I'm not entirely sure what he hopes to accomplish. He doesn't have the means to hold all of those countries AND Ukraine AND court Greece AND fight the growing civil unrest at home. Over extension was one of the reasons the USSR completely failed to begin with and Russia is already in economic decline. What exactly is his game?
Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
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I just read about half (because it's looong) of this ( How World War III became possible: A nuclear conflict with Russia is likelier than you think ), and it seems relevant. Altogether quite interesting... and worrying.
This is the most frightening thing I've read in a while. Remember they ARE part of NATO, and it's in the charter of NATO that an attack on one is an attack on all. If Russia starts shit with them, then it's very very bad.
Putin is gambling that we'll throw them under the bus. And we might. Kind of like Austria in another conflict. "For Peace".
U.S. Episcopal Church will now allow same sex marriages. Clergy are allowed to opt out of doing the ceremony themselves if they feel uncomfortable doing it.
This means three major US Christian Churches (United Church of Christ and Presbyterian) now allow same sex marriages. Neat.
This means three major US Christian Churches (United Church of Christ and Presbyterian) now allow same sex marriages. Neat.
Former Sen. Leland Yee pleads guilty to bribery, extortion, and weapons smuggling. You might remembering him as one of those Jack Thompson era social values crusaders from back in the days. He's facing 20 years and 250k+ in fines.
GasBandit
Staff member
I remember, Leland Yee was very much in favor of gun control - not just "requiring a background check to be able to purchase firearms", he was one of the guys who actually was in favor of banning and seizing weapons.... apparently so he could drive up the black market price, since he was supplying confiscated weapons to dealers. Scum, pure scum.
The reason a nuclear conflict with Russia is likely is because, simply put, their conventional forces aren't as good as they're supposed to be. Their navy is like 90% rusting hulls sitting in port, and their few active vessels are decades out of date. Hell, France refused to sell Russia two of the warships they'd ordered over the conflict in Ukraine. Their army is badly understrength, with units manned at levels mostly between 40 and 60%. They rely on largely conscripts who serve for 1 year, making advanced training on complicated systems difficult, and contract soldiers (ie volunteers, like the US Armed Forces) aren't re-enlisting, with dropout rates between 35 and 80%. They privatized their logistics system, and like most privatized industries, it contracted out everything, tripling the costs and causing a corresponding decrease in quality. They then had to un-privatize it, and logistics are now being handled at the brigade level, but there is a shortage of trained officers capable of the task. Their air force is down from 1,600 combat-capable aircraft in 2010 to 1,200 in 2014. Their tank and artillery crews have little live-fire experience, since they cannot afford to expend the shells in training.
Basically, if there is any serious fighting to be done, Russia will have to go nuclear or collapse.
Basically, if there is any serious fighting to be done, Russia will have to go nuclear or collapse.
This is kind of nonsense, in my opinion. Everyone knew he was an ass and a jerk, but now that there's public outrage, they stop airing his show? That's not a moral stand. If NBC, Macy's, etc. really cared about not associating with Trump, they would have stopped airing his shows and carrying his clothing forever ago. They're doing this for publicity as much as Trump does... everything for publicity.
And, as best as I can tell, the only way to win a nuclear conflict with Russia tossing tactical nukes to try and even the odds is to let them and defeat them anyway... without using tactical nukes ourselves. We're talking losing thousands, tens of thousands of troops to nuclear fire in order to show that they aren't worth using against a committed enemy. This would force Putin to consider a Strategic launch, which is basically a failure state for him because he's not willing to risk HIMSELF to win. We can't use our own nukes because that would just escalate the situation. Alternatively, our missile defense technology finally proves that it's worth beans and it shoots down a tactical nuke before it can detonate.
It has literally reached the point that the only way we can preserve European stability is to ether let Russia nuke us a few times or we assassinate Putin.
I suspect that very shortly we will have missile defense technology that can do such a thing, though I am not sure if we have it at the moment. Certainly not widespread enough to create a thorough missile defense network even over a single theater.
This is REALLY why Putin's been on the offensive, actually: we've already pledged to share our missile defense technology with our allies in that region and he can't do shit to NATO without tactical nukes.
Yeah, he's basically running out of time before Russia' true impotence is revealed to the world. Of course, the fact that they're already on the edge of economic collapse, with no one wanting to bail them out*, isn't helping. Essentially, Russia under Putin won't play nice, and the rest of the world is learning they're not powerful enough to be feared anymore.
* to go a little further into this, there's only a few groups / nations that could give Russia enough money to stabilize, and none of them are particularly inclined to do so. The USA? Given that Putin keeps on interfering with the United States in multinational affairs, and blaming Russia's internal troubles on us, yeah, that's not going to happen. The EU? Fuck no! Half of the nations in it just recently escape from Russian dominion, and the economic core of the EU, Germany, isn't exactly full of warm fuzzies for Russia. China? Extremely unlikely - they do billions of dollars of business with the EU and the USA in mutually beneficial trade. Why screw that up by helping Russia, whom, again, the Chinese don't have an especially favorable history with. OPEC? They tanked their oil prices just to knock the bottom out of Russia's economy, so unless they're playing some sort of weird long game, they won't be helping, for certain.
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Yeah... that's about as clean a shoot as you can get. And really, this is a perfect example of why officers should WANT to wear cameras: the video evidence makes it clear exactly how it went down. When they are in the right, the camera helps back that up.
That's horrifying, but the officers really had no choice there. And yeah, it's a good case for why officers should want to wear cameras.
GasBandit
Staff member
Take a spin on the Antonin Scalia Insult Generator.
This somersault of statutory interpretation is the latest stage of prophylaxis built upon prophylaxis, producing a veritable fairyland castle of imagined constitutional restriction upon law enforcement.
Your mom is like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried.
This Alfred Hitchcock line of our jurisprudence is legalistic argle-bargle.
This somersault of statutory interpretation is the latest stage of prophylaxis built upon prophylaxis, producing a veritable fairyland castle of imagined constitutional restriction upon law enforcement.
Your mom is like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried.
This Alfred Hitchcock line of our jurisprudence is legalistic argle-bargle.
Well China's stock market has been due a crash for awhile, considering their entire economy is being floated on massive construction projects they don't need or use. Now that no one is making money on real estate on these new cities, the creditors have come knocking and no one has the cash to pay for the margin investing that went on. A change to equity trading might have softened this blow but the Chinese are notorious for being short sighted when it comes to economics so everyone was working debt because why not? It's not like it was hard to get a loan. Now no one can pay anyone back.
The only real issue is this is happening during the Greek shit. If Greece is forced to switch currencies (a dumb idea unless the military is okay with unbacked drachmas) or worse, forced out of the Eurozone (which WILL start the downfall of the EU), then we're all 10 kinds of fucked. Unfortunately, that is possible because the EU isn't a political union like the US is, only an economic one. We float failing states all the time here in the US... basically every Red state outside of Texas costs more in taxes than it provides, but we don't threat to kick them out because it would FUCK UP LITERALLY EVERYTHING.
The only real issue is this is happening during the Greek shit. If Greece is forced to switch currencies (a dumb idea unless the military is okay with unbacked drachmas) or worse, forced out of the Eurozone (which WILL start the downfall of the EU), then we're all 10 kinds of fucked. Unfortunately, that is possible because the EU isn't a political union like the US is, only an economic one. We float failing states all the time here in the US... basically every Red state outside of Texas costs more in taxes than it provides, but we don't threat to kick them out because it would FUCK UP LITERALLY EVERYTHING.
What will probably happen is that the US will bail out China in exchange for trade agreements, political favors, etc. We don't want a bankrupt China, because that will cause an economic collapse across Asia, and despite the massive debt, the US is still considered to have AA+ credit (according to Standard & Poor's) - we're a good risk.
The Greek situation is as much caused by Germany as it is Greece: the German and EU banks who hold the Greek debt want to institute austerity, which the last decade of Europe's economic situation (particularly in Italy and Spain) has shown does not help the problem, since it focuses all economic growth to the top, not to the people. Greece's debt could be written off (as Germany's was after World War II, giving them a stable foundation to become the economic superpower of Europe), or restructured with more favorable terms without austerity. The recent No vote was a rejection of the terms of austerity that the EU wanted to impose upon them. And I can see why: Greece essentially has very little to lose.
The Greek situation is as much caused by Germany as it is Greece: the German and EU banks who hold the Greek debt want to institute austerity, which the last decade of Europe's economic situation (particularly in Italy and Spain) has shown does not help the problem, since it focuses all economic growth to the top, not to the people. Greece's debt could be written off (as Germany's was after World War II, giving them a stable foundation to become the economic superpower of Europe), or restructured with more favorable terms without austerity. The recent No vote was a rejection of the terms of austerity that the EU wanted to impose upon them. And I can see why: Greece essentially has very little to lose.
Necronic
Staff member
Its worth appreciating that even with the 30% freefall or whatever that we've seen the chinese stock markets are still massively up YOY.
Also worth pointing out that the cause of the crash seems to be people borrowing money to invest which led to rampant speculation and allowed a purely demand driven increase in prices. Basically exactly what happened back during the great depression.
The fact that people don't learn these lessons on their own is a great example of why the whole "FREE MARKET" cry is idiotic. People will expand their actions within the territory allowed them even if it is self destructive.
Also worth pointing out that the cause of the crash seems to be people borrowing money to invest which led to rampant speculation and allowed a purely demand driven increase in prices. Basically exactly what happened back during the great depression.
The fact that people don't learn these lessons on their own is a great example of why the whole "FREE MARKET" cry is idiotic. People will expand their actions within the territory allowed them even if it is self destructive.
Writing off the debt without governmental changes in Greece would have been pointless though... the Greek people have made a national hobby out of avoiding their taxes and the tax collectors were toothlessly unable to force the issue. Until Greece can actually pull in the money from it's people that it needs to sustain it's government services, there is really not point in writing off the debt because it's just going to be replaced with new debt in a few years. This means austerity measures or an outside agency enforcing the tax law.
As for the no vote... well no shit. Who wants to live like a peasant for the next few decades to satisfy some Germans?
It's also an example of why there needs to be a basic level of authoritarianism involved in how a government works. The unwillingness of the Greek government to address this tax issue is explicitly due to the fears of being swept out of power by their own people... people who were perfectly willing to take and give nothing back. There comes a time when you need to do what is necessary to make a society to work and making people pay for the privileges they enjoy is hardly fascism.
What does their spending per capita look like compared to the rest of Europe? And compare with the GDP (per capita) as well. That will tell the story of where on that spectrum the "truth" lies (lay? whatever).
And because it's funny, yes the Truth also Lies.