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atomheartbevo

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Posts posted by atomheartbevo

  1. 4 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

    It's pretty interesting from a historical aspect at least.  Chapter 25: America's Economic Downfall Due to Hubris, Greed, and Stupidity

    You know, we can look back at various empires, and pinpoint moments big and small that led to the downfall of those empires, whether they be Romans, Persians, Ottomans, British, Spanish, etc., etc. It's just so obvious in hindsight, some real "damn, they really fucked up at this particular moment in time" kinds of moments.

    Most of the time, the people who were living at that time within those empires would not have realized the seriousness of those moments, because they would have grown up in a situation where the empire is all they had ever known.  They couldn't conceive of something wrecking their world and they would have seen the occasional speed bump but assumed that things would course-correct and everything would work out fine, because that's how it had always been in their lives.

    And in those cases where we can assign an exact date to the end of an empire, even then for the majority of people who were living at that time, it might have been just another day. One day a farmer and his family go to sleep under one ruler or one country, and they wake up the next day under another ruler or country. He still has chickens to tend to, fields to plow, etc. He's going to hear about it after the fact. He may not even be able to see the big picture, because he lives in a tiny village in the boonies. Maybe whoever comes by to collect taxes has a different accent in the future. 

    But here in America in 2025, we all have access to information (even if we don't partake of it) where we are aware of these things, and we can in fact see, in real-time where we are pissing away our influence on the world scene. We will feel the effects over time on our economy (it will be measured in years, so we will see and feel it).

    Killing USAID and Voice of America and various other things we use to project soft power, we are literally giving the Chinese a power vacuum to fill, and when they fill it, we can't just put a different party in power in 2026 and 2028 and bring back everything and tell the Chinese "yeah, you guys need to leave, we got this, we'll send them some food and medicine and they'll let our oil or mining companies back in, no harm, no foul!"  

    When countries pivot away from one empire to another, well, lest we forget we have a very relevant example from earlier in the year: when we got in the tariff fight with Canada, they literally said they need to pivot to Europe and replace us with Europe. When that happens, we won't be able to claw our way back into those markets easily, because that's a helluva lot of supply chains/infrastructure that does not pivot all that quickly.

    When conference realignment happens globally, just like with college sports, there's usually no going back to the old conference. And this isn't the Cold War where we just keep a steady bearing and stick to our values and we can beat the Russian bear and eventually get all of those Eastern European countries on our side. China is playing a much longer game than we and the Soviets were.

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  2. 4 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

    Yeah.  And I particularly loved that very Christian era in DFW (and Texas as a whole), when they lynched black people.  https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/lynching

    You could really feel Christ's loving embrace as they grabbed and tortured black men before they executed them in public.  WWJL?  Who Would Jesus Lynch?

    Fuck these pieces of shit.  Fuck their fake Christianity.

    And lest we forget a little show in the 80s called.....Dallas....about a beautiful, loving, Christian family, you know, the Ewings.

    Every week, we were regaled with tales of the Ewings and their friends and competitors (not enemies mind you) going out and doing good things in the world.

  3. 2 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:

    I'm coming back to this because she said exactly what the proper, grown up response to tfg's batshittery.  The fact that the perfect response came from this source is utterly baffling to me.  But I'll take it if it means the people who follow her see a crack in the facade of their great and wonderful orange Oz.  

    Almost makes you wonder if her MAGA stuff was all an act.

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  4. 18 hours ago, KYHorn said:

    The shooter on the bridge was right behind the other shooter whose gun was taken. So I wouldn't be surprised if the hero was shot by the guy on the bridge after taking the gun

    Bingo, we were right, after he took the father down, the son shot him.

    Quote

    The owner of a tobacconist, al-Ahmed, a 44-year-old father of two daughters, aged six and seven, suffered gunshot wounds to his shoulder and arm from the second suspected attacker, Naveed Akram, who turned his fire on al-Ahmed after he had disarmed his father.

    https://au.news.yahoo.com/fruit-shop-speaks-bondi-hero-233639859.html
     

    56ca520be52c47433088e4fad81252f7

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  5. 27 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

    He cowrote the screenplay with Ephron for When Harry Met Sally. Regardless, terrific film and a brilliant guy. He will be missed. 

    25 minutes ago, South Austin said:

    He contributed to the story, as did Billy Crystal, but I believe Ephron got sole screenwriting credit.

    If he had not changed the ending of When Harry Met Sally to be happy, it would not be nearly as popular as it still is.

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  6. Michael Koffman said 403k was their quota, and the growing pool of reservists include service members who probably thought they had served their time and were done. These maybe the guys who get tapped for those internal forces/national guard to keep the peace in Russia, and you can bet they would be bitter at any men protesting/trying to dodge any drafts.

    “Russia signed up 403,000 recruits this year, surpassing its initial plan for 2025, Budanov said. It is also tapping a growing pool of reservists to replenish its ranks and doling out financial incentives that lure men from its hardscrabble provinces.”

    Zelensky’s Front-Line Visit Highlights Ukrainian Resilience - WSJ

     

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  7. 50 minutes ago, Bevo said:

    if Russia does decide to attack, Germany and Poland will not be caught off guard. And more likely, Russia will not attack because with a fortified central and Eastern Europe, Putin knows he would lose.

    The EU as a whole has over 1.5 million active-duty military personnel, and much more modern and effective air forces.  Not to summon Peter Zeihan's spirit, but Russia is on a downward slope in terms of eligible men.  And that's ignoring that they can't even defeat Ukraine.

    And more importantly, Putin doesn't have the balls to truly go after NATO, even with American sitting on the sideline, since England and France have serious nuclear capabilities that he would not risk.

    But here's my thing, putting aside the nuclear issue - if Putin had manpower to spare, we would see it. He literally emptied the prisons, brought in Russian PMCs, brought in a shitload of North Koreans, brought in Africans and Indians that were tricked, and here we are in 2025, the Ukrainians are hitting factories and refineries a thousand kilometers deep into Russia, Muscovites have heard air raid sirens and seen explosions in the distance, the Russians are moving at a snail's pace in Ukraine and taking losses over small amounts of land that they can't afford in the long run, and some of those "gains" they claim, are then reversed by the Ukrainians, and/or are faked.

    He's got 700,000 men committed to Ukraine. He would need several times that to try and invade NATO proper when you take into account that his logistics chain would stretch out very rapidly through enemy territory.  Right now, his local logistics chain is only under serious threat for the last few dozen miles (from the Russian border to wherever in Ukraine). Stretch that out from the Russian border through Ukraine or Belarus (forces in Belarus would quickly find themselves under NATO attack) and it gets into hundreds of miles, and with rails being hit almost immediately by NATO air/missiles, he'd have to try it by trucks, which he doesn't have a lot of these days.

    I firmly believe that if he had even 100,000 or even just 50,000 troops to spare, we would see them being thrown into Donbas or another area to gain control and make his case for claiming that area through "negotiations". I think that's why we are seeing those mobilization orders and building of internal security facilities/groups - he's gotta tap into Moscow and St. Petersburg, and that's going to tie up troops within Russia keeping those cities under control.

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  8. Some Republicans in Congress are getting testy with Trump, and he’s still pissed at the Epstein vote.  He’s got the majority of Republicans in the Indiana Legislature telling him to fuck off, which while it’s one state, does show that not everybody will do his bidding, even after he threatened to withhold federal funding. Plenty of Americans on the right are not too thrilled with the economy.  And millions are about to get turbo-fucked with healthcare expenses.  And murdering survivors in the water did not go over as well as he thought.

    I don’t see how he sells a big war against Venezuela in an election year when they haven’t attacked us and Trump is already Bigly unpopular and he doesn’t have control over a Republican Congress.  Maduro knows he can’t be trusted to make a deal, and he’s got Russia and China in his corner, so it’s in his interest to stick it out.

    Hell, there are a lot of Americans who don’t realize that we are on the path to war with Venezuela. How does he go on TV and sell that, and surprise the hell out of them like that?  It’s a fantastic way to help the Dems win Congress next November.  

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  9. 4 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

    Convincing Germany and Poland they oughta start thinking about engaging in large-scale, continental warfare.

    What could go wrong?

    And there's even more. Germany deploying engineering troops to build fortifications/defensive positions in Poland next year, on the border with Kaliningrad and Belarus. 

     

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