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956 Worldwide

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Posts posted by 956 Worldwide

  1. 53 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

    Yes, but hardly along central supply lines. The Soviets had to extend their logistic network. That simply isn't the case for Russia in Ukraine. Again, these conflicts are not even close to the same scale. 

    Also, the Soviets won in Afghanistan, at least the early going. We financed an insurgent campaign designed to inflict maximum attrition anytime they left their urban strongholds. 
     

    The goal in Ukraine is not to surrender the nation to Russia and then bleed them dry. Not to re-litigate the morality of what happened there, but this would be a cruel and cynical approach that would cost at a minimum tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian lives and would confirm the worst narrative of what we are doing by supporting Ukraine.  We want Ukraine to be free and sovereign. The goal isn’t just dead Russian soldiers as useful as that is. 

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  2. 10 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

    1.) I Wish this shit would happen to more of them. Period, fill stop.
    2.) I wish some of them would learn that they've been conned and act accordingly
    3.) We all know they'll blame corrupt democrats for somehow fucking with the stuck unjustly and ruining his life. 

    EL-OH-EL. Proof that being able to make significant amounts of money is not related to intelligence.

    queue reaction s GIF

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  3. 13 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

    With the caveat of a promise that this is the last, best and final aid package to Ukraine, I think this would be a deal.

    All U.S. military aid to Ukraine either comes from U.S. stocks and is backfilled with newer, better stuff or is being produced in the U.S. and reinvigorating our defense base and preparing us to fight the next war. You’re choosing American weakness and Russia/PRC victory. 

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  4. 3 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    Ukraine is going to get plenty of weapons whether there is a resolution or not.  No way Lockheed Martin and other big boy defense contractors are going to miss out on those revenues.

    Yeah, this is wishcasting. This consensus doesn’t exist. The obstructionist wing of the GOP is invulnerable to even domestic economic lobbying. 

  5. It is getting increasingly hard to untangle the battlefield and Ukraine’s prospects from politics because (of choice) American politicians have chosen to make Russia’s victory and Ukraine’s defeat a political aim. I’ll leave it at that but the single biggest factor for whether Ukraine can hold serve is more approval to send weapons. 
     

    In the meantime China has picked sides and so we now sort of are in a proxy war with the PRC. 
     

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-intelligence-shows-china-is-surging-equipment-sales-to-russia-to-help-war-effort-in-ukraine-ap-says

    Spoiler

    WASHINGTON (AP) — China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow in turn is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine, according to a U.S. assessment.

    Two senior Biden administration officials, who discussed the sensitive findings Friday on the condition of anonymity, said that in 2023 about 90 percent of Russia’s microelectronics came from China, which Russia has used to make missiles, tanks and aircraft. Nearly 70 percent of Russia’s approximately $900 million in machine tool imports in the last quarter of 2023 came from China.

    Chinese and Russian entities have also been working to jointly produce unmanned aerial vehicles inside Russia, and Chinese companies are likely providing Russia with nitrocellulose needed to make propellants weapons, the officials said. China-based companies Wuhan Global Sensor Technology Co., Wuhan Tongsheng Technology Co. Ltd. and Hikvision are providing optical components for use in Russian tanks and armored vehicles.

    READ MORE: Ukraine will be outgunned by Russia 10 to 1 in weeks without U.S. help, top Europe general says

    The officials said Russia has received military optics for use in tanks and armored vehicles manufactured by Chinese firms iRay Technology and North China Research Institute of Electro-Optics, and China has been providing Russia with UAV engines and turbojet engines for cruise missiles.

    Russia’s semiconductor imports from China jumped from $200 million in 2021 to over $500 million in 2022, according to Russian customs data analyzed by the Free Russia Foundation, a group that advocates for civil society development.

    Beijing is also working with Russia to improve its satellite and other space-based capabilities for use in Ukraine, a development the officials say could in the longer term increase the threat Russia poses across Europe. The officials, citing downgraded intelligence findings, said the U.S. has also determined that China is providing imagery to Russia for its war on Ukraine.

    The officials discussed the findings as Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to China this month for talks. President Joe Biden has previously raised his concerns directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping about Beijing indirectly supporting Russia’s war effort.

    While China has not provided direct lethal military support for Russia, it has backed it diplomatically in blaming the West for provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch the war and refrained from calling it an invasion in deference to the Kremlin.

    China has also said it isn’t providing Russia with arms or military assistance, although it has maintained robust economic connections with Moscow, alongside India and other countries, amid sanctions from Washington and its allies.

    WATCH: Leigh Ann Caldwell and Stephen Fowler on Ukraine aid, House leadership and the 2024 race

    Xi met in Beijing on Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who heaped praise on Xi’s leadership.

    Russia’s growing economic and diplomatic isolation has made it increasingly reliant on China, its former rival for leadership of the Communist bloc during the Cold War.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who returned to Washington this week from a visit to Beijing, said she warned Chinese officials that the Biden administration was prepared to sanction Chinese banks, companies and Beijing’s leadership, if they assist Russia’s armed forces with its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

    The Democratic president issued an executive order in December giving Yellen the authority to sanction financial institutions that aided Russia’s military-industrial complex.

    “We continue to be concerned about the role that any firms, including those in the PRC, are playing in Russia’s military procurement,” Yellen told reporters, using the initials for the People’s Republic of China. “I stressed that companies, including those in the PRC, must not provide material support for Russia’s war and that they will face significant consequences if they do. And I reinforced that any banks that facilitate significant transactions that channel military or dual-use goods to Russia’s defense industrial base expose themselves to the risk of U.S. sanctions.”

    The U.S. has frequently downgraded and unveiled intelligence findings about Russia’s plans and operations over the course of the more than 2-year-old war with Ukraine.

    WATCH: Pentagon holds news briefing as general warns Ukraine will soon be outgunned by Russia

    Such efforts have been focused on highlighting plans for Russian misinformation operations or to throw attention on Moscow’s difficulties in prosecuting its war against Ukraine as well as its coordination with Iran and North Korea to supply it with badly needed weaponry. Blinken last year spotlighted intelligence that showed China was considering providing arms and ammunition to Russia.

    The White House believes that the public airing of the intelligence findings has led China, at least for now, to hold off on directly arming Russia. China’s economy has also been slow to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. Chinese officials could be sensitive to reaction from European capitals, which have maintained closer ties to Beijing even as the U.S.-China relationship has become more complicated.

    Meanwhile, China on Thursday announced rare sanctions against two U.S. defense companies over what it called their support for arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy Beijing claims as its own territory to be recovered by force if necessary.

    The announcement freezes the assets of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems held within China. It also bars the companies’ management from entering the country.

    Filings show General Dynamics operates a half-dozen Gulfstream and jet aviation services operations in China, which remains heavily reliant on foreign aerospace technology even as it attempts to build its own presence in the field.

    The company also helps make the Abrams tank being purchased by Taiwan to replace outdated armor intended to deter or resist an invasion from China.

    General Atomics produces the Predator and Reaper drones used by the U.S. military.

     

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  6. 22 hours ago, Bevo said:

    I agree with this, but I'll add to it - The West fucked up by providing incremental aid. If we would have avoided the javelin to ATACMS and Patriot to F16 slow progression, Ukraine could have hit Russia before it transitioned to a wartime footing. We planned first for Ukraine to lose and then we planned for a long lasting war of attrition. We also put restraints on Russian assets that Ukraine could target. You have to fight a war to win and running a war with diplomats is a sure way to keep that from happening.

    All is not lost, but now Ukraine is on the defensive. The world will have to change course to change the outcome. Right now, from the reports coming in, it doesn't appear that it will happen.

    Ukraine needs to shift to an attritional strategy that gives them space to reconstitute forces and get support flowing and integrated. There isn’t space for another grand offensive.  And they can really maul the Russians.  They can’t mount one either but they also are going to try. For the near to mid-term there is no Russian collapse on the horizon. 
     

    Even this, which they can do, will need more and more consistent support. 

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  7. 1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

    What blows me away is how few MAGA realize that the only time that NATO’s Article 5 was invoked was after 9/11 and that many of the largest members sent troops or aided in other ways, along with New Zealand and Australia.

    They don’t care.

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  8. She’s almost certainly doing less damage as a rep than as mayor. That was a huge bullet dodged.

    She’s embarrassing and she’s hell on her staff but as a voting member is pretty much doing what she got sent there to do. Long term incumbents with marginal ambitions are rarely the worst problems in the House. 

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  9. 34 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

    New one I just heard from the in laws:

    Biden has something wrong with his eyes and that’s why he wears sunglasses. 
     

     

    The libs say the sun is really big and super hot and then say that these little sunglasses can protect you from it. It’s silly. 

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  10. 6 minutes ago, Satchel said:

    It’s still unsettling that college adjacent people feel comfortable suggesting that absence of people of color (who do not play sports for LSU) can make white people happy.

    Most SEC fans are college adjacent in the sense that IPIHB posters are Ana de Armas adjacent. 

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  11. 31 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    Oh hey on that note, WaPo has some new reporting out:

    image.thumb.png.6f4e14aa4f480a30e7ee33abc3067c2c.png

    Some analysts think giving Putin all he wants will reward him, amazing analysis WaPo. 
     

    We are done. We can’t win important wars. We can’t build ships. We can’t build airplanes. There’s no backbone or steel in any spines. It’s Jake Sullivans and Mike Johnsons all the way down. 

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  12. White vinegar is much stronger than most of the other types of vinegar and so that goes both ways. For pickling and stuff, you will need more wine or cider vinegar to get the same level of pickle-ness if you use something other than white. And on the flip side, using white when wine or cider is called for will add more harshness and you will want to cut it with water and maybe some sugar. I find for marinades and things, you can change the flavor profiles between cider, red, and white wine but plain white vinegar overpowers everything and breaks down meat fibers faster. 
     

    It will take some experimenting to dial in. 

  13. 3 hours ago, bolverk said:

    It's worth reading the comments of Slovaks and Hungarians on this thread in reaction to this pro-Russian candidate getting elected. They sound very similar to us talking about Republicans and the idiots who vote for them.

    Here's one example:

    It's kind of impressive if you think about it. An in the closed gay being openly against gay rights won the election by claiming the other candidate would send our soldiers to Ukraine (despite him being against it).

    He literally claimed he is not a product of marketing, while he exceeded the limit that he can legally spend on a presidential campaign, because third parties campaigned for him (yes it is against the law, but there's minimal punishment for it)

    I feel sick...im a slovak, but seriously fuck this country

     

    I could just about write my analysis of this in Slovak but I’ll resist the urge. Suffice to say that Pellegrini won this election with an appeal to lies, fear, hate and with extensive foreign interference. He got through to the second round by posing as a centrist and then mobilized to grab the neo-Nazi and pro-Russia vote even as his opponent (Korcok, former foreign minister and ambassador to the U.S.) got more votes than the current incumbent president. Slovakia’s president is much weaker than the U.S. president. This basically removes any institutional hurdles (not brakes) to the criminal group currently in government. 
     

    There’s lots of comparisons to the way the GOP behaves and who they mobilize, and how they exploit foreign interference. Example: Slovakia has a “campaign moratorium” where all public campaigning stops 48 hours prior to polls opening until poll closure. The winner of this election went to Hungary and gave a fawning interview to state TV which Orban then ran almost non-stop through the moratorium. Slovakia is home to about 500,000 ethnic Hungarians who all are in the Hungarian media space. Non-stop diet of Orban telling them who to vote for and calling the democratic bloc tools of Soros. Every accusation is a confession. 
     

    Slovakia is rapidly turning into No Country For Young Men (Women, Gays,  Educated, Tolerant, Kind….). I personally know about a dozen of the smartest Slovaks who bailed to Czech Republic and many more weighing the move. There’s almost no linguistic friction and you can even study for free in Czech schools so for about a decade the top 30 percent of Slovak students have gone to Czech schools. That will speed up and the current crowd of Kremlin tools can rule over an empty European Appalachia full of terrified pensioners, literal Nazis, and oppressed Roma. Here’s what one of my smartest friends, who is leaving, texted me:

    Quote

    It sucks that someone with whom the majority of normal educated people don’t agree represents your country and decides about your future

    The thing is— that’s fine with them. Just like that vision is appealing to our GOP.

    Oh, and today Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine will lost without Congressional action. He’s right (which is why I’m too angry to go near the DT thread now). And Anastasis and GRU and the GOP that wants us to be more like Russia and Slovakia can suck each other off.

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  14. 35 minutes ago, troph said:

    I was trying to be irreverent and highlight the absurdity of the use of the word.

    i agree 100%.

    my best friends daughter has Rett Syndrome - while she would squarely fit in the slur if used by someone - she is hardly deserving of such a name. Though unable to control her body and unable to speak she is a nuanced and complex person with emotions, thoughts, hopes and desires and someone that knows she’s not like the others and has done the hard work to cope with her condition. Hardly what I would consider “retarded”  it’s a terrible word.

    Got it, need to adjust my meter. I’ve just noticed that one was always favored by the shithead right but recently adopted by the asshole dirtbag left to prove they can be edgy too. It really just shows they’re mean and too cowardly to use slurs that might get them punched or canceled.

    Not putting Lobo in either category, I know it’s not malicious just a linguistic relic we can afford to toss.

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  15. On 4/3/2024 at 5:00 PM, troph said:

    if it's a proper noun it's ok?

     Not really, and I know it wasn’t meant is malice in this post. The people hurt by it are the least likely to come after you, so I’ve noticed it’s come back into fashion among people who’d never think of using a racial or LGBTQ slur. 

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  16. On 4/2/2024 at 1:11 PM, Daddy Fat Sax said:

    What is your preferred economic system for a society? Almost every single one of your posts has an anti-Capitalist flavor. 

    Free market killing it, rewarding high performers. Capitalism winning, this is for sure how markets are supposed to work. 

     

     

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