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They won’t be the only ones.

Well, it didn’t take long to prove me wrong on that one! 😂

It’s the kind of thing that would have made sense to us in sixth grade.

You’re joking.

That low? Were there other nuclear powers on the brink of confrontation with us on that one?

I was thinking about this a few days ago, wondering whether we will see the dead bodies, and I’m guessing we won’t, because sensitivities. Remember Vietnam? Each night, the network news would show video of soldiers wounded in the field, or coffins of soldiers coming home. It was instrumental in shifting American sentiment against the war. The then-current presidential administration and its military complex did not like that. So, in the wars after that, starting with Lebanon and Grenada and on through Panama, Desert Storm, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and all the post-9/11 wars, the military embedded the media with the troops to get them on the same sympathetic side as the soldiers, and there was exactly zero footage of facts on the ground like dead soldiers blown up by IEDs made available for the media to air. This worked to prevent Americans from seeing as they did with Nam just how dirty and deadly war actually is. It didn’t necessarily keep all Americans invested in pursuing those wars, because other reasons, but grim footage of death on a nightly basis was not a factor in people’s opposition to, for instance, America’s Middle East wars. I think it would be beyond shocking for the media to foist close-up images of dead people at all, let alone children, on any basis, let alone nightly. There are probably websites out there that will feature that kind of imagery, but people would have to seek that out, and I don’t think anyone save for a few NGO professionals and perhaps some ghoulish people would do so. So unless there is a dramatic shift in the perspective of presenting raw war footage in the media, I think the closest we will get to anything like that is grainy or blurry or heavily edited images of unidentifiable adult people falling down from a distant camera angle, and maybe not even that.

Much like Trump, his red hats and his inner circle, Putin believed in the Kool-Aid he was drinking. He believed that Ukraine is an illegitimate state; that “Ukrainian” is a fake nationality; that in their hearts people living there identity as Russian; that they were duped by an faux-democratic globalist conspiracy into leaving Mother Russia; and that once they realize this they would welcome his soldiers with open arms; since they are going there only to eliminate the Uki-Nazi leadership and their sympathizers. Now he’s going to get bogged down by a super expensive occupation that is going to complete the bankruptcy of his country that began with the withdrawal of the world economic and business community. His people are going to starve, there will be protests and even riots in the street, and his soldiers will have to decide whether to draw blood from their fellow countrymen in defense of whatever the fuck Putin tells them the principles at hand are. As for Putin himself, he’ll be like Kim Jong Un for at least a while: a guy who owns everything and everyone in an entire country, with which and whom he can do as he pleases. He can steal from anyone, torture anyone, fuck anyone, kill anyone he wants, with complete impunity. For now, anyway. It’s very possible that the sheer ugliness of the story that will eventually be told about the Russia of this era will be as shocking as anything we learned about Nazi Germany.

You are not the only one, and I need to do better as well. Great post.

The increase under Biden in 2021 can't be well-defended, for sure, but Trump certainly liked his Russian oil too. Especially near the end there. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MTTIM_NUS-NRS_1&f=M FWIW, Russia's never more than 8% of all oil imports in any given year.

No proof, but …

So called creation of jobs.

Cruz misspelled “Trump” and “Pence”.

Trump would have been strong with Putin.

I presented a poster on this in Pittsburgh a few years ago where I showed that deadening the ball by just 1% to 2% could result in double digit percent decrease in homers.

This is so far nestled in between Invasion of Poland and Cuban Missile Crisis. 9/11 has turned out to be pretty much what I was filleted for saying about it at the time: a heinous criminal act blown way out of proportion, up to the level of state action, for political, military, and profit purposes. I think COVID is/was bigger than 9/11.

The Allies may not technically be a party to the conflict, but we are practically a party to it, which counts just as much. I don’t think Putin would ask for Trump to be part of the Allies negotiating team because I don’t think he’s going to ask to sue for peace in the first place. Such a concession would be the ultimate weakness. He either wins, or he loses. No in-between. But: as revolting or nauseating the thought is, in the spirit of what if, if Putin did demand to talk to Trump and agreed to stop the shelling in order to do so, which could save tens of thousands of civilians lives, the Allies, including Ukraine, would have to seriously consider that. After all, we’d be talking tens of thousands of lives saved here. And if they did meet and, in a charade pre-arranged between them, Putin agreed to permanent cessation of hostilities as a result of those talks, Trump could be considered a hero as a result, albeit controversially. And to the degree that people in this very forum believe it’s a foregone conclusion Trump will be elected in 2024 anyway, something like a successful Putin-Trump peace summit would cement his landslide election here at home. Ick.

Stipulating that we both agree that this is unlikely, why do you think it is unlikely? Do you think it’s because Putin would never think of it? Or do you think it’s because Putin wouldn’t want Trump involved in the talks?

Yeah, I’m not predicting that. Just a random thought to flew into my head last night as I reviewed pictures from Helsinki 2018.

Remember, Bunker doesn’t like Trump, tho

This would ring a little better if MJT didn’t believe her worst enemies are other Americans.

You can cheer for the death penalty for the worst of the worst, and no one will blame you, and many will attaboy you for it. OTOH, a death penalty that can be used on one is a death penalty that can be used on any. Word to the wise.

Pence was willfully ignorant of Trump’s worst impulses and behaviors, hoping against hope he could be talked into the mainstream Republican fold. All the mainstream Republicans were equally willfully ignorant, with the same hopes. Pence was in the position of not being able to publicly abandon that hope at any point because of his unique position, which I think is why he stayed silent until well after the end.