ewsieg

Fixed that for you.

I got a mailer yesterday that said whoever wins the GOP primary for my state house seat will win the general election. It then asked democrats to vote in the GOP primary for a non-extremist candidate. While I appreciate that move, not sure if there is a non-extremist candidate.

I don't disagree with any points you have made except for this snippet above. This is absolutely a war of our choice. If we sat back and just used sanctions, if Zelinksky is still alive he's trying to piecemill a resistance from somewhere near the border of Poland.

I'm a little confused by this response. Is the argument that the US should support Ukraine at all costs and all deaths due to a prolonged recession and the starvation of millions is acceptable because Putin is that great of a threat? As such, Ukraine must win this war and we should support them.....but, if Ukraine wins the war so much that they are able to try and take back Crimea, we will be in a situation where Nukes are being used.

Georgia and Chechnya falling under the rule of Putin, versus now where they are under the rule of their own president who is under the rule of Putin, should not be our worry. He could go after Azerbaijan, that's about the only one left. If Ukraine fell, I think Moldova was clearly the next target, that's off the table now. In the eyes of the world his army has been shown to be a mockery. He knows this. A continued war like we have now will put tens of millions in Africa alone at risk of starvation. Is a continued fight against Putin in the Donbass region to ensure he can't turn his attention elsewhere worth potentially millions of lives elsewhere? Possibly it is because Putin always surprises us again, but it just seems like most of you, none of whom i'd call warhawks, seem to think it's worth risking everything and the only way this war should end is with Ukraine driving Russia out of their land.

Who else is he going to invade? The western pushback for Ukraine was real. Ukraine is doing the fighting, but without amazing support from the west, Russia is likely controlling most of the country by now. You think he'd go into Finland? That's basically NATO-lite right now. Whereas, China? I just don't see how what was mentioned could be viewed as an enticement and reason to do more invasions.

I doubt Putin would do it either. But if he would, it seems like a dream scenario to me.

I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert in the field, but we could send in all of our might, annihilate every Russian in Ukraine, including Crimea, Russia completely backs down, but Putin would still spin it as a win internally. From a western standpoint, He would have invaded Ukraine, agreed to no Nukes in the eastern European countries in return to walking away with his tail between his legs. Additionally he would have added another NATO country on it's border in the North and it absolutely would put Ukraine in a direction of being a NATO member in the upcoming years as well. I just don't see any reward for Putin. I do see a reward for African's being able to get some wheat, as well as the global economy, which again, affects poor people more than anyone else. Don't get me wrong though, remember i'm still a conservative at heart, so screw poor people, they should lift themselves up by the bootstraps and maybe head to Ukraine and fight if they want to do something productive.

Serious question, why is this such a terrible idea? We refuse to use our Nukes as a deterrent already and can launch enough to participate in our 50% share of the end of the world without launching them from eastern Europe. In return, Ukraine gets it's land back, fighting stops, and maybe this world recession we're about to jump into isn't as bad as it could continue to be if we don't. Mind you, awfully easy for me to say 'F$%@ Putin' from my fairly steady job that likely won't get cut even if a major recession, my guess is most of you would be throwing out reports on how a major recession is worse on minorities if a republican was to blame for the recession. Odd no one seems to give a shit about them now.

There is a part of me that hopes not.....keep eating those Big Macs Trump!

From what i've read/listened on her, she falls into the DeSantis category. Not dumb at all, but blatantly chose party over country.

Exactly, and what you pointed out above with 'the wagon's circling' is the concern with that.

They are doing a good job to the people that are willing to listen to them, which happens to be the same people that didn't vote for him anyway. At this point, i'm not sure how well it's doing elsewhere. There is evidence that GOP voters are starting to look at a party past him, maybe this is playing a part of that. He's been able to put a spell on the entire GOP voter base though, so I don't give a crap about soiling him, he needs to be put in jail to ensure he doesn't run again.

I would gather there would be meta data at both the device and network end. I doubt you could get the full texts from the network side, unless, soon after 1/6, federal requests were put in to provide or at least safeguard the data. If it's secret service, I would hope/assume they don't have a BYOD policy and have secure government issued phones. With this, it's possible all communication is tracked/stored separately and even if not, at any time the government could take the phone and attempt to get the info directly off of them.

If you don't think it's fair for the GOP to take any credit on getting kids back to school, then I'm assuming you're laughing at the fact that Whitmer is taking credit for it.

Whitmer ads have started, she's touting that she didn't raise taxes (even though she pushed for it) and she got kids back into schools (even though it was the GOP that pushed to get kids back in schools). Oddly, nothing about how she fixed the roads or brought down car insurance rates while trying to kill Konstantinov. I guess the "good" news is my mom (still would vote for Trump today) watched the GOP governors debate and said that from what she saw, Whitmer might still be the better choice.

Absolutely, just pointing out WV isn't the problem. Earlier you'll see why I think Biden should be pushing the legislature to put it to a vote to put pressure on those purple states to try and keep some of those borderline Dem seats as well as possibly steal some of those borderline GOP seats.

Manchin has already said he would codify RvW, the party wants more than just that though.

Adding to this. A very large majority of the country thinks there should be Abortion for the case of rape, incest, and the health of the Mother. Even abortion without those exceptions has a majority approval. For someone like me, a conservative that favors GOP fiscal policies but wants to punish the GOP for abortion, if the Dems are just going to throw their hands up in the air, what's the point? If I have to put up with abortion with or without Democrats in charge, maybe I minds well vote GOP and get better fiscal policies (IMO). I'm not saying the above is my mindset as I still want to burn the GOP to the ground for allowing Trump, but in your purple states, giving independent/centrist voters the belief that their votes will make a difference for their state right away, that is a huge encouragement.

I'm iffy on the fillibuster and definitely don't want stacking of the court. Biden, more than anyone knows about slow incremental change though, which is why his presidency has been even more infuriating to me. Whip up the party to put a bill up that will codify limited abortion rights that will get Manchin on board (shows unity) and gets likely the minimum GOP votes, Murkowski and Collins. Even if it doesn't pass, you're showing folks what they will get if they continue to vote for you. This would be critical for your purple states.

I was gung ho that I was going to go to this until over the course of the last few months the Drew and Mike Podcast has been tracking Vince's path to this tour and it's just been abysmal. The scary thing is, he's much improved from a year ago.

I'm assuming my recollection is coming from Gary Graff, but IIRC, Henley was big on pushing for the tiniest edits if it was lyrics he was not involved with in order to get named as one of the songwriters.

You guys got me, I've been doing it wrong all along. From now on, should my kids get into an argument, I will do a full investigation to figure out who is 51% or greater wrong in that situation and punish the offender. Additionally, I will do nothing but praise the other. You hit your brother but he definitely started it and egged you on, not only is he punished, how about we go get ice cream!

I agree with Edman that i'm more worried about right wing extremists currently, but you just pointed out about a situation where even if 100% of the blame on that building was a boogaloo boi, we're talking what 1 million dollars in damage, rough estimates for the Floyd protests were around 2 billion nationally. Just as the GOP is wrong to try and deflect criticism about 1/6, probably not right to deflect criticism about the Floyd riots.

Certainly wasn't giving Carlson any benefit of the doubt. In fact I wasn't even talking about benefit of the doubt, just mentioning if one side is adamant X should be done, it seems the other side questions why is X being proposed, not the merits of X, not possible con's with alternate solutions, just that obviously the other side wants to do it in order to get to some "bad" Y outcome.