Lord Ratner

They don't have to be an arch enemy. Life doesn't have to be that cartoonish. They are an adversary, and they are a bad actor. That doesn't mean I want to send the marines into storm the beaches of Russia, but it also doesn't mean that I'm going to pass on the opportunity of a lifetime to severely weaken an adversary, who has brought this pain on themselves entirely, at bargain basement prices. Just look at how much money we spent blowing up primitive terrorists in the Middle East, and compared to the damage being done here at a fraction of the cost. And we don't have to worry about spawning an insurgency that hates Americans, we don't have to worry about Americans coming home in boxes (volunteers notwithstanding), and incidentally, it's a righteous cause. Further, we don't even have to worry about adopting a failed aggressor like we did with Japan and Germany, funding their rehabilitation. The only thing being destroyed in Russia, other than a couple of pipelines, is the military. Which is completely unnecessary to operate in a globalized world. They are losing the very thing that destabilizes the world we always wish they would just participate in. Nothing is perfect, but it is hard to imagine a more favorable set of circumstances for the United States. Getting ahead is about identifying opportunity and seizing it. This one fell into our lap.

Sorry for the delay. Sure, though it's the same generalized answer for most of the government actions that are broad-based. I benefit immensely from a peaceful world. My paycheck is larger and my goods and services are cheaper. I'm healthier because a world that isn't spending on war is usually spending on medical progress, as well as the discounts gained from the scale offered by a global customer base. I believe there are now several countries that are realizing they won't win the globalized world, so if we go back to polarized they can at least be king of their corner. That's going to be bad for all of us. While I do think it is inevitable, delaying it will prolong human flourishing. Conspiracies are only needed when the obvious answer isn't apparent. Who needs a puppet master? Russia and the West have been jockeying for alliance with the old Soviet countries for years, and Russia is losing that battle mightily. Add a wannabe-conqueror to the mix (Putin) and it shouldn't be surprising that this is happening. Did the other 100% of human history need excuses to invade and conquer? Russia would be occupying Ukraine if not for the US and the West. You might consider that more desirable, but I do not. The option where Ukraine is Ukraine and Russia is content with what they have and the rest of the world stops meddling is a hypothetical fantasy. I believe it was a misstep to rush the NATO courtship with Ukraine. Personally, I think NATO is useless, but a generalized alliance of Western-style countries is not a bad thing. Right now they seems to be getting a huge discount, though I suspect we are preventing them from any attacks within Russia. A seller can give away their product for free, until they decide not to. Either way, of course it's a choice. You are suggesting they surrender their land through negotiations. And stop trying to word everything others say to suit your narrative. "In exchange for killing Russians." What a bunch of nonsense. Russia is the one making a choice that is wiping out Russians. We are providing them a means to survive and defend. Whether or not that results in dead Russians is Russia's decision, not ours. They are two modes of survival here. Get Western weapons and fight back (on western terms), accept Russian rule, or die fighting Russia to the last person without help. That is a fucking choice, and like the rest of life, some of the choices are fucked. Interestingly, your position offers only the latter two choices, which I agree, makes it much less of a choice. Yeah, you get over that once you stop accepting the false choice they are offering you. Do what I say OR I will kill myself. But really it was always: Participate in my delusion OR don't. Often the threat suggested in the false choice is unrelated to the path you choose in the real choice anyways. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, because I believe it has been finalized for around 15 years now. Once the central banks unleashed QE, we lost. I like your analogy, because it fits pretty well with similar misconceptions people have about drugs. You don't just quit heroin or meth. Sure, there are a few much-ballyhooed examples of someone just quitting one day, but that's the exception, not the rule. We wouldn't have the "homeless" (i.e. drug abuse) problem if it were. Once you're hooked, there are only a few ways out: Something so damaging happens to you, at a point where you just happen to be sober enough to comprehend it, that you are scared into kicking the addiction. Very, very high rate of relapse. You are forced into sobriety by people with the power to force your actions through: Financial incentives (weak) Threat of disassociation (better, but weak) Physically overpowering you and forcing you into treatment (best, but only with very costly follow-through by the enforcer) You die. Now I've spent most of my life seeing option 3 as the best answer. I don't want anyone to die for the sake of it, but I'm not interested in helping people that don't want to be helped. But that was my false choice. Go broke helping them or let them die. But we were never going to let them die, it's just not what western societies do, so the true choice was Help them now (with force, if necessary) at great cost but with a better chance of recovery -or- Be their custodians for life later (also with force, and more often) at an even greater cost. So extrapolating that to global finances, the same options apply from above. But we are the top dog, for now, so no one can force us. But we are still hopelessly addicted, both the politicians and the voters. We are not going to kick this habit on our own. Option one from above would be the Global Financial Crisis. Didn't last long, and we ended up being less responsible in the aftermath. Option two would be the collapse of the fiat system, and the associated chaos that will follow. Option three would be us spending into oblivion, then being conquered. Option two is my bet, with three being unchoosable and one being a fantasy. So if two is the only option, positioning ourselves for that reality is the best course, shitty though it may be.

How many hundreds of billions have we invested so far? Most corrupt? You know Russia is in Europe too, right?

A sadly relevant comment considering the trans insanity from the left.

Did you change your username, torqued?

1. In what reality am I supposed to make geopolitical (support/oppose) decisions based on my personal physical or financial health? I must be reading that one wrong. 2. Sacrificing lives? Show me the American that is forcing the Ukrainians to fight. FFS. They can end this war tomorrow. Are we sacrificing Russian lives too? Is everything our fault? Power of the seller. You want an iPhone, you pay the fee Apple charges. Want to use the app store? You sign their EULA first. Lets try taking the whole quote this time: A little different when you don't selectively quote. I have. And? I don't get your point. Are those Americans beating them? Have there been intercepted emails from Washington telling the Ukrainians they better get in there and fight, or else? How about some of the Russians raping kids and disemboweling them in front of their parents? No stomach turning there? War is fucking ugly. You show me the war that was civil and maybe we can talk, but until then this is just another dream that we can't base our foreign policy off. Read the tea leaves. We aren't going to responsibly-spend our way out of this mess. If you haven't figured that out now, I envy your optimism, but we aren't. We will spend until we hit whatever level triggers a massive upheaval that leads to the end of fiat (again). We'll get back to fiat one day, but everything goes in cycles. So between now and then we are going to spend XXX dollars of fake money, and I'd rather tilt the distribution towards spending that will weaken our enemies and strengthen our industries so we win the recovery. Not spending on the good things does not equal spending less. It just means spending more on the dumb things. Clearly you've never dealt with that type of crazy. Lucky, but until you have you can't understand it. I'm not upset about it, my life is pretty great. Most lives are a hell of a lot better, but that's because we are at a peak, I think. What's dark is what's coming, and I don't believe it can be escaped. Debts are always paid, and we have taken out huge debts to give everyone more than they are producing in return. That will have to come out of the next few generations, either evenly distributed (everyone has a lower quality of life) or unevenly (lots of people die, removing themselves from the list of debtors).

And that's their choice. But as long as they have to rely on our weapons, training, and Intel, they have to do what we tell them to do. Right now I see no reason to change the status quo. The Ukrainians want to keep fighting, and that's absolutely their choice, and I'd like to see more dead Russia soldiers and smoking tanks for however long they insist on invading a sovereign nation. And at bargain-basement prices, no, IDGAF about the spending. You're posing an alternative that doesn't exist: No one in power is willing to do that, in either party, and the largest voting block isn't going to vote for it. We will not fix the problem until it materializes and slams us into austerity, and that's not going to be a time-based event, it's going to be a debt-based event. Spending on Ukraine pushes us closer to that inevitability, sooner. That's good. Otherwise it would just go towards the nonsense domestic spending. You want to talk about appealing to the extremes? Your fairy tale let's just put the money towards responsible government spending is the most unrealistic thing I've heard in this thread. I wish it weren't, but it is. And I really don't give a shit about nukes. Maybe you guys have never dated a truly crazy woman, but I have. Eventually every fight they lose gets to the suicide threat. The ultimate trump card. But what are you going to do, be a hostage forever? Fuck it, you want to kill yourself over breakup, go for it. If Russia intends to unleash nuclear destruction over a failed invasion of another country, then they are operating on a different set of rules that we will never be able to follow. People will die, but we'll win that war. We're overdue for the fourth turning anyways: https://a.co/d/4gG2rqg

That's an easy one. Yes

Extremes are useful for lots of hypothetical conversations. They're not good for the ultimate making of a decision. If you're incapable of seeing how one could support you crane without supporting anything and everything that might help them, I'm not sure I have the capacity to make you understand. That was your question, and I answered it. If you have a different question, let's hear it.

I want to help Ukraine stop and reverse a Russian invasion. Nukes would help towards that goal. Yet somehow I manage to justify not sending Ukraine nukes, because they would do more than simply help return Ukraine to the Ukrainians. Do you really have a hard time imagining a world that isn't black and white, because I don't, and I don't think any of the "pro-Ukrainian" posters here do either

Agreed with everything except this. The Chinese are almost certainly drowning in stupid paperwork, especially awards. If there's one thing communist dictatorships love, its meaningless flair.

Dude just got paid 100k for time he didn't have to work. I'd love to have that lightning strike twice.

Baseops is making sure I know the best way I can contribute to the way effort 😂🤣

I don't mean this is an attack on you, but your post demonstrates why these things rarely change. Let's operate on the assumption that this guy actually has the authority and approval to put these types of changes into place. When an organization is run like dog shit for so long, you end up with a lot of lost-causes who simply can't move on from the amount of shit they were forced to eat for so long. I'm one of those people by the way. So when you come in as a leader with an attempt to make a drastic and immediate change to the very character of the organization, it's not going to work if you don't first go through and sweep away all the dead bodies. A perfect example of this is Twitter, I think they got rid of 2/3 or 3/4 of the company at this point, and that's what it takes to make sure the cynicism born of the previous however-many years of terrible leadership and decision making don't poison the future. The leadership infrastructure in AMC is built upon a system that this guy is trying to flip over. That means the leaders now are literally the opposite of the leaders he needs. The AF picked the current AMC sq/gp/wg commanders based on ability to process and adhere to administrivia. Now he wants leaders who excel in undefined environments, with a much, much higher probability of failure. We're talking polar opposites in terms of leadership characteristic. Is the air force ready for what accompanies those types of leaders? Considering the last decade of squadron-culture-eradication, I doubt it. This will not work until the stakes are so high that the AMC/CC can literally remove a commander on-sight and install his replacement on the same day. You need alignment of vision to make something like this work, and the outgoing leaders will not take their exile idly if they are removed one-by-one over time. Mini will not be the CC when this happens. He's the leader we need, but remember the first rule: timing is everything. He's too early, and as such he will fail.

You know it's funny, I read the memo and immediately believed it was false because of the tone. But then I think about what a lot of Elon musk's messages, or Steve Jobs messages, or Jeff bezos's messages sound like, and it actually fits the mold. It's just so strange to hear anybody commit to a real vision, because we live in a world of people playing it safe. That said, there is a 0.0% chance of this guy lasting in the Air Force now. He's played his hand from a position that does not allow you to have that type of vision. Only the top dog can, and he's quite a few rungs below. We have the same problem in corporate America. Companies that achieve great things through the vision and perseverance of their founder are eventually led by accountants and Wall Street hacks chosen by a board of other accountants and Wall Street hacks. Sometimes your board might have some other founders on it, but they're founders from different companies with different visions, and they don't offer anything useful to the company. Shareholders will only ever agree on one vision, short-term profits. So that's the type of leaders you get. This guy is done for. The current president of the United States has family members who are making money from China. And his transgressions are child's play compared to the entirety of the academic, corporate, and media world. China has done an incredible job of warming their tendrils into some of the biggest and most powerful institutions in America, and they aren't going to be extricated one at a time. China will have to do something so catastrophically unacceptable that America will just have to rip the Band-Aid off. And a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money in power, just like when we ripped the band-aid off Russia, but that's what it took. I hope Mini enjoys his retirement. It's coming soon.

It's not. The exchanges absolutely increase the volume of trades, that's their primary function. But they are not an inherent part of any cryptocurrency or blockchain. They are an external layer. Think of it like craigslist. Selling your old bike to another person doesn't require an exchange, however. Craigslist is somewhere that buyers and sellers can find each other. Without craiglist there wouldn't be nearly as many transactions, but ultimately Craigslist isn't a part of the transaction. Those were the earliest "exchanges." Then they transformed into something closer to Fidelity. Instead of having your own crypto wallet (which is just an address on the Blockchain, nothing more), the exchange opens a wallet for you, and does the transaction. And just like with Fidelity, you can transfer your crypto out to a wallet you control and go back to using it like cash, but of course with fewer people to transact with. The entire point of Bitcoin was to decentralize the digital exchange of currency. Digital cash. The exchanges directly contradict the whole concept, but it became a speculative asset instead of a currency, and here we are. They are the predominate means of exchange, but they are not inherent to the system.

Maybe it really is just all for the spring. If Russia is planning a big offensive to push back west, they're going to do it with tanks. Maybe knowing there could be a pair of Abrams waiting to ambush the convoy will change the calculus? As you said, they've clearly got a knack for asymmetric warfare. But they've managed to incorporate all sorts of very advanced systems into that advantage. Maybe with a fleet of drones distracting/locating the Russian column they can use a small number of advanced tanks to lay waste? I guess we're gonna find out...

It's pretty hard to film a HIMARS hit that happens dozens of miles behind the enemy line. Your post doesn't specify biggest public relations successes, just success. The ability to quickly blow up any Russian colonel, general, or ammo depot that the US Intel apparatus uncovers stopped the Russian advancement nearly overnight. I agree the PR is definitely more influenced by YouTube videos. That's not too say the Ukrainians aren't doing an amazing job in other ways, but HIMARS have Ukraine the ability to decimate Russian logistics. That's what wins wars.

That's incorrect. Nearly all cryptocurrencies are traded peer-to-peer as their native behavior. The exchanges are simply the easiest way to connect buyers and sellers.

I think HIMARS coupled with American intelligence providing the targeting coordinates has been far more decisive than the grenade-laden drones.

I only have one question for you... What's does this say?

Huh? You're a bot, right? Not even General Chang was this good 😂🤣

I might be disconnected from your reality, but I don't think that's the one the rest of us live in. You don't think devastating effects are being brought upon Russia? Because the Russian media sure would disagree. They obviously have a very different opinion as to why those effects are being brought upon them. This is the type of nonsense I'm talking about. It is perfectly rational to disagree with our support of the Ukrainians. But denying basic realities because they don't support your position just wastes time. Next, everyone I know who's acted as a good Samaritan against a violent attacker has gotten a handshake and a pat on the ass from the cops. While the stories of homeowners being charged for shooting a burglar are viral on the internet, they're not representative of what happens in the real world, which again, I'm not sure you are a member of. And some of the biggest self-defense cases have ruled in favor of the defendant. Zimmerman and Rittenhouse to name a couple. Maybe you live somewhere like California? It's been a long time since I lived there, so I suppose it's entirely possible the insanity there has escalated to the point Californians don't remember how the rest of the country operates. And finally, do I need to explain how analogies work? 😂🤣

Close, except for under this scenario. Mexico/La Raza would be Russia annexing California, and the immoral party. I agree though, it is a much better analogy. Here we completely agree, though the situation is still quite complicated. This is the only argument I've seen so far that justifies Russia's actions. Informed debaters like you and flea have made it, but it is not a mainstream argument. You also get to the question of whether or not the world going back on a promise of territorial alignment can justify the widespread slaughter of civilians. I suspect that it cannot. But it at least adds an element of justification. Let's also not forget that Ukraine did not join NATO. Maybe it would have, but that was a long way out. You can't preemptively respond to a violation of an agreement. It seems much more likely to me that this was merely used as a pretext for something Vladimir Putin had wanted and planned for a long time. This started in 2014, not 2022. Yup, this is pretty classical post-modernist. And wrong. First, while we have most certainly interfered in the conflicts and politics of other nations, we have not sought to expand our physical empire. That makes us rare amongst modern powers. Seizing the land of another nation is quite clearly different than meddling. And slaughtering civilians by the tens of thousands in pursuit of military, political, or economic goals is also clearly different. To compare the two morally implies no sense of morality at all. And even if we have the same moral past as Russia, that still doesn't affect the moral implications of today's conflict. You cite examples of both countries being immoral then imply that somehow obviates the possibility of judging this conflict. But how can you judge the previous conflicts (by both Russia and the US) as immoral, then be unable to judge present conflicts? So more to the point: Let's ignore the hypotheticals, because we don't need them. We have a very clearly defined situation now that you are clearly educated on. Is Russia acting morally or immorally? Do they have the right to do what they are doing, or not? Does Russia have a legitimate claim to Ukraine (they tried taking Kiev), and is a military attack justified in pursuing that claim? That doesn't even touch the war crimes. Just the military decision to take Ukraine and (try to) destroy the Ukrainian military in doing so. The historical perspective is useful for judging the present situation, because experience and comparison are important. But stopping short of making the actual judgment negates the entire exercise. I suspect the reason so many of the don't-interfere-in-this-conflict crowd are unwilling to finish the analysis is they don't want to, either consciously or unconsciously, say that an evil is happening but they are willing to let it happen. It's a bad look, even if/when it's the correct call. But it also makes the debate difficult to the point of satire. Because when the question of morality inevitably comes up and is danced around, instead of talking about the prudence of acting or not acting against evil, we end up talking about whether or not the situation is evil at all, when it is clearly so.