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956 Worldwide

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Posts posted by 956 Worldwide

  1. Just now, Doc Sam Beckett said:

    How is it any different from the NFL? This is what people wanted and expanding it isn't going to change anything 

    Yeah, these are the two best teams in college football even if you REALLY don’t want them to be.  In all likelihood the result is the same— rematch, unless an accident of seeding has them meet before the final. 

  2. Just now, Vic Mackey said:

    Bama vs Georgia pt 2 close to happening. SEC got what they wanted. We might have our 3rd all SEC national championship game in the last decade. Georgia laid down for Bama in the SEC title with a wink wink handshake deal to get both of them, knowing a rematch was likely. 

    I have this awesome pillow you might like to try…..

  3. 4 minutes ago, Wally Pryor said:

    No, there was no chance. Was over from the get go.

    Yep. Cincy started looking a lot worse once nothing worked and they started getting frustrated. It was just an asskicking and Cincy shouldn’t have been there. 

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  4. 1 hour ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

    We tried invading Russia after World War I with a ridiculously tiny allied army of Brits, White Russians and Czechs and quickly realized the futility of attempting to conquer Russia and pulled out with the quickness.

    Patton would have met the same fate as Napoleon and Hitler. 

    The Czechoslovak Legion is one of the most amazing stories of the 20th Century. 

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  5. 10 hours ago, Brisketexan said:


    I just don’t understand people who get their information from cable talking heads. Of any stripe. Hell, I probably agree with Maddow’s “conclusions” more than Tucker’s….but she’s maddening. She uses clickbait style (builds forever before getting to the key fact or point), and she feeds an outrage machine.

    F that. Get fact-centered reporting from sources like NPR or the BBC if you need electronic media. Or, try reading: the economist, the WSJ, even just wire services like Reuters and AP.

    If someone is feeding you conclusions, they’re feeding you their brand of bullshit. Read facts, actual news.

    I truly don’t get it. I can’t stand watching pundits.

    Here’s the thing, very few people actually do. Carlson gets between 3 and 4.5 million viewers a night. Even the lowest rated network news shows generally outdraw him, the top two best him easily, and all together they crush him.  Tucker just doesn’t reach as many people as it may seem.

    Also, comparing him to Maddow is truly dumb. Lying and exaggerating about political shit is one thing.  Carlson pushes vax conspiracy theories and lies that lead to real world people dying and the rest of us suffering from a prolonged pandemic. 

  6. @Shady Ray is correct, the announcement came first with a pledge to review MAPs in December, and the invasion coming in between. 
     

    That aside, the report on who did what and who was bad when for Russia-Georgia is a master-stroke of Russian success in sidetracking the West with minutiae and completely missing the larger issue at hand— that no matter who started what, when, it was Russia and no one else who was acting with military force on the other side of a universally recognized international border. And that it was Russia and no one else who had supported and encouraged the “frozen conflict” in South Ossetia for decades. It is a classic Russian tactic to create a crisis and then threatening to lose control of it. Europeans, with their love of procedure and letter of the law, are especially susceptible to this.

    Russia is the master of the old legal saw—- when the fact are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on your side, pound the table (Russia is usually pounding the table). It’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that it’s Russia and no one else who is claiming the right to tell its neighbors what trade agreements are acceptable.

    Also, you are mistaken about Central European leadership. PiS Poland and Orban/Fidesz Hungary are the EU’s biggest headaches and serious concerns, but neither comes close to the corruption of either the Communist incarnation of those countries or Vladimir Putin’s Russia. And for that matter, the recently brought down Kurz government in Austria. The Fiala and Heger governments in the Czech Republic and Slovakia are boring, competent, technocratic, cabinets.   Neither are as inspiring as Havel or Walesea, but then again that’s not what either place needs. 

     

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  7. 15 hours ago, mdmost said:

    Hell yeah.

     

     

    15 hours ago, mdmost said:

    Hell yeah.

     

    These great and the rose in the interlocking U is the type of graphic design we need more of. 

  8. 22 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

    Given that Putin has worked to make sure he has no competition (anybody that could rise to his level), I fully expect things to go to shit as a bunch of lower- and mid-level bureaucrats jockey for position and power.  

    This is really just back to the future, as one of the favored pastimes of Russia hands used to be Kremlinology— speculation over the health of the General Secretary, poring over May Day photos and TASS quotations to decipher who is in favor and who might be a favored replacement….in a lot of ways, the Tsar was much better because even if he was autocratic and viewed Russia as a personal possession, he at least presumably wanted to hand over something marginally functional to a clearly designated family successor. 

  9. 41 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    I think this is a strong -- and true -- point.

    In some negotiations, you are dealing with an opposing player who acts in good faith, sees the relationship as mutually beneficial, and that it can offer mutual benefit in the future.  You can make good-faith concessions to that person because they will make some concessions in return, and you each will be rewarded by a functional and profitable relationship.  The classic "win-win."

    In other negotiations, it is a zero-sum, one-off game -- even if you might have future dealings with each other, that doesn't figure into things.  The other side is thinking one thing: how can I extract the most personal benefit from this transaction.  There is no "win-win" -- quite the opposite.  For me to win, you must lose something.  (And, without going down that rabbit hole too far, does that remind you of the approach of a certain recent president?  It may tell you why he though so highly of Putin and Russia).

    In dealing with Russia, you are dealing with the second type of counterparty.  Always.  

    More true than you realize. One of the defining features of dealing with the U.S. during the Trump era was a (uncharacteristic for the U.S.) zero-sum, cutthroat New York real estate approach to cutting deals even with our FRIENDS. And it reveals the limits of the persistent myth among some voters that we need a “businessman” to get things done.  Negotiating with Allies and enemies is nothing like a real estate deal. There will always be something else you’ll need to negotiate, the other party will never take his money and leave or be forced out of business. And the other party will remember how you behaved. 

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  10. We’re not short sighted at all but rather realistic. This argument calls for belief in three propositions that are dubious at best. First, that Russia’s perception of the West as its first and most important enemy is based on Western actions and is malleable, rather than a permanent and defining feature of Russian strategic thought. The second dubious proposition is that Russia will be reassured rather than emboldened if the West compromises its fundamental values. And third, that hypothetical (and improbable) cooperation with Russia on the Middle East or against China is more valuable than the very real and tangible benefit we’ve received by expanding the Euroatlantic sphere of prosperity. 
     

    Its worthwhile to note what prompted the NATO assurance to pursue integration with Ukraine and Georgia— the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia.  The invasion came first. It’s worthwhile to note what sparked Russian fury and threats (followed through upon) in Ukraine in 2014– the prospect of a Ukraine-EU free trade agreement and not NATO membership.  This is normal and expected Russian behavior and acceptance of it does not satisfy Russia or prompt better behavior elsewhere, it simply encourages Russia to press further.

    The first principle to understand when dealing with Russia is the Russian view of compromise.  Russia demands the contents of a bank vault at gunpoint then compromises by accepting half. The perfect example of this is the unstated but barely veiled compromise of accepting Crimea’s loss in exchange for the East. 
     

    The second principle is that long term cooperation based on anything beyond immediate, pressing equal threats is impossible and in fact Russia views such offers as deeply suspicious. Policy makers will do well to remember this when hearing about Russia-China cooperation. A corollary to this principle is that Russia expects rewards and compensation for doing the right thing even when it’s in Russia’s own interests, like nuclear non-proliferation. 
     

    Russia is a blackmailer which will always view the West as target one, and it’s not a wise idea to be seduced by short term cooperation (which Russia will view as a temporary agreement between thieves) that in the long term will just make them a more capable, emboldened, and powerful extortionist. 

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  11. 21 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

     

    I'd also say the rocket surgeons (love that description BTW) probably knew a lot more than we or the average Russian did about who was moving to take power in the post Soviet world, and who that cast of players would be.  How would anyone not think ex KGB would be the ones who moved to that end ?  They had the training, apparatus, and all the other tricks needed to drive Russia right back to it's current mafioso state.  Of course I could be way off, but I don't think it's a great leap of faith to think that was going to happen.  

    Russians have had zero experience with democracy, voting or self governance ever in the entire history of their country.  That they were going to succeed in that 180 degree transformation would have been a bit of a miracle.

    The rocket surgeons were right on this one. It’s important to keep this in perspective. Thanks to NATO expansion, we are concerned about Russian intervention in Ukraine or Georgia. Based on past lessons, we’d be worrying about Russian intervention in Poland, Hungary, or East Germany.  That’s a win for us. 
     

    The alternative is to posit an alternative history where Russia not only abandons an external strategy of regional aggression and destabilization that has been remarkably consistent for centuries, but also completely transforms itself internally into a reliable partner.  That’s the real bit of magical thinking. 

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  12. @Shady Ray, nearly all of the rebuttals to this argument are embedded within the arguments themselves. First, you are entirely mistaken in claiming that the concept of a Transatlantic security guarantee did not exist until the 1990s. The concept is embedded in the founding document of the charter, which states that an attack on any member of the Alliance will be treated as attack on all. Literally the entire point of the Alliance was to offer Europe a guarantee of American intervention in the event of a Soviet attack, thereby ending European regional rivalries and arms races. It’s worth noting that the ideas has been wildly successful in that war between European nations is as close to “unthinkable, as exists in geopolitics the idea of any external attack on Europe within NATO. 
     

    Onwards. As you accurately note, Russia feels insecure because it “lost control” of the strip of land now inside NATO. The key here is that security for the inhabitants means independence and an Alliance freely chosen. For Russia, security involves control and repression and a veto over other countries’ choices. One of these behaviors is legitimate and the other completely illegitimate. 
     

    And it’s important to remember that Soviet (Russian) aggression was a prime mover in starting World War II and the subsequent loss of 15,000,000 citizens. Although Russia teaches that the war started in 1941 (you’ll be put in jail for teaching otherwise), the war started in 1939 with the Soviet Union as an aggressor when they teamed up with Hitler to destroy and occupy Poland. The Soviets were also at war with another vulnerable neighbor over territory that didn’t belong to them (Finland) and had recently illegally and aggressively annexed the Baltic nations.

    Before that they had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, allowing him to focus all of his attention on attacking Western Allies, secure in the knowledge that the USSR would quite literally have his back. It’s no exaggeration to say that if the Soviet Union had acted like responsible nation rather than looking to aggressively expand as Hitler stirred up shit in Europe, then Hitler would never have been in a position to invade the Soviet Union. TL;DR, Russia was not a victim in 1941 and most of their problems were enabled by their own aggressive behavior. 

    Which brings me to the real point, which is that we DID achieve a reset in Europe after the Cold War. A huge bunch of former enemies are now friends. Lots of people who were poor are now rich. Lots of territory that used to be contested and the source of wars is now secure and peaceful and almost invulnerable to outside attack. Europeans that used to solve problems by fighting now entertain themselves with Brussels bureaucracy and rulemaking. It’s a smashing success for everyone.

    Except Russia. Because, as you have so accurately noted, Russia can’t feel secure if they don’t control those countries, and now they don’t. And if they can’t control them, the second best option is for them to be weak and vulnerable to attack by Russia.  This is a structural feature of Russian thinking about security and its telling that your Russian friends feel personally insulted when their small neighbors are allowed to do what they want. 
     

    The only thing more pie in the sky than belief in a reset with Russia is belief in a potential democratic Russia. Even a cursory familiarity with Russian history and society reveals these truths. The correct response to a Russia which believes it needs to control, bully, and impoverish its neighbors to feel secure (and that is Russian official strategy and doctrine and has been regardless of who sat in the Kremlin or on the throne for centuries) is to reduce the zone where this is a feasible course of action, not to expand it so they feel better at everyone else’s expense. 
     

    By any measure except “making Russia happy”, expansion of NATO has been an incredible success for everyone involved. Europe has never been more stable, prosperous, independent, and secure and the United States has never had a better and more effective transatlantic partner. 

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  13. On 12/23/2021 at 10:08 PM, hundredTT said:

    My brother, dad, and I took all 4 kids to the movies yesterday. Literally no issues, had a great time. Today, my mom, wife, and sister took the kids to another movie and it was chaos. Yelling at me to find this and that, acting like I’m a jerk because I’m watching football instead of helping get them ready, brother is going through the same this with his wife. When we took the kids yesterday and the girls were drinking wine and talking, we didn’t bother them because had no need too. 

    I go through this all the time and it’s awful here in winter.  When is just me and our kids (9 and 7) I tell them when it’s time to get ready. I ask them if they’re ready when I hear movement stop. We leave.

    My sole concession is to check for masks since we still have mandates and I don’t want to get kicked out of a bus or store. And, if the activity is outdoors (ice skating, hiking, etc), I’ll confirm hats and gloves and warm attire so we don’t have to cut it short. Other than that— you either bring it or you forget it and next time you’ll remember. If you don’t listen to my advice on jackets, you’ll be cold and will listen next time. Or you won’t and IDGAF. 

    When wife is involved, we check for hats, gloves, scarves, water bottles, etc. We look for umbrellas just in case. We check (and change) jackets, sweaters, and tights based on wife’s assessment of what’s needed. I end up standing in the hall in my coat and shoes sweating as we fight over whether it’s sweater plus coat or just coat, whether we need snow boots or just warm shoes, etc.
     

    Drives me batty. 

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  14. 19 minutes ago, UT_OB1 said:

    You don’t sound married. 
     

    Got a pressure washer for my wife that she has been wanting. After her first use, it of course end up in the middle of the garage, cords everywhere. So instead of passively aggressively dumping it on her side of the bed, I took the gun off, wound up the hoses, and put it away in the shop. 
     

    Fast forward a few days and she’s trying to use it again, and she’s yelling at me from outside about not taking the gun off.  I asked her, with intentional tone, if she wanted me to put it back on for her real fast. 10 seconds later I handed it to her.  “So you have to turn it backwards to put it on?”  
    Me - no. Righty tighty

    Her - but you were turning it left 

    me - no i turned it right. (Picked up and demonstrated. 
    Her - no that’s backward. 
    me - (now getting pissed because surely she must be trolling me) well google it or ask your dad since you are clearly not going to believe me at this point. 
     

    next morning I get a text to some stupid link about righty righty and clockwise and how she was right. I happened to be in the shop and sent her back a video of me tightening it and loosening it.  She came down and said you are turning it backwards!  
     

    At this point, it is amazing that no one is in jail.  I did it for her again, with her a foot away, also indicating which way a fucking clock goes. Nope, your loosening it now. 

    I had to leave. She’s gas lighting me, right?  
     

    About an hour later it came up again, and she finally got it. We can laugh now. And I bring it up every chance I get over the last few weeks, but I really think she might have been trying to get me to stroke out so she could collect insurance. 

    Before I was married, my then-fiancé and now wife and I were in a large European city in a large European country.  While walking to dinner she asked how I knew the way (she believed I was lost) and I replied that I was using a church as my orientation point since the restaurant was about a block away.  
     

    Said church was not only the largest church in the entire country and the most visible landmark of the city but we had visited it that very afternoon as part of sightseeing.  She confirmed with two strangers before conceding that I was right (she dismissed the first confirmation because the person she asked was also visiting the city). 

    After conceding that the structure in question was indeed the largest and most famous building in the city, which she had been to, she explained that we were seeing it “from a different angle.” It’s a single domed building. 

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  15. 2 hours ago, Shady Ray said:

    With respect to Ukraine and Georgia, absolutely, Russia has shown aggression towards them since the 2008 announcement was made by GWB that their NATO accession was on the table.

     

    But I really don't see how you can say that the big, "problematic enlargements" (at least in the eyes of the Russians) in 1999 and 2004 were fueled by Russian aggression pushing Central Europe into the arms of NATO for a security guarantee. Now, there may have been some geopolitical benefits to the US in undertaking such an expansion, but it wasn't as a result of an expansionist Russia threatening its neighbors...Russia was completely inwardly focused on keepings itself together at the time.

     

    I point to the incomparable diplomatic titan/legend/chief architect of US Cold War policy, George F. Kennan, when interviewed by the NY Times about the initial tranche of englargment back in 1998:

     


    Now this doesn't mean things haven't changed, but the bulk of NATO expansion had nothing to do with Russian aggression.

     

    And Kennan, even in his last decade of life, proved himself to be as prescient as ever.

    This is an incredibly short-sighted and Americacentric analyses of why NATO enlarged I’ve ever read. NATO expansion into Central and Eastern Europe was driven by Russian aggression and enabled by Russian weakness. It’s worth remembering that NATO has never forced a member to join and that each new member had to ask and apply. 
     

    A short history of the first, 1999 expansion and the new member states’ history with Russia or the Soviet Union in the 20th century. In 1991 Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary formed the Visegrad Group with the stated aim of joining NATO and the EU.  In June of that same year, the last regular Soviet troops left Czechoslovakia after a 30 year occupation that began with an invasion in 1968. Also in 1991, the last Soviet troops left Hungary after invading and occupying THAT country in 1956. 

    Poland gained its independence from Tsarist Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary in 1918. A few months later war broke out with the Soviets, and the Red Army reached Warsaw and was militarily defeated.  In 1939, the Soviet Union partnered with Nazi Germany to invade Poland and liquidate it as a state. In 1945, the Soviet Union destroyed the Polish Home Army that rebelled against Nazi rule and installed a puppet government. In 1981, the Soviets threatened to invade again and pointed to Hungary and Czechoslovakia, resulting in martial law and the most repressive period in Polish history since Stalinism.

    It takes a breathtaking bit of willful blindness to claim that those three states (Czechoslovakia split in 1993 and the Czechs joined first) were not prompted to join NATO due to their entirely rational experience of Russian aggression, and the expectation that the window to find a security guarantee was small. And we haven’t even touched on the Vilnius group’s history. And it’s worth noting that Russia has intervened militarily in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Tajikistan following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but has not touched the smaller and more vulnerable Baltics, which host significant populations of ethnic Russians— which is almost certainly due to their own NATO membership. 

    The fact that Kennan could, apparently in all seriousness, write that Russian democracy in the 1990s was more developed than the Czechs under Vaclav Havel should be enough to tip your hat to his past insights and then prevent him from embarrassing himself further. 

    A relevant map— for all Russia’s talk of U.S. encroachment on its borders, Russian troops permanently stationed outside of Russia on NATO’s borders outnumber U.S. troops stationed on Russian borders 3-1.  This map does not include EFP rotations into the  Baltics, which are in the hundreds of U.S. troops and which also didn’t exist before Russia invaded and occupied Ukraine and scared the shit out of its neighbors. 


     

     

     

    image.jpeg

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  16. 1 hour ago, Ghost of LL said:

    I think this is broadly right, but I don't think that last bit is right.

    Russia doesn't have any natural obstacles that would slow an invader. That's something that has been apparent since the time of the Vikings, and of which the Russians are keenly aware.  But that also means that the Russians know what a natural border would be.  They've been eyeing it for centuries.

    In the east, it's the Pacific--they've reached that.  In the south, it's the Gobi and the Himalaya and the Caucasus--they have friendly regimes all the way along that string of obstacles.  On the west, it's the Rhine to the Alps to the Julian Alps to the Adriatic--and they're not anywhere close to that.  Until the Russians at least get friendly regimes to that line, they'll never feel secure.

    That being said, there's a big difference between the mildly insecurity Russia feels with NATO on the other side of the Elbe and the high level of insecurity Russia would feel if it were to look over and see NATO troops in Eastern Ukraine.  Even the other side of the Dnieper would be a big improvement for the Russians. 

    The last bit is a slight exaggeration, but Russia’s own 20th century century history belies their comfort with even their seemingly “secure” borders. At the height of the Soviet empire, Russia felt compelled to invade Afghanistan, insecure behind the vastness of the Central Asian republics and Siberian steppe.  Russian and Chinese fellow travelers came closer to nuclear war than Russia ever did with the West and in fact regular troops shot at each other. Russia and China are, at best, at an uneasy truce. To this day, Russia has unresolved territorial disputes with Japan over useless islands entirely peripheral in any strategic sense.

    The West has always been Russia’s bugbear par excellence, though. And the fundamental issue with this ideal border is that the territory is full of people who aren’t Russian, have no wish to be Russian, are mostly richer and more developed than Russians, and have only ever sporadically and begrudgingly fallen under Russia’s sphere of influence. And Russia creates its own security dilemma- the harder it pushes, the more desperately the people run for a Western security guarantee. Russian foreign policy to Ukraine has been a failure inasmuch as it turned a nation that wavered between friendliness and neutrality into a sworn enemy. 
     

    And, this interpretation also does not leave room for an equally valid rationale for Russian expansionism. We have long been accustomed to think of Central and Eastern Europe as poor and backward. But in comparison to Russia, the Bohemian, Polish, Hungarian, Baltic, Romanian, and Ukrainian lands have mostly been incomparably richer and more developed for all of recorded history. It’s vital to remember that COMECON was a one way transfer of wealth and technology to Great Russia. Russia did not just lose part of its empire— it lost the (stolen) crown jewels, which goes a long way towards explaining its singleminded fixation on influence and access to the Western reaches and not the more desolate Central Asian sphere (which was a net drag for the Soviets). 

     

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