leh-nerd skin-erd

Good for her. Maybe we need more of this sort of thing. And the biggest poser in Washington.

By the true believers in Biden, the rationalization is he’s untouchable and beyond criticism. That describes a few folks here. For some, generally, the human interest angle and the feelings generated by seeing BG come home overrides any concern of Bout returning to his prior life and destroying countless others. For some, it’s business as usual, politicians choose who wins and who loses and in this case, why get all upset about it?

Welcome back, Doc. Brittney Griner is home and that’s excellent news for her and her family. Bout is free to injure, kill and maim again, and that’s very bad for the world. No, I would not make the trade. Had the exchange involved returning a Russian national convicted on some low level charge, the son or daughter of a Russian diplomat or member of the Russian water polo team, I’d consider that. As an American, would you consider accepting an arrangement for a temporary pause in aid to Ukraine in exchange for Paul Whelan? Let’s assume no financial/military aid to Ukraine for 6 months. Or, there are stories of the Ukrainians mistreating Russian POWs, up to injuring/killing or releasing videos of them. Would you support Biden pressuring Zelensky to grant their release by withholding aid/support until…say 100 were returned to Russia? In return, Paul Whelan comes home. Finally, I do not believe Biden would have traded Whelan for Bout, leaving BG behind, if that was the only option. Do you?

BillSy is struggling today, very difficult to follow. Turns out he makes more sense when he spends his days meme-ing.

This is the worst Penthouse Forum story ever.

I started the conversation acknowledging that Trump was wrong to send love letters to NK. You then attempted to compare Biden's actions to Trump securing the release of Otto Warmbier, including some odd mention of the cost of his medical care. Once that ruse was exposed, looking silly, you moved on to the relationship between Trump and the Saudi's, in particular, MBS, a current and former ally of Joe Biden. One that connection was revisited, you moved on to a prisoner release that was designed to end a longstanding war with the Taliban and the release of 5,000 POWs. Trump was criticized for that decision, apparently by war hawks who wanted perpetual hostility, or perhaps preferred the Biden approach to earning the deaths of more American soldiers. We can certainly debate the release of those prisoners, and who(m) might have been responsible for that decision--and I assume you were in complete lockstep with Trump on the decision. Be that as it may, you continue to compare unrelated issues in a futile attempt to defend your guy Joe. Just take the hit.

Good Lord, what a wuss.

So...your argument is that a negotiation to broker a peace deal is the same as what happened with Biden and Putin today? That's your position? Fair enough point....Besides getting BG back...what else do you think Team Biden negotiated with respect to peace in that part of the world? At face value, sending a guy back known as the Merchant of Death sounds most unpeaceful, don't you think? As for MBS...Biden has been in office +/- 50 years. The Saudi's have been the Saudi's for all of those +/- 50 years. What was Biden's response to the murder of Khashoggi when he took office...? More importantly, what did he do to marginalize, prevent or eliminate the Saudi scourge after taking office in the early 1970s? When he was second most powerful man in the world 2008-2016? So far we're up to making the world a better place by capitulating to Putin and releasing murders, and punishing MBS by buying oil, offering a fist bump and maybe sending really mean notes with stern language to his mom. I can see why you're a disciple of Joe.

Politicians do political things. BillSy mentioned Trump's "love letters" to N Korea. I'm happy to talk about that, it's what dialogue is all about. BillSy though is completely off the rails here. His angle seems to be that returning Bout to Putin was absolutely the right call, and he apparently would have supported Trump trading Bout for Paul Whelan a few years back. I honestly can't think of any person, any time who would support negotiating with hostile nations and sending their killers back to do more killing. Neville Chamberlain, maybe. It's like BillSy has entered some sort of dream state where Biden is beyond reproach.

We’ve already established that Biden will negotiate with hostile regimes, and that’s historically not been a presidential best practice. You keep asking the same question, which basically boils down to “Why didn’t Donald Trump negotiate with hostile nations for political gain, and get sandbagged in the process?”. Kudos for you for super-sizing the silliness with jumping to the conclusion that Trump not negotiating with a nation you feel is dangerous to our interests, and Putin not invading in Trump’s watch is indicative of an employer/employee relationship. Meanwhile, Biden is freeing serial killers.

Low brow humor, disrespectful to the Office, and yet very funny. For one to think outside the box, it's helpful if they actually know the box exists. Sadly, BillSy just thinks it's cloudy all the time.

Sure, if you want to go down this road, that's fair. In a perfect world, Trump wouldn't send love letters to Korea, Biden wouldn't align with the Saudis, Obama wouldn't partner with Vlad, and so on. That said, one can look at the facts as they played out and conclude: Korea before Trump was Korea after Trump, and is no less Korea with Biden in office; Biden and his crew have almost singlehandedly caused the dependance on Saudi oil and the embarrassing debacle of Biden begging for assistance for the hard cold winter; Putin's relationship with the very flexible Obama resulted in the annexation of Crimea and revealed the impotence of Obama; On Trump's watch, for all the hype and bluster on his relationship with Putin, Putin stayed home; On Biden's watch, Putin quickly moved on Ukraine, with the completely predictable loss of human life and unimaginable suffering that followed; And now, this In less than 10 months, Putin engineered the release of a key ally, by all accounts a reprehensible and vicious human being. This in spite of :wink wink: outrage :wink wink: at Russia's devastating attack on Ukraine and commonly accepted wisdom that when dealing with a bad human being, it's the height of foolishness to send him more very bad human beings to assist him in his deeds. Putin knows Biden better than Biden know Biden, and all your manufactured concerns about 'love letters' don't change a thing about what happened and why. As for Otto Warmbier, it is abject numbskullery to compare his treatment and ultimate release to that of Brittney Grenier. The situations are not the same in really any way beyond terrorist nations and people being victimized. In retrospect, it must be heartbreaking for his family to know that the US Government will, in fact negotiate and acquiesce when it's politically advantageous to do so. I always wonder how far someone like you--the meme generating Hillary popcorn guy--will go to defend things you would criticize under the prior admin. Have some pride, man. This is great from Brittney Grenier, that is absolutely indisputable. It is not great for the world, that, too is indisputable. Both things can be true. Why can't you acknowledge that? It's like you're in...a cult...or something. Welcome back!

The Biden admin sends an international criminal called “The Merchant of Death” back to Russia, gets fleeced in the process, brags about caring about all Americans, and reveals his Administration is completely comfortable in negotiating with terrorists and terrorist nations as long as certain boxes are checked. Naturally, the follow up question form pro-Biden supporters who used to really distrust Russia (from late 2015-early 2021) is “Why didn’t Trump negotiate with the terrorists nation?”. Even for Billsy, Tibs and the crew, this is pretty dumb.

You asked a question at a third grade level but these issues are more complicated than that, Tibs. But you’re probably right. The “Merchant of Death” is probably retired and won’t be able to just walk right into the Leningrad Walmart and buy some tanks. Good to see Russia isn’t a concern again.

In no particular order: Great for Brittney Griener and her family. In spite of her naïveté and/or criminal behavior, the sentence she received was cruel, unjust and designed ultimately to result in this outcome; Great for the WNBA, they get their high profile star back and the positive news keeps the sport in the public forum; Great for the LGBT community showing an historically marginalized group that the world is changing and that when given the opportunity to choose freedom for two individuals, BGs life had more value than that of Paul Whelan languishing in prison for 4 years; Great for Putin and Comrade Bout. Putin knows Biden, knows the American people and knows that in spite of bluster and tough talk, it was only a matter of time before the Biden admin met Russian terms; Bad for Paul Whelan, jailed for 4 years. The message has been sent that his life is irrelevant in that the Americans held a known terrorist and Putin ally and still couldn’t/wouldn’t get him out. I would assume he’s devastated and just about out of hope; Bad for the American people generally. There are thousands and thousands of American citizens traveling the globe, and the stage is set again for another hostile nation to “arrest” an individual and go to work on shaking down the administration; Bad for the world. If the Russian is as bad a guy as the American government said he is, more deaths are sure to follow.

Less than 24 hours later, he backs down. In a move surprising no one, he returns the Merchant of Death to work with Russia and gets in return for one reefer smoking American who apparently didn’t pay attention to her surroundings. In the meantime, the other American detained for four years is left behind, presumably because he’s not a real, real good basketball player and probably an old white guy. On the other hand, maybe this is the flexibility Obama talked about to get some things accomplished…since he’s been in office, Russia has been invaded, Biden has cozied up to the Saudi Monarchy, and now Vlad gets his guy back.

I didn’t think about Herschel Walker much one way or the other, but it seems you did. I have no control over outcomes one way or the other. Trump followed the playbook on “illegitimate elections”, “coup” and “treason”. Sadly, supporters of the dem party willingly went along with the charade launched in 2015, and when that scheme failed badly, simply moved on to the next scheme. Had folks like you, presumably, demanded some accountability from your leadership team for getting you all worked up with unfounded allegations, chances are high that Trump would not have followed suit. Unfortunately, for people like you to come to grips with that, you come face to face with the fact that you were bamboozled by one of oldest political scams in the world. It takes a strong person to acknowledge that sort of thing, and most people just don’t have that capacity. Btw, it’s why the Dems launched the probe to begin with—they know you better than you know yourself. I support legal action against the participants in the 1/6 riots, support the actions of the police officer who shot the protestor, wonder how those nudniks overran the Capitol and who was responsible for the security that say, and why that person hasn’t been held accountable for the abject failure that day. Do you? As for “participatory”, that word means nothing in the context of the rest of your paragraph. It’s a weasel word as you used it here. I assume you don’t mean Trump physically assaulted officers, or that you’ve seen direct evidence that he orchestrated the plot to kill officers. It’s not that I think you couldn’t think that, it’s just that you would have said so if you did. Surely you can be more specific here.

No, wrong. The GOP recognized the political aspects of the impeachment proceedings for what they were…political shenanigans.

Game…set…match.

This is getting scary. I had something ready to go on the song being about Annie, Nancy and Heart, but deleted it. Next thing you know I’ll be talking all about my pigs in a French blanket recipe.

I think it was Annie, Mup. What people didn’t know—indeed what they couldn’t know—was that Annie’s middle name was Nancy.

Nancy are you ok, are you ok Nancy? Nancy are you ok, are you ok Nancy? I’d go on but in this case, it’s probably too soon.

There’s no need for information to be released. The people of Pennsylvania voted him in, it really doesn’t matter if he makes a recovery or not. It is what it is, and he’s obviously been significantly impacted.

You’re taking him out of context. That fan never smelt the field, and it was only one d.

And you played tennis!