ChiGoose

You already admitted that you believed that Russia invaded Ukraine because they didn't want it to join NATO. Russia invaded Ukraine for the same reason it invaded other former Soviet republics. It wants to re-establish it's former "glory".

“No you are!” -The guy routinely parroting Russian talking points Very convincing and clever argument there!

Yes, it is very clear that you don’t understand what’s going on.

Depends on how things go in Ukraine. If the Chamberlain caucus gets their way and there’s a ceasefire that expands Russia’s control beyond the 2014 lines (or even just keeps those lines), then the next conflict will probably be another attempt on Kiev after reconsolidating their forces. If Putin gets his way and is able to install a puppet government in Kiev, then Transnistria is probably next. If he keeps being able to push through into Europe while the West continues to capitulate to him, he may try for a conflict with a NATO country like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, or even Poland if he doesn’t think NATO will live up to its Article V commitments.

I do love that your list of reasons for Russia invading Ukraine doesn’t mention anything about NATO and starts with the real reason that Putin / Russia is revanchist. We are in complete agreement there. I‘m just not optimistic that the guy who has isolated himself from any criticism or pushback will cease aggression once he successfully adds more Ukrainian territory after we stop supporting them and/or push for a ceasefire. Doesn’t seem to fit with the history of Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Putin’s whole worldview. He hates NATO and if he thinks he can force its end by showing they won’t honor Article V, he’s going to find it very tempting.

Finland joining NATO basically doubled the length of Russia’s border with NATO countries but Russia did nothing about it. If Russia was attacking Ukraine to prevent NATO encroachment, wouldn’t they have tried to stop Finland from joining? It’s almost as if the NATO talking point is a fig leaf to distract from Russia’s revanchism…

Do you honestly still believe that Russia invaded to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO?

I think this is broadly true. We didn’t expect Ukraine to put up much of a fight given their performance in 2014 (they had been modernizing their army since then but still). We dragged our feet sending weapons because we wanted Ukraine to prove they could be effective and to avoid escalation. Once it became clear that Ukraine could win given the chance and that Putin’s saber rattling was mostly empty threats, we should have just sent over whatever Ukraine wanted. Unfortunately, by then the Neville Chamberlain caucus had seized control of the House.

Please point to where I said Trump was an antisemite

The best way to avoid an expanded conflict would be to provide Ukraine what it needs to stop the Russian aggression before it expands to other countries.

I am not willing to concede that an authoritarian who has spent decades surrounding himself with yes-men and literally murdering anyone who dissents from him has an accurate understanding of reality.

Remember that one of the main reasons that Fox News was created was because Ailes did not want a future Republican president to have to resign for their crimes like Nixon did. For 30 years, what has become the biggest news channel in the country has been focused on pushing feelings to balance out any inconvenient facts. The advent of social media has expounded this problem exponentially as a significant contingent of GOP voters find the propaganda of Fox News insufficient to slake their thirst for emotional validation. They have continued to seek out sources that are less factual than even Fox. The Kremlin, Beijing, and other adversaries are exploiting this. These clickservstives don’t recognize that they are parroting propaganda but their talking points are often indistinguishable from those of the enemies of the US. Putin absolutely would do this to a NATO country if the felt that the alliance was too weak or too cowardly to invoke Article V.

Russia would love to do this to a NATO country. If they succeed here, Moldova is probably next and then NATO countries are on the table. Not to mention that Ukraine isn’t ready for NATO membership anyway. The only thing Putin understands is power, so the only way that Ukraine comes away from this without becoming a Russian vassal is by making it abundantly clear that Russian aggression will end in failure.

Shhhhh…. No thinking or logic is allowed for the appeasement crowd. Just let Russia take some land now. They won’t then continue to wage war just because that is what they’ve always done to appeasers.

It’s the exact same mistake they made with Nagy.

The Bears completely blew it by keeping Eberfluss. They should have fired the coaches to give them maximum flexibility to either keep Fields or draft a new QB considering how poorly the offense has been handled.

1. You obviously care since you keep posting about it 2. Loss of funds is pressure for a campaign. You can debate the definition of “intense” but best guess is that a significant loss of donor money would create a correspondingly significant pressure on the candidate to end their campaign 3. If actual voter support drove these decisions, he would have either been out of the race ages ago or have never entered.

No, they obviously weren’t. And if his donors decided they didn’t want to continue to support him, that would be intense pressure for him to drop out.

His donors. The people donating to Christie are the Republicans who dislike Trump but aren’t ready to support a Democrat (Think Mitt Romney, Bush types). Once DeSantis revealed himself to be the fraud he obviously was and Haley became the clear anti-Trump choice among GOP candidates, Christie became even more irrelevant than he already was. The deep pocketed donors who supported Christie so he could try to take down Trump decided that Christie was no longer their best option.

Loser finally recognizes that he’s a loser.

They are upset because conservatism requires a belief that: “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” That law enforcement would bind their group is such a foreign concept to them that they literally cannot wrap their heads around it and come up with crazy conspiracies as to why law enforcement would dare enforce the law.

Not all of them, but quite a few. So far, I am not sure I've seen anything that is clearly sanctionable (like with the Kraken lawsuits), but some of the arguments are quite dumb and come up to the line of arguably sanctionable. The thing is, we've never had a president / presidential candidate commit so many crimes, so there isn't much precedent here on a lot of the issues. In other cases, there would be a long list of history that is relevant and can provide guidance and arguments for either side. Here, there is no history on things like presidential immunity for crimes committed after their presidency and whether electioneering falls within the gray area of presidential duties. So even though it seems clear that those issues *should* be decided in favor of the prosecution, there isn't a big stack of case law to put in front of the judge. If you were to give Trump's attorneys the benefit of the doubt: where there is no case law directly on point they just interpret everything in a manner that is best for their client, even when it leads to nonsensical conclusions like "the president is required to be impeached before they can be convicted." They're throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. Strategically, however, I don't think they are trying to win these cases. He's in deep here and his chances of victory in these cases range from borderline to impossible. If you assume the goal is just to delay as long as possible in the hopes of escaping through being elected president, their strategy makes much more sense than if you think they are actually trying to win.

Yes.

I prefer not to think of him. Unfortunately, as an avid news consumer, he always seems to pop up.

I don’t understand how anyone justifies SecDef just disappearing for a few days. The White House should have been in the loop.