chasfh

I’m with you on this. My wife is still way into it. I’m starting to run out of gas on it.

Jack Lopez would definitely be an out-of-nowhere make.

That can’t be a serious post.

Then it looks to me as though that puts us in a super difficult position, because Putin’s is slaughtering Ukrainian civilians, and we simply cannot respond in by doing the same with Russian civilians. And just about any military action we undertake would put civilians at mortal risk—otherwise we risk losing support from the rest of the world. And US don’t necessarily have a very good track record recently of avoiding civilian collateral damage. So it seems like there’s a very fine needle we have to thread here, and it’s gonna be a challenge to make Putin take notice and pause without our having to play in his particular sandbox.

The crux of the biscuit, right here. Let’s not pretend that corporations are zombies rising from a state of inanimacy to impose its self-directed political will on the process. A corporations’s political activities reflect the supercharged will of the most powerful person within it, usually the CEO. It’s a way for one person to cloak themselves and their personal intentions behind the imprimatur of an institution. It’s a way for such people to wield an inordinate amount of power far out of proportion to what the Founding Fathers intended for the individual citizens of the nation. Call it dark influence, maybe, although if you think about it for a few seconds, you can usually figure out who’s behind it in most cases.

Well, sure, as long as it’s being allowed, of course Democrats aren’t going to unilaterally lay down their arms and get rolled over in the dark funding game. And I grant there are Democrats who are just fine playing in that muck. My belief is that, funding aside, in strictly a marketplace of ideas, absent either dark funding or dramatic funding imbalances, and with a free and fair election landscape in play in which literally everyone who is eligible to vote can do so if only they wish to, today’s Republican Party would get slaughtered by todays’ Democratic Party. I would like to see dark money banned outright, for everyone, regardless.

Sure, I agree, and we always have to prepare for any contingency. I’m just wondering, what’s the red line step? Can you proceed up an educated guess?

Really? Didn't Correa just do a press conference welcoming him to the Twins yesterday? That wouldn't have been in Minneapolis, would it have been?

The main thing Willi has going for him over Harold is his age. Willi is not yet 25, so he (purportedly) has upside, and he had a great 60-game stretch a couple years ago. Harold is 28. If we have to have at least one Castro on the team, I don't think this has been decided yet. I understand the desire to have a guy who can play both in and out, but we'll probably already have five guys who can play outfield, so that might be enough to take Willi north if he has a surge in the last couple weeks.

Interesting qualification on the statement there. Do you think a Republican in office could successfully force a liberal Justice to resign over, let's pretend and say, their spouse being involved in a reform-the-police effort?

Really, dark money is the only way Republicans can win, given how morally, ethically and even intellectually bankrupt their platform has been of late.

I know you've seen enough and want to start the bombing now. I'm not there just yet. But if radiation starts seeping across Europe, I could be talked into it.

Too good for him. He should be forced to resign immediately.

That's because Josh Hawley Backs the Blue™! Well, not the Capitol Blue, of course ...

I think we may have discussed this before, but do we think once any biological, chemical, or radiological effect wafts over into a NATO country from this war, that would be the bright red line Russia crosses that gets us involved on a shooting basis?

If there is a ray of optimism I am taking from all of this, it's that the actions of Autocrat #1 might horrify those right-wingers whose red hats are less well-dyed and steer them back toward the middle, even if it's back to Bush-style adventurism or Reagan-style let-them-eat-cakeism. The crazies we will always have with us—it's just a matter of whether they make up 10% of the population, or 40% of the population. Hopefully the Ukraine misadventure will leave that number way closer to 10.

He still might ... 😢

No, they're not. Mine are.

Maybe Putin was hoping China would take that Russia role to his Syria role. My thinking is evolving on all this. Max Boot had said on Maher last Friday that Putin didn't have to invade under Trump because he had that fifth column in the White House doing his bidding to undermine the West, after which Putin could just roll in firing nary a shot (in his estimation, anyway). Sounds like a reasonable assumption. Now I'm hypothesizing that the specific reason Putin didn't invade with Trump in office is that he was waiting for Trump to pull US out of NATO first. If Putin had gone in while we were still technically in NATO, and European countries started getting involved, we would have been obligated under treaty to work with them on it. With US out, Europe would have been on their own, US would have sat on the sidelines with our President lipping off about the genius of Putin and the stupidity of Europe, and Putin could have used a Trump-divided West to do what he wanted in and with Ukraine. Additionally, that could have opened the door to China to aid Russia on an overt basis, again with US sitting on the sidelines, and would have created this bi-polar world of Russia/China/the autocrat world versus Europe/the democratic world, with US technically being isolationist (which would have had the practical effect of supporting Russia's move). That's a scary world because Russia and China, together with other despotic dictatorship satellites in support (Turkey, Philippines, Nicaragua, nuclear North Korea, maybe even nuclear India?), might well be at least as strong as the non-US West. All this might be the #1 reason Russia worked so hard to get Trump elected, and then to get him re-elected: Putin needed US out of NATO so we would stand down while he went into his neighbor states unmolested by US. As it turns out, though, Biden is president instead. So why did Putin send Russia into Ukraine anyway, even with US still in NATO? This, I think, is Putin's big miscalculation: he believed the MAGA line he himself propagated, that Biden is feeble, even mentally incapacitated, and weak, and that the West is in disarray. Putin thought he could still waltz into Ukraine and do what he wanted, and that Biden and the West would be too weak and chaotic and powerless to stop him. Putin was wrong. Biden has proved himself the strong and capable leader of the allied coalition to support Ukraine in the fight against Russian invasion. As a result of Putin's fuckup, Russia is getting their clocked cleaned militarily in Ukraine, and the West acted in united fashion to crater Putin's economy out from under him and turn Russia into a legitimate pariah state. Not that he cares about that yet, since he is insulated from a lot of that pain still. But the legs are weakening out from under him, and it can't sustain like this indefinitely. It's gonna break, and then we'll have to be there to help contain the mess.

I don't think bots have mommies.

It is spring here in the city and cold weather does hang on past Memorial Day, so ... yeah, a nice jacket would be a good choice. 😁

Your posts aren’t truthful, mine are truthful.

Stopped Clock Alert: You’re right in one respect, Bunker: Biden’s words have already led to disaster—the Russian misadventure disaster in Ukraine. Biden checkmated Putin by outing Putin’s tactics before he used them, or could use them. If Biden had kept quiet, Russia would have gotten away with false flag attacks and the like, after which there would have been worldwide debate about their veracity, perhaps with China publicly taking Russia’s side on the question, which would have created a huge polar divide and complicated the situation perhaps even beyond resolution. But because Biden told us upfront what to expect, no person in the world who values their own reputation will profess even the whiff of a belief in Putin’s line that Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis who are bombing their own cities and killing their own civilians so they can unfairly blame the Russians for it. Because of Biden, the world knows the truth. Do you, Bunker? “Way to go, Brandon, way to go! 👏 👏 “

Lol bunker throwing shit against our walls.