romad1

I have a fine memory of a night I spent driving to one of the GLCM bases in Belgium with my captain to snag a bunch of furniture from the just built but also just closed facility. It was something like built in April and now closing in January the following year. It was a snowy January in the Ardennes and I was driving the same roads Patton did to approach the base from the South. I was grooving on the historicalness of it. That was HW Bush and Brent Scowcroft who knew a thing or two about collective security. This here link says my dates might have been slightly off but essentially accurate. Florennes - United States Nuclear Forces (globalsecurity.org)

I hope this is confidence and fighting spirit and not a false sense of security.

"Russia if your listening, I hope you have a good plumber. "

I guess not all the Ukrainians are secret quislings

Russian FM Lavrov basically declared the UK FM Liz Truss to be an idiot to her face. In olden times, you'd see redcoats on the crimean peninsula over that sort of thing.

Interesting thread

The Russians are truculent bitches

I do not accuse anyone I've chatted with here of this view. Only some in other spheres.

We can do a lot. We just won't. Until he touches NATO

I guess he's not going to lose his yacht. Repairs are still pending.

I'd say some of them are clear eyed about the Russian donations. Paul Ryan knew plenty about the ones who were.

Pre-invasion.

Was hearing that some Republicans wanted to do per-invasion sanctions. I'm [shrugs] about the difference. So long as we speak with a common voice and let the bully know that he will pay a potentially regime-ending price for war with Ukraine. Now, how do you do sanctions that are dangerous to his regime? Castro never had that. Kim il Sung never had that.

Blair had to swallow invading Iraq

The German political hot house is really against cancelling Nord2 because it would be like telling Louisiana and Texas that we won't pump oil if Canada wins a gold in the Olympic hockey. Except for all the death and violence of course.

You see that in the Youtube algorithm where the black rifle coffee company guys are boosting Ukraine's potential fight against Russia. This is a real disconnect between the "Russia is the only real Christian country" nonsense spewers and these dudes. Smart strategy is to keep a leash on them to avoid them being provoked into the sort of "nazi" atrocity that Putin wants to launch his invasion.

Are the players getting the issue of Rob Manfred trying to have some of them killed in games with souped up balls addressed?

My hypothesis is that Dad wants his son in the room for the defensive meetings to round out his skillset.

Putin will be very happy to get everyone in Ukraine registered and cross-tabulated using his Chinese friend's tools for data management

Its not as bad as Iraq or Afghanistan was. There will be a core of Ukrainian resistance like there was in immediate post WWII period until well into the 1950s until they were finally snuffed out by the Red Army and the KGB.

Many like these guys are in the Baltics as well

All true. I would say that the best way to deal with the quislings is to string them up but that is exactly what Putin wants to create the conditions for his invasion to help the "Sudeten Russians"

The GOP right now is what happens when you don't have collective security based on norms of behavior. The bully dominates the individually weaker members.

There is a scene in All Quiet on the Western Front -- the 1930s version, not the TV version with John Boy Walton and Earnest Borgnine which is quite good in its own right -- where they have a prolonged discussion about why the Kaiser needs a war. And they decide that he needs a war because he has everything else in Germany.