busdriver

This isn't domino theory, or some half baked idea about the spread of an ideology. It is partly a realist (ie. Mearsheimer) perspective on great power competition. Basically, states will seek to ensure their security, through border control and eventually regional hegemony. Russia doesn't have naturally defendable borders (deserts, mountains, oceans). So expansion to control terrain that allows a defendable border is needed. And it has already done this recently (South Ossetia & Crimea). That perspective is weird to Americans. Our country has zero natural threats, an ocean on two of our four borders, and complete hegemony. Hence Ron Paul's theory that all we need as a military is some boats/subs on each coast. This part is not without merit, but if we're going to step back with a mindset of "we suck at predicting what will happen" then we have to accept that there are trade offs and just because historical second/third order effects stunk, doesn't mean that there weren't worse potential outcomes. Both war/death outcomes and economic outcomes.

And now I'm quoting myself. Just to add, I don't think Ukraine winning is a pre-requisite of what I think needs to happen. A pyrrhic victory for Russia would work. At least for the rest of the world.

Agree. If the Russian military is sufficiently beat down, they will then lack the ability to start another invasion. The more beat they are, the longer it will take to re-constitute. Hopefully Putin will be dead by then and they can have another chance to join the rest of the world. Preventing Putin from starting an invasion in a NATO country is the important part. They would lose badly. Which makes for a risky proposition given the nuke thing.

Something to consider: -Would Russia stop with Ukraine? There are geographic reasons to suspect they would not. Namely that Russia has poor natural geographic borders without controlling the Baltics, Moldova and about half of Poland. There's a reason it ended up controlling those areas after WW2 (negotiated). -Based on what we've seen of their performance in Ukraine, I don't think anyone thinks the Russian military would stand a chance against NATO in a conventional war. I'm not sure US troops would even be needed; but if the US is involved, it is for sure a forgone conclusion that Russia loses badly. -If you grant me those two points for the sake of discussion, does that increase or decrease the threat of a nuclear weapon(s) being used on the European continent?

Long term political viability of the current version of China I think it largely depends on what their actual demographics are. All we really have are lies and analyst estimates. I'd venture we won't recognize that they've become a paper tiger for about ten years. So maybe 20 years (10+10)? I think there's a real chance they try to do something with Taiwan. They changed the 2 child policy to 3 children, so they have to see the crash coming.

China is still a huge market. And as such still wields a lot of power, and will for as long as their population is buying a lot of stuff. But the manufacturing base is leaving, their population demographics are very screwed up, and their internal monetary policy is ridiculous. My point is our economies look to potentially be at the start of an un-meshing. Which also means the CCP is backed into a corner.

This may become less of a relevant point in the not too distant future. The CCP keeps locking down due to COVID scares, and manufacturers are starting to move out of China as a result. Once the plants are gone, there isn't any reason to go back.

Big blue doesn't like the ambiguity of platforms that require anything approaching "art" to employ. It doesn't fit with the algorithmic thought process to war planning. What they want is the ability to run an equation: A aircraft x B munitions x C sorties = we win. Basically an operational level JWS. I suspect that is the actual root cause, but also influenced by shrinking training dollars and some other stuff.

It depends a lot on where in the city you are. I was there about a month ago, stayed in the Northwest district. 23rd street area was fine. Walking down to Powell's city of books, there were more homeless folks/piss/etc. Seattle up by the space needle was fine. Walking down to pioneer square, the urine and puke aroma just kept getting stronger.

Stop being so pedantic.

That bent towards bloviating showmanship is exactly what I was talking about. Their presence on the political stage, not what they have or haven't accomplished in their lives. He vomited out stupid shit constantly. The most comical was the sharpie modification of the hurricane thing, at least that was my favorite. 90% of of the stupid bullshit, people on the right just ignored. "Trump's just bullshitting" sort of response. At least that's my response. I have to think there is a similar thing going on, on the left. She opens her mouth and I get pissed off. But that's the same response on the left when Trump opens his mouth.

She's like a left wing female version of Trump. Just spews nonsense. I suspect her actual supporters believe the crap she says at about the same rate as Trump supporters. So the left wing equivalent of that hand-full of retired guys we all know on facebook. It's mostly a nihilistic big old middle finger to the other tribe.

One of the great ironies of pictures like this: protestor screams in face of representative of the institution, while simultaneously relying on the restraint of the institutional representative. It wasn't that long ago that protestors relied on the lack of restraint to make their point.

Wasn't disagreeing what should have happened. That is pretty clear. My point was why it didn't.

Quality and quantity, yes. I feel safe saying most patrol officers don't routinely train anything. And some of those in that department may well be lost causes. Obviously the department level and on-scene leadership was terrible and have proven incapable of doing the job.

It was an absolute top to bottom failure, no doubt. Was it cowardice, well in a definitional sense (lack of bravery), sure I guess. What I'm saying is righteous indignation about a bag of pussies doesn't fix anything. In other words, is the root cause of the problem a constitutional problem with the specific people hired to do the job? Or a complete failure of department training and culture? You want cops who will act in that type of situation, then you have to have enough on the force that you can pull a percentage of them off the street on a routine basis and have them drill building entry. They have to have to tools to actually solve the problem. If they haven't drilled it to the point of second nature, they won't do it under stress. They "freeze." How many people in the military who've done amazing things, have afterwards basically said they didn't think about it, they just did what they were trained to do? EDIT: I guess I'm just really beating around the bush of an old dead guy quote: "We don't rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training." -Archilochus

How many days of drilling over how many years of training? How many years of training within a culture of constant learning as an aircrew member before you started acting in a leadership role? Academically knowing what you are supposed to do, is different than doing it with proficiency under stress, without thinking. Whatever training system produced those cops will produce the same in the future. "Courage under fire" isn't innate. It is taught and built over years.

Is there only one shooter? So they shouldn't be covering other potential axis' of approach? I'm not saying they shouldn't have gone in, obviously they should have. I said this fits the description of an emergency situation. Put it this way. Look at the first handful of cops going in on the video. Do they look anything like any video you have ever seen of dudes going into a building? But they are moving towards the shooter. Then shooting, and then running. Panic. No idea what to do. Success in that environment requires speed and teamwork, which requires training to acquire. If one or two of them had straight up banzai'd the shooter, the outcome would have likely been hero of the day. But if the plan is rely on a hero emerging instead of training competence and confidence, well hope is not a tactic. So the lesson learned in debrief of this thing is to stop hiring pussies? Essentially "do better," great lesson learned....

Clearing a school building is a MFer, I would guess that they're taught to wait for SWAT and only go in, in an emergency. I would guess they've never drilled the emergency part, which is based on their god awful movement/positioning/etc. My contention is if those pistol packing cops had drilled that emergency situation (clearly this situation fit that description) repeatedly, to the point of automatic response, they would have moved in this case. Your contention is they are just a whole group of pussies? Some of them, maybe, but all of them?

That's a complete lack of training. They have no idea what to do, they're out of ideas. Not knowing what to do, is what breeds that fear.

Thanks.

Question for you then: Peter Zeihan has made a point about refineries and setup/re-tool costs and timeline when switching from one crude formulation to another. How much of an impact is it to go from refining light/sweet from a shale field to a heavy/sour crude from where-ever?

Zilch. I just remember reading some stuff years ago about how Venezuelan oil was so gross that they were essentially reliant on US refiners to buy it, since no one else was willing to re-tool to deal with it. Not saying the Texas refineries can't deal with it (they obviously refine Canadian tar sands oil), just that my understanding of the business model shifted a bit after the US went from net oil importer to exporter.

Ironically, US refiners used to specialize in shit oil. Not so much after shale and Venezuela collapsing. Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

And politicians say all sorts of dissembling nonsense Edit: I don't think nsplayr is dissembling, Biden is in reference to what I assume is a monkeypox question.