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No, the ATF should be the first to go!

Not just interesting, it's the best summary I've seen from someone who has been personally involved with the Ukrainian government at a high level in the early parts of this crisis. The arguments made here are becoming circular so it's kind of a waste of time, but it would be nice if some of you could put aside your fears, biases, and clearly see the designed and intended progression of this conflict so that there is ultimately a direct conflict between Russia and NATO. The same Western leadership that has brought us all kinds of bullshit from a policy mismanagement standpoint; domestically and internationally, socially and financially... is somehow making brilliant decisions on this issue? It is a retarded line of thinking. It is an undeniable fact that the current leadership of the United States and most NATO countries do not care about the best interests of their citizens. Most people are coming to realize this as indicated by the election. What they do care about is retaining power and streams of revenue. As we the people begin demanding order and civility, War and crisis are the things that guarantee their opportunities for profit continue. When I read many of the replies here, I'm always reminded of "Doctor Strangelove." The unreasonable obsession with the idea that we're somehow under threat of a Russian invasion was supposed to be a joke, but it seems like so many are reenacting those sentiments, but sincerely, and without realizing how ridiculous it seems. NATO leadership realizes it has 60 days get us entrenched in a conflict that can't easily be de-escalated. Therefore: And how does Russia respond? The launched an ICBM. I thought ICBM were kind of a big deal. Not one average European citizen realized that an ICBM was in the air. No alarms, no emergency broadcasts, no nothin. Why? As I said, acting in the best interests of the population is not the real modus operandi here. You likely won't know either. God forbid we have even the possibility of a negotiated settlement that results in the cessation of hostilities, and the flow of cash.

It's remarkable how Sachs has built an entire narrative about Russian/NATO relations off of one conversation with absolutely no legal authority that even Gorbachev himself has disputed. A better take, from the same thread: https://x.com/JonathanHessen/status/1858789212952125463?s=19

It’s a huge, expensive bureaucracy, created in 1979, not 1824…….employs No Teachers and has little to no impact on Education on a local level except to dictate, interfere, and propose programs which spread whatever political and social ideologies that they deem important. Remember it employs zero teachers who teach. The Dept of Ed has been low hanging fruit for decades, and whenever Republicans try to dismantle it, Democrats begin airing commercials about So and so candidate is against education and your children. We went to the Moon and won 2 World Wars, and ushered in the tech age without the Dept of Education.

The defense of America is clearly provided for in the enumerated clauses so the Air Force is obviously well within the Federal powers. And, yes, I'm fully thinking of the broader implications. Just to toss out a number, I consider well over half of the Federal government and the things it does to be unconstitutional. Unfortunately, Americans have come to expect an absurdly huge Federal government and the handouts that come with it. Which is also why we are over a year of GDP in debt and some people can't build a house on their own land because someone once saw an endangered salamander there 30 years ago.

The Ukrainians aren’t wrong to fight…we’re just wrong to spend hundreds of billions of dollars (via debt) to help them fight. If the Ukrainians want to keep fighting using their own resources, then should definitely go for it.

On my 28.8k dial up running Win 3.11.

Got it. Hey, for what's worth, I happen to agree with you. DoE is probably not constitutional. It's debatable. But I don't think a constitutional justification is going to persuade. Americans need to have a debate on substance and understand how little it's doing for them, how expensive it is, and how much more the states could do with the resources it's using. The fact it's arguably an unconstitutional intrusion into state matters is a decent footnote. The substantive arguments flooding into the thread now are the ones that have a chance to prevail. Ultimately there needs to be a strong popular mandate because a lot of people have their interests tied to DoE, including powerful lobbies and corporations that won't just give up. They'll give up when it's in their interest or when they are defeated legislatively. I happen to agree with you more generally that federal agencies are overgrown, we have too many federal laws, too many federal people, too much federal presence in day-to-day life. I don't even want to give a shit who is in a federal office and would love to go back to the quaint pre-WWII reality of most people not even being able to name the president. But unless we're going to have a constitutional convention and re-bake the cake, we have to figure out how to unbake this one. I think that'll take substantive arguments. Appeals to legality, while valid, are not persuasive.

Good. Now he can be a blow hole on TV.

Are you a fifth grader?

Dept of Ed should be the very first entity completely shuttered. Send education to the states, zero fed involvement in education at any level (exception is mil academies). A lot of people on X are saying IRS is #1, but I think they’re missing the forest through the trees (not that I don’t think the IRS and our tax code doesn’t need a massive overhaul/gutting).

What's she going to do? Destroy the department of education? That would be ideal. It shouldn't exist.

Day Man, She was an executive in the WWF, she also ran for political office, ran a big organization and was in Trump’s Administration as the SBA head. She ran for Senate as a Republican in Uber Democrat Connecticut and lost to Richard Blumenthal ( Perhaps you may think he’s more qualified, being he was a Vietnam Vet hero🤣). You’re gaslighting calling her a WWF personality. Just like people called Reagan, an actor, or Trump, a reality TV personality. Her and her husband built the WWF into a multi-million dollar organization. She’s no dummy. Probably not as Qualified as Pete Buttigieg, but her WWF days are long gone. Trump is a disruptor, and his picks are usually non-politicians and from the business world, ie. People who work, built things and aren’t on the government dole.

Looks like it was just a kinetic strike, no actual warheads, using an IRBM.

While I agree with your overall concept, and I believed it for a long time, it may not be entirely accurate. Constitutional arguments have one venue that turns out to be more effective and more powerful than many others. The Supreme Court. The right answer might not be to appeal to the American people for objectives that are already covered by the Constitution. The better plan of action might be to simply act, and have a bulletproof case ready to go when it is inevitably elevated up to the Supreme Court. Part two, however, is to be ready for the aftermath. Roe v Wade is a good example. 50 years of appealing to the public accomplished absolutely nothing. But bringing the correct argument to the correct Supreme Court ended it overnight. Republicans were obviously not ready for the state battles that followed, but that's a republican problem, not a constitutional option. As this election showed in spades, those of us who believed abortion had been removed from the national debate were correct.

I just got an In Stock email from Graffs for CCI M34 primers. I put the request in when they went out of stock when Obama took office. That was about 16 years ago!

They are also using cabled drones now to counter the EW efforts.

In addition to Smokin’s comment, it has objectively worsened education year over year. Student performance has steadily declined since its inception. While doing the opposite of what any logical person would expect of such an organization, it has been at the forefront of political/social manipulation of generations of children, demonstrating it is not about academic success, but rather social engineering. That last part has increasingly become worse this century, but it started a long time ago.

In summary: Your skin color, gender, and sexual preference have no bearing on your performance...so long as you aren't white, male, or straight

It’s been a smashing success

Does this mean you also think the Air Force, also unmentioned in the Constitution, should be shuttered? I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you about the Dept. of Education. Just curious if you're thinking about the broader implications of this kind of reasoning.

Because it is unconstitutional. The 10th Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Education is never addressed in the Constitution, thus it is reserved to the states or to the people. Either one of those, but not to the Federal government.

Very glad that you included the grains of salt. Drudge has always exploited fear and hysteria as clickbait, but they’ve gone completely off the deep end in the last few years. Their headlines got especially ridiculous during Covid and only keep getting more ridiculous. Here’s a screenshot of Drudge on Nov 4th. 24 hours later, Trump won decisively and swept all the swing states. “….uhh….whoops….ohh well, on to the next headlines.” Today they’re stoking fear of nuclear war in Ukraine. What a total clown show that page has become.

My words came off wrong. I was agreeing, hence the word sorry, but saying it was a worthy topic, and then tried to steer it back with subsequent paras. I should have added, a worthy topic in it's own thread. PS, anonymous transition teamsters are leaking that they're not happy with Hesgreth (unforthcoming on past) and someone unearthed a mean tweet from Tulsi (D) calling Trump Saudi's Bitch, both headlines in today's Drudge. ......... <--grains of salt.

I’m between Tac and Surely. We are spending an egregious amount on UKR, with a major reason being war is profitable for the elite class. But Surely is completely accurate on Europe’s inability to perform without US help. The answer to this shitshow is probably somewhere in the diplomatic/economic realm. We can’t let RUS run amok in Europe, but we have to immediately stop completely fucking over our own people, which is exactly what we’re doing with our current UKR actions. Trump may be the guy who can tell Putin and Zelensky to knock the shit off, borders are now where the current lines are, and UKR can fuck off on joining NATO. Sucks for you UKR, but your loss is not our problem at this point, be thankful we enabled you to not lose half your country, Kiev, etc. RUS will be in a massive deficit for generations to come, we don’t need to do/enable anymore on that front.

Interesting summary presented. https://x.com/LionelMedia/status/1858588723488678073 i still say we should help negotiate a ceasefire immediately and treat Russia with a little more respect. Putin was wrong to invade, but in my opinion we are also more than a little bit culpable in how all of this has evolved.

For reference here is what the page looked like right before the election. https://web.archive.org/web/20241007193219/https://www.af.mil/Diversity/

For anyone adding to the list of events that made voters rebuke the Dems, we now have a woman imprisoned for 9 years because she argued 2020 voting machines were compromised*, but we have several Dems in Pennsylvania outwardly admitting to violating voting law because they want to count invalid votes. Literally breaking the law trying to sway an election in their favor and not one mention of bringing charges. The gross imbalance of legal action depending on party affiliation is sickening and a major reason voters have walked away from the Dems. I will happily eat crow in the future if every one of them ends up in prison for years. *For those interested in what actually brought a 9 year sentence: “Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.” Of note she didn’t actually manipulate any vote counts, unlike the Pennsylvania people mentioned above. So I guess they need over 9 years of incarceration…

I support helping a country fight off an invasion by Russia. So far, there hasn't been any big spill and this thing has been going on for what, 2.5 yrs? It really has suppressed a supposed top tier world military and the affects will be felt for a generation. Another upside to providing support is it tells China that we're willing to help nations defend themselves, like Taiwan (different animal, but still a message). Lastly, we learned that porn is an effective tool to suppress N. Korean troops. Lets really develop that COA by getting a team together. Ukraine corruption. Seems like Z is attacking it where its found. But is it any more than any other entrepreneurial type taking advantage of the money train called war? They still seem to get enough funds to the front lines and the troops are still fighting for their motherland. I'm not saying its OK, just that Z is addressing some of it. Z tested the waters some with his drone strikes into Moscow. I think any strikes Z does with an unleashed US arsenal will likely be to really degrade the Russian military threat; bases, munition stores, POL, equipment, LOCs, even if they're deep. The Moscow strikes were psychological and probably not even effective at that, so why waste more effort on that. Even with a MOA-UKR-B, the likelihood of taking out Putin is low. 10Ks troops amassed? Turn em into 10Ks of graves filled.

If you think Russia is justified because they used to own it, would you support a Mexican invasion to retake W. Texas?

To maybe draw this away from insults and back to rational discussion. For those who are against - do you think we should turn a blind eye to Russian aggression? If no what is your response, diplomacy and sanctions or just ignore it. Do you think he will stop at Ukraine? What do you see as the impact of Ukraine under Putin's control? For those who are in favor - How do you mitigate the potential for the conflict to spill over? What are the downsides of providing munitions and money? What do you say about Ukrainian corruption? I've stated many times I am in favor of the support we have provided, for a relatively low cost we have removed Russia as a near-peer threat for many years to come. That being said I do have concerns about striking deep into Russian territory with American made weapons.

KCBM 25-02 // 25-03XPW x2 F-15 International STUDs HC-130J Moody x2 C-146 Duke F-16 (NJANG) F-16 TBD x2 E-3 Tinker KC-135 Mildenhall x2 T-6 FAIP C-5 Westover ARB (AFRC) C-17 Charleston (AFRC) x3 C-17 Charleston RC-135 Offutt x2 KC-46 McConnell C-17 McGuire C-130J Yokota KC-135 Hawaii ANG F-2 International STUD U-28 Hurlburt KC-135 MacDill MC-130J KC-135 Kadena

how are they still dropping A-10's.

KSPS 25-01 (A week late but since no one else posted...) F-15E X 3 A-10 X 2 T-6 X 2 FAIP F-35 X 2 C-130J X 2 F-22 T-38 FAIP T-38 ADAIR C-17 B-1 B-52 F-15C CANG EA-18G