to Putin. I have no idea when it occurs, but it obviously occurs. Given Russian politics and Prighozin's lack of a power base outside of Putin and Wagner, he chooses to go all in. Backing down at this point would mean losing everything to the long knives in Putin's inner circle. I don't know that he has a long term plan per se, other than like Baelish opined, chaos is a ladder. I can't imagine he saw himself as displacing Putin directly, but I certainly feel like he saw himself as a potential replacement for Putin, depending on how things worked out. Bakhmut is taken over, or at least the rubble of the town is taken over. Prighozin declares victory and begins to pull his forces out. Shiogu sees Prighozin's limited utility at an end, and makes a move to eliminate Wagner as a separate source of power. I'm assuming with Putin's blessing. Who knows, though. Maybe everyone is acting in a vacuum. Prighozin sees this as an existential threat in more ways than one. He escalates his rhetoric and his actions, but eventually sees no other course of action than to declare war on the Russian military command. My guess is it's probably sold to Wagner fighters as an act of righteous rebellion, Potemkin style. I don't care how much ammunition or other supplies they've stashed away, it won't be enough. There will have to be some way of dealing with air power, of refueling, replacing ammo stocks, and feeding the troops. This won't be a sustained activity. Even if it's true fighter pilots refused to fire on them (which I don't believe) eventually they'll find fighter pilots who will. I do not believe this was the end goal at virtually any point along the timeline. I believe Prighozin felt like eventually Putin would step in in his favor, because his organization is the only one getting anything done, and they still provide a lot of value in Africa in the short term, and around the world in whatever hotspots arise in the long term. But at the end of the day Prighozin has had the rug pulled out from under him. Better to go out with guns blazing than meekly submit to a kangaroo court and a bullet in the brain.
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I don't agree even a little bit with the facile comparison to Iraq and Afghanistan. Just an easy tweet to make that won't be challenged. The US won both conflicts with ease. They didn't administer either occupation with any element of competence. The two are not the same. They require different mindsets, and different skillsets. Not going into Iraq would not have made the US any more competent in Afghanistan. Going into Iraq did not make the US any more incompetent. The problem wasn't opening up two fronts. It was lacking the political will and acumen to set up a competent military occupation in either place. And actually, in terms of occupations, Afghanistan doesn't really matter. There's no real geopolitical importance to it from a US perspective. It's not rich in natural resources. It's not going to develop a booming economy. Obviously the US should not have gone into Iraq, and part of it was the lack of a post war strategy. But more so it was about going in under fraudulent auspices. But from a military perspective there was no issue with opening up a second front for the US military the way Hertling is hinting at, and I resent its false implication. Doesn't change my very high opinion of Hertling, but I do not like this specific tweet.
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