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MaybeACoordinator

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Everything posted by MaybeACoordinator

  1. Bucha has every hallmark of an atrocity but we need a third party to come in there and figure out what really happened. And we need to see if it's part of larger pattern during the brief occupation of these towns across Ukraine so that we can see if it was the work of shitty commanders of individual units or part of the overall design of the war plan, so that the scope of the international war crimes investigation can be cast as wide or narrowly as necessary. If this pattern is repeated in each city the Russians withdraw from, the international indictments should go higher and higher up to and including Putin himself. But again -- what is y'all's endgame here? How does Ukraine "win"? And in the event of the collapse of Putin's government....be careful what you wish for. The assumption is that we get a kindly, corrupt, drunk old Boris. We re just as liable to end up with a true monster like Stalin. As for the question about liberalism vs realism, 1. Mearsheimer is a Sanders voter; 2. Liberalism at home and abroad are two different things. Our attempts to install liberal democracies on our model have failed time and time again. At some point you have to accept the facts on the ground and adjust accordingly. I think back to a line from Dunkirk: the RAF squadron leader was bitching to his commander back at their base about how this rescue mission was taking place at Dunkirk and not Calais, which is most closer. "I am afraid the enemy had something to say about that," the commander said. Or for The Wire fans: "You want it to be one way, but it's the other way." It sucks but the world is a cruel place and no amount of idealism can change that sometimes. I wish it could but it cannot. We can't always get what we want, so we have to make the best of what is. That is bedrock realism.
  2. Yes, I do. If you have not followed my posts I would direct you to the realist school of IR as espoused by Dr John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. "Why Ukraine Is the west's fault" has an inflammatory headline but it was not so inflammatory in 2014 when he gave the talk as it is now. Check him out on Youtube.
  3. What is your source for this info?
  4. Because I know that any citation of civilian deaths at the hands of the American military will be dismissed out of hand as "whataboutism," I will only put forth a token effort to make the argument. And to say, "yeah what about Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam? And by proxy, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras? And The Phillippines circa 1900? (Read Mark Twain's diaries on our atrocities there.) Of all people, who are we to pontificate about the civilian casualties inflicted by others? Of course, we have had the decency to confine most of ours to brown people, so we didn't rip the fart in church Putin has in that regard. And we always believe we have learned our lesson and won't do the same in the next war, and then the next war rolls around, and it's the same ol' same ol'. "The enemy was using them as human shields." "We acted off bad intel."
  5. If this is where your mind is at...wow. "Just think of how many more Jews the Wehrmacht could have gotten to!"
  6. It occurs to me that some of this could be the inborn American inability to accept draws. We've eliminated them from pretty much all our sports. We can't abide a game without a clear-cut winner and a loser. Fair enough. But you know who would win if we can create a neutral Ukraine? The Ukraine you armchair guerilla commandos profess to love.
  7. That is absurd talk designed for a Ukrainian audience. W/o our hardware they are not a "locomotive." They are even less of one as regards to EU membership. It is conceivable that even ornery old Vlad would accept Ukraine in the EU, but do you know why? Because it would weaken the entire union economically, maybe to the point of being a poison pill for the entire enterprise. If the Germans resent Greece as a burden on the EU, let's see what they think about a country with four times the population and 1/7th the GDP per capita. Frankfurt don't like it.... And as for NATO, if it is truly a defensive alliance, why does it need Ukraine within its ranks as opposed to neutral?
  8. Why not try? Y'all attribute so much to Putin, you'd think he was your dad. As for the appeasement thing, lol. He knows he can't take and hold Ukraine; that's why he is pulling back now. The idea that he can sack all the nations of the old Warsaw Pact is as laughable as the idea Todd Orlando could stop a decent offense on 3rd and 17.
  9. I am still for appeasement in that appeasement means peace. All I hear from the pro-war crowd is "moar bombs" but what is the fucking end goal? Do we really think we can just end Russia here? Without them hunking a few nukes around? The more we pour into there the likelier this is going to quickly escalate into nuclear war. Some of you believe that Putin wouldn't be able to carry out that order, or that Russia's nukes are decrepit and probably don't work, but I think y'all are a bunch of Anton Chigurhs and it doesn't matter much. Those are not bets I want to be forced to take. Again -- let's get to the peace table and work out a truly neutral Ukraine. Why is that such an offensive concept for y'all to accept?
  10. Meh, in a few years I'll be proven right. Or we'll all be dead.
  11. I've said this on here before, but I've never changed my handle in spite of how it implicates me as a fool. I was a loyalist well past time to quit. I've hd the opportunity to speak with Vance Bedford casually and at length and even he as told me the same. You get dug in on a position and you fight and sometimes you are wrong. What I see here is y'all are wanting to widen this war even more than Zelensky does. You want him to fight to the last Ukrainian but what on earth is your end goal? Do you think we can widen this war and win? That Putin will just go home? Or do you really believe there will be some black swan coup or assassination? Or that we can activate teh forces of Nato along with Ukraine and annihilate Russia forever? Zelensy has indicated he is willing to accept a neutral Ukraine. Some of you won't accept that on his behalf. You say it can't be enforced, or how can you trust the Russians, or whatever. But this is the only solution. The Ukrainians are willing to accept neutrality and the Russians claim that's what they want to. I am not dumb enough to believe that there should not be some teeth in this state of neutrality. I believe Ukraine should be entitled to Article 5-style protection from attack, but also that it should be effectively disarmed. Why is that so difficult a concept to grasp? If we can get Putin to agree to a deal like that, why not go for it? Otherwise we are just dumping more money and hardware into a black hole that has the potential to end life on the planet. So far this entire invasion has operated exactly the way John Mearsheimer said it would back seven years ago including this alleged retreat, save for the fact that Russian ineptitude has made it a bit more costly than Vlad anticipated. He never wanted to annex Ukraine and occupy it block by block. He wanted to break it, to wreck it, to teach it a lesson, and make it fear that he would do it again absent a promise of neutrality. As far as I can tell these American opposition to Ukrainian neutrality is "it would makes us look like a puss." Well who cares if a neutral Ukraine is protected by Article 5 like Nato protection. Where if he invades again, he gets the whole enchilada of Nato air support and ground troops in Ukraine and possibly even bombing of Russian soil? We need to do whatever we can to put this situation to bed because we have bigger fish to fry. Domestic idiocy, the climate crisis, China on the rise....and here we are getting sucked in (again) to some damn fool thing in the proverbial Balkans.
  12. By Chas I meant Jake, lol. Pre-coffee post. Chas is adequate but I think Jake can be a real plus.
  13. Siri - Willie Mays tools, sub-Eric Anthony production. Frustrating. Chas is the best of that trio by far IMO.
  14. I also wish we would quit calling it an "insurrection." In my mind an insurrection has some element of righteousness to it. "Custer rode off to his death attempting to put down a Sioux insurrection." "A years' long slave insurrection on the island of Saint-Domingue ended when the former slaves ousted their French former masters and created the Republic of Haiti." January 6 was not anything like that. It's becoming more and more obvious that if this happened in any other nation we would call it a failed coup, but that makes us sound sooooo trashy and Banana Republic we won't cop to it. But that is what it was. Q Shaman was no Sitting Bull and Jenna Ryan no Toussaint L'Ouverture but simply rabble roused to idiotic action by seditious words by their leader. Who should be convicted of sedition and sentenced to 20 years in Lewisburg prison...As much as I would love to see him twitching at the long end of a rope, I think sedition is the better case, and it removes him from public life forever.
  15. My son was in the army through almost all of Trump's term and he assured me the rank and file was split down the middle; maybe even leaned D. Trump pissed all over veterans and the institution and legit studs like Mattis and that was not lost in the barracks.
  16. Well as it happens that one time they were a people with many hot takes they tried so hard to export to all of their neighbors. It didn't end very well.
  17. To be fair, he was playing a tape so he wasn't literally live on air while he was supposed to be at the deposition. I did like the little fake coughs he was throwing in to show how sick he was -- like the KF hosts said, it was like what we would all do as kids in trying to convince the parentals over the phone we were sick when we just wanted to get out some exam we were not prepared for at school. Or maybe he is dying of Covid. That would be a shame.
  18. He does hit a lot of doubles, though. Maybe Bregs? If he returns to form? Or Tucker, as a sort of Springer-like lead-off guy, coming in there and leading off with Tucker Fuckers?
  19. Quibbling. Not talking about him any higher than 7th. But a good manager knows that about all his hitters, not just his worst.
  20. I am also a big believer in matchups. Even Machete owns certain pitchers, so a hard and fast day=in, day-out lne-up, or even a strict platoon, is foolishly restrictive. (And I hate the idea of speed for speed's sake at the top of the order vs OBP. Such outdated '80s thinking.) I think you need to factor in not just match ups but also ballpark and a few hunches. Like, why is it that Machete murders some dudes? Is the guy pitching today thow similar stuff to that guy? Then move him up in the order.
  21. I think my BA would be Brantley Altuve Yuli Tucker Yordan Bregman CF Machete Diaz
  22. Vey similar story but w/o shitting my pants. I know that's the point of this thread but this story is worthy anyway.... Same age as you and living in Nashville. I was deep in the woods after school behind our house. It must have been a Wednesday afternoon because my neighbor buddy's dog was with me but he wasn't -- his family were three-times-a-week Church of Christ goers. This dog was a pure white, slightly retarded German shepherd named Bear. Anyway, so Bear and I are walking the woods and it was the same thing -- a sudden, crushing, overpowering need to shit that came out of the clear blue sky. Luckily I was probably a half mile from even a trail so I just squatted and let slide an avalanche of what ended up looking like a good sized cowpatty with a singularly grotesque aroma. Even though it was my own, it was fucking nasty. Intensely relieved, I wiped with dry leaves, and watched with increasing alarm as Bear took enormous interest in my shit. He smelled it at length, and then the fucker wiped both sides of his face in that steaming pile, and then kind of looked at me, like "Yeah?" So we went home -- Bear back to his house and me to mine. Next day Greg and I are playing basketball in his driveway and he is wondering how the fuck his dog's cheeks were coated in reeking dried shit. I told him I had no clue and agreed it was really nasty and that's where the story stands to this day, 40 years later.
  23. PImphand seems like a relatively sane Ttom....Ttom before he really gets revved up.
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