ViperMan

Yes, many. Among them are the UN Charter, the 1975 Helsinki act, the 1990 Charter of Paris, and the 1997 NATO-Russia founding act. None of which place any limit on NATO's expansion or which exclude Ukraine from joining NATO. All of them recognize each nation's sovereign right to determine their own alliances and allegiances. Russia is a party and signatory to every one of these treaties and agreements. Make note, Bashi didn't provide any treaty or agreement that limited NATO's expansion - no such document exists. He provided you a video of a guy saying that Putin (Putin, specifically) warned us not to. That's different. There is no reading of the facts which alleviates Russia's full responsibility as the aggressor in this conflict. They are in direct violation of every one of those treaties. One could argue, as Bashi does, that it was unwise to allow NATO to expand eastward, and that can be a basis for a good argument, but it's also fully opinion, and there is no treaty or arrangement that Ukraine or any other NATO member state has violated that Bashi can point to which places any legal blame on the West. Ask him to provide a receipt. He'll be unable. In 1999, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia (all former Soviet satellites) joined NATO. Czech and Poland also join the same year. In particular, Poland's accession into NATO had been underway for the entire decade - starting in 1990. Notably, Russia signed the NATO-Russia founding act in 1997 - which as far as years are concerned, comes after 1990 the last time I checked. Also of note, Poland was once a former Soviet satellite. Hey, the more you know! Right? Tough for me to know how long and on what setting I would have to microwave my brain in order to believe that Russia was super upset about its former satellites joining NATO, but would also simultaneously sign an agreement saying it's cool, but then again, I'm no statesman. Hence, why the entire line about them being upset over Ukraine joining NATO is total horse shit. In 2008, Ukraine (and Georgia) were "invited" to NATO at something called the Bucharest summit. As his final act as President before stepping down, Putin expressed discontent that Ukraine would be invited to NATO. Understandable. Falls squarely into Bashi's opinion that "we provoked" this conflict. We get it. Putin didn't want Ukraine in NATO. And because Putin didn't want it, it's our fault. This is the one fact Bashi can lean on and which comprises the totality of his argument. Putin didn't want it. Undisputed. Flash forward to 2014 and Vlad is back in power pushing little green men into Ukraine. I, for one, can always tell who the good guys are in any conflict by who's soldiers are wearing unmarked uniforms, occupying another state's parliament buildings, and then holding "elections" for them which in turn result in the dissolution of their government. Flash forward to 2022, and Putin has his full-on invasion. Personally, my opinion is that Putin is concerned about Ukraine becoming (more) Westernized because of the enormous economic power they wield both in terms of agriculture and energy. Putin (or Russia) losing a substantial amount of their economic leverage over Europe would be strategically devastating for Russia. NATO expansion is a pretext because Ukraine can continue down the path of Westernization with or without being a NATO member state. Yeah, there is a complicated relationship between NATO and Russia given the legacy of warfare in Europe in the 20th century, but there is nothing which has ever limited any state from choosing their own alliances - and this includes Ukraine. Anyone who wants to read them can find them on the internet. Russia has signed all of them. I predict two things. First, that this war will end with Russia annexing eastern Ukraine (Crimea), permanently. As the trade to achieve peace, what is on the west side of the front (Ukraine) will eventually be allowed to join NATO. The second prediction I have is that Bashi will down vote this comment.

LIberals are unable to effectively model conservative thought. It's a thing. Which to me, explains a lot of the derangement surrounding Trump. Conservatives don't have the same issue. You ask a conservative to explain a liberal's position, 9/10 times they will be able to effectively articulate what a liberal thinks and why. Swap the roles, however, and you don't get the same result. You get derangement, hysteria, panic, etc. This explains much of the underlying reason why our politics and conversation right now is so inert. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19379034/

I would have been surprised had you.

As reticent as I am to do someone's homework for them, I'll move the ball down the field...so, yes. Watch for one minute; up until about the 3:30 mark. And no, I don't think she's a Russian agent. She characterizes the Iraq war as a war for "financial reasons" that was sold on lies. Now, I was a naysayer (at the time - like in 2003 when I was a cadet) about Iraq part 2. Put another way: I was against the Iraq war before Tulsi was. I didn't think we should have gone in for the reasons we did and I have posts on this site that go back years which indicate that - I'm no Iraq '03 apologist. That being said, there are only two ways you can fairly approach an understanding of our decision for going into Iraq the second time. The first is a fear-based reaction that is grounded in our assumption or lack of knowledge into what Saddam Hussein was up to in the aftermath of 9/11. I thought there were smarter ways to handle that fear and I think in different times and under different circumstances we would have done better. That said, it's a perfectly acceptable response to the "why" behind our decision to go in. The second (fair) way to approach the decision is to acknowledge that we "went in for the oil." Though that one requires you to grapple with the fact that we're going to trade blood for oil. I am a blood for oil guy because I'm a realist. We are not going to allow a dictator on the other side of the world put a stranglehold on the global economy. We fight over natural resources. We always have and we always will. Decrying "no blood for oil" is absolutely ignorant, hippy-coded nonsense. If you want to be a realpolitik type, you can lean on this one. If you want to be a hippy pacifist, you can lean on it as well. It works for both groups. So yes, I agree, if you want to characterize it as "we went in for financial reasons," then yeah, sure we did, but then again, everything we do has a financial dimension, so it's really not a very illustrative way to view the world...but I digress. The problem I have with her, however, is her characterization of the "why" surrounding going in for oil. She posits some sinister, financial, get-rich-quick, evil motivation that led the likes of Dick Cheney to use 9/11 as a pretext to get Halliburton into Iraq - which was always his master plan...it was closer to the view I had when I was 20...but I was 20. I'm now a grown up. Zip ahead to 4:45 when she goes into "just like we wouldn't want Venezuela to come to our country..." to over throw our government, we shouldn't go into theirs...blah, blah, blah. It underscores this neo liberal idea(l) that all country's are equal and get to have an equal say in the way the world works. Nah. No thanks. Venezuela's merry-go-round of dictators don't get to have an equal say in the way the world works because they're a so-called country with borders on the map. There are other examples available, but I'm not going to trouble myself more tonight by expounding anymore on them at length. The bottom line is that her world-view is conspiratorial, and that one which has no place in a position as serious as the DNI. So no, what I'm doing is not name-calling. I am looking fairly at the implications of her worldview and it concerns me. I haven't written her off. Like I said, I hope she's a fast learner with an open mind. On a somewhat related note to help characterize how I approach the world, I also think the regime in Iran must be toppled. October 7th has necessitated it, and it's only a matter of time before it becomes a reality. I'm not a war-monger, though. I'm just taking an honest look at who's who in the world, and "countries" that engage others in that manner have to be transformed. That usually takes force.

It's not sarcastic. She possesses a high-school-debate-club-level understanding of politics, war, the Middle East, and our role in the world. I hope she wises up quick if she is confirmed to that role. I don't want someone in that role who thinks we're up to no good at a fundamental level, or someone who thinks we can all get along. I want a stone-cold killer as the DNI. She doesn't seem to fit that description to me.

Say what you will, it take balls to fly a big yellow school bus directly up Satan's asshole.

Laws. Regulations. Regulatory capture. Bureaucracy. Safety. Equity. Fairness. Status quo. Oversight. Risk-mitigation. Risk-aversion. Precaution. Guard rails. Red tape. Protocol. Compliance. Special interests. Precedent. Motherhood abounds in our society. Votes could be counted nearly instantaneously if we really wanted them to be. But it wouldn't be fair to some person, in some place, at some time. Or something.

I'm honestly not too keen on Matt Gaetz or Tulsi Gabbard for the positions they've been nominated for. Though in fairness, I think far less damage could be done by Matt Gaetz, so I'm less concerned about that one. If Tulsi is confirmed, I hope she wakes up real quick and changes her tune about "regime change wars," etc. I don't think it'll be healthy to have someone in a position like that who doesn't have a firm grasp of our role in the world.

You haven't had your first Flight Deck Pop? Everybody's had an FDP.

I want this to be true so badly. The irony of her calling him a racist in the 2020 election cycle and then him, an ornery old man, sinking her future political career with this kiss of death would be absolutely delicious, but I don't think he was that adept. The whole thing went exactly according to their plan...problem is, it didn't work. That was their plan. They didn't want Biden. They didn't want a primary. Dems waited until the time was right so they could jettison Biden, but were also close enough to the general election that they couldn't "afford" to hold a run-off or primary. Don't kid yourself. Pelosi and Obama wanted nothing to do with a damaging free-for-all primary that was going to be anybody's game with all the attendant uncertainty, all the while Trump was dodging bullets and chucking spears in the background. No. The plan was to prop up Kamala and pray. It didn't work.

It's integral to their world-view, though. They view any requisite to success as one big chemistry experiment that will work if you only mix the precise, perfect ratios of sex, gender, race, and other immutable qualities to garner of perfect reaction of human achievement. To me, it doesn't seem like there's a rational reason to believe such a crazy thing, but that's their shtick. So I would expect them to keep doing it. I have too, honestly. I saw plenty of dems on the news shows with the seeds of self-reflection taking root...I just hope those little roots hold strong. They probably won't as it's more likely that it's just a shock reaction - sort of like the one where you get punched really hard in the cranium and need a second or two to regroup. That's the unfortunate, more likely reality, and we'll probably be back to more of the black bloc that we saw during the COVID riots in 2020.

Pandemic turnout could be an interesting avenue to explore. 81,000,000 votes down to ~62,000,000 votes DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. That is inexplicable. It cannot be hand-waived. That is an unbelievable difference in voter turnout. You're talking 20,000,000 people showing up, and then not showing up. That doesn't happen without a very clear reason. Period.

Cotton. Massie. Paul (Ron or Rand). Gowdy. Beyond that I'm not sure. Positions: I don't care. We just need authentic people in office now. We have to get away from the longhouse and bureaucracy.

You could (I would) say that I'm a "math inclined" person. A 30% deviation from the norm with large numbers like this is what you call a signal. It's not noise. There is 100% something there. What is it? I can't say. But there is a signal there.

Dude. For real on this. I was NEVER a guy who doubted the previous election...NEVER. Ever. Now, when I see a quarter of the votes missing from a previous parties' election it does raise questions. What the fuck happened. It's not a necessary conclusion that there was cheating, or even that cheating was the most likely occurrence. I'm not saying that. But, it is absolutely a WILD and INSANE outlier that should be studied and understood. 80M votes to 60M votes says something earth-shattering. Earth shattering.

Boomer.

Yeah I think Nicki is a bit too "machine." I don't follow her closely, but that is my impression / read.

Nukes. It doesn't go beyond that.

Fuckin' A. Cheers and good work.

I tend to see the opposite, honestly. Day one, you had an extremely odd reaction from CNN with the naval-gazing over who had the "most attended inauguration" in history. It was clearly meant to be "stumping" by the incoming administration, and it stood out to me that CNN commentators were so hyper-focused on this mundane detail. I still remember how peculiar it seemed. Little did I realize how it would be a harbinger of things to come. In hindsight, looking back, it was obvious from the start that there was a never-ending attempt to discredit him at every opportunity. Here's one about the "very fine people" business. Look at the entire video, and tell me this isn't someone who is very thoughtful in his analysis. Who is taking a clear-eyed and practical look at the situation. Here it is with all of it's context: ALL of the stuff about Charlottesville WAS fake news. It IS propaganda. It is right there for you to see it if you are willing to take the scales off of your eyes. Nearly every bit of this has been boiled down into a shorthand used by the likes of NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, and many others to condemn him as a racist. The only part you ever hear talked about has been stripped of ALL context. Said another way - it's been lied about from the start. If he's so racist, why is he doing better with blacks this time around? What do they know that you don't? Or are you smarter than they are? What about the "Hunter Biden laptop"? Was that fake? Because many in our government with security clearances well-above mine and yours said it was "fake," and news about it was legitimately censored in direct violation of the 1st amendment. Turns out it wasn't fake, and our government compelled technology companies to censor information that was deemed "too dangerous" for you to know about. Now, do you still trust all those people? It was an actual attempt by our "betters" to leverage the inherent trust placed in them into a certain acceptable view of the world. Or is there perhaps something you don't understand about the state of things? Is there maybe something about the way politics works behind the curtain that you're not allowed to see? The signatories of that letter are basically a who's who of the people that are in charge of our little-understood global order and foreign policy. Maybe Trump is a threat to that order? https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9b330000 I suppose all of those people are discredited in your mind now? Or were they right? Was the Hunter laptop fake news? Or was it real? Your answer says a lot about how you process facts and the value you place on truth. Your appeal to "what is more likely" is simply motivated reasoning and cherry-picking facts. That you wield a lot of important-sounding names makes you feel good and as if you have an actual argument, but you haven't presented anything. You take comfort and security in the fact that you place names like Mattis, Kelly, and others in your "quiver" of arrows you lean on, but they are merely people just like Trump. People who were in political office I might add. But I guess that's not a radar contact that's covered by your el strobe right now? You should try arguing with facts. You should look at the entire context. You should attempt to strip the emotion from your worldview and approach this with fresh eyes. Your TDS is showing. At this point, I want Trump to be President so all you infants can have your latent psychotic break, get past it, have your cathartic cry session, and we can all hopefully move on. I'm tired of the craziness.

And now they're saying that the guy who replaced Solemani was perhaps a Mossad agent? Imagine if that was the setup from the get-go to get him in there...smoke Solemani in order to place our guy as the head of the Quds forces...wow.

It feels good to see there are actually serious people left in the world.

We should start a thread that covers this. When I looked at my July tax bill I almost shit myself. Something must be done.

It's not a unicorn. It's a different paradigm for weighing peoples' choices and preferences. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. The author of that Columbia article has chosen a very particular way in which to count votes. He successively eliminates candidates based on multiple rounds of who gets the least number of votes. That is not the only way to count votes in such a system. He certainly knows this fact, and that he neglects to address it, and show other ways of counting and perhaps different outcomes, betrays his bias against such a system. i.e. he's pulling the wool over his readers' eyes. Take his example which you provided: 4 CAB 4 CB 3 BAC ----------> 3 BC ----> C wins 2 ACB drop A 2 CB It's a totally contrived example. In the majority of cases, the extreme candidates will be represented on the "ends" of the choice spectrum - put differently, the middle candidate will in almost all cases be the same (for example, most people would vote 1. Trump, 2. Kennedy, 3. Harris OR 1 Harris, 2. Kennedy, 3. Trump). In the constructed example provided by the author, the middle candidate is A, A, and C - this is not a likely outcome in our currently hyper-polarized political reality. Even still, I'll take him at his word that such an odd outcome is possible: this contrived example still relies on and requires a unique counting scheme to result in a nonsensical outcome. Suffice it to say, there are multiple - better - ways of executing the counting system in a ranked-choice voting scheme which that article side-steps. Opponents point to issues like this usually because they have some predilection against it - it is very difficult to exercise fear-based politics in such a system. Understand though, there are more fair and optimal ways of weighing votes, eliminating candidates, and settling on a candidate who is satisfactory to the majority of voters - which is the ultimate test and purpose of a democracy (republic). Look at it this way: we currently have ranked-choice voting, it's just a 1 or a 0. I'd much rather have a choice between a 6 or an 8 at the end of the night...and that's the purpose of the ranked-choice scheme: to eliminate the other people at the bar from choosing who you have to bang at the end of the night. Under our current system, you either get to bang the 10, or are forced to bang a dude...