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Ghost of LL

Burnt Ends
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. It's a pretty extraordinary position in which Jeremy Hunt finds himself. He lost out to Boris Johnson in the leadership contest in 2016, and then had a pretty desultory showing in the leadership contest earlier this year. But now, he's Chancellor of the Exchequer and is plainly more powerful than the PM. I don't know how long that is going to last (or how long it realistically can last), but that's a pretty wild turn of events for him.
  2. Well, the Chancellor of the Exchequer didn't make it. And I kind of doubt Liz will.
  3. So they're shipping Russian conscripts into Belarus in cattle cars? So how are those guys supposed to get to Kyiv? Walk? If the Russians think human-wave assaults work in 2022, they're about to be painfully disabused of that notion.
  4. Declaring Russia state sponsor of terrorism would be an accurate description of the state of affairs. But it is a threat you can only make good on once. And that is one of our big remaining non-military threats against Russia. We have the state-sponsor designation. And then we have the secondary-sanctions threat. But after that, we start getting into military steps to dissuade any further bad behavior. This is maybe bad enough that you want to make good on that threat. After all, at some point you have to make good on that threat, else it is no longer a threat at all. But we need to give real serious consideration as to what that leaves us left on the table. And the other thing is that we shouldn't go first on that. We've done a real good job on this entire thing of coordinating with our allies. We need to make sure that they're not blindsided by any declaration that we make. And ideally we would convince the Germans or French to make that designation first. This has the strong whiff of the V2 attacks. We dismiss those attacks as not having an impact on the outcome of the war. But in the meantime, they did manage to kill 9,000 Britons. It doesn't necessarily mean that no one can do business with them, but secondary sanctions do usually follow. It means that no American can do business with them. But there are few Americans who are doing so right now, anyway. The biggest thing is that it is a waiver of sovereign immunity. And that means that the victims of Russian terrorism can sue Russia in federal court. And since Russia has hundreds of billions of dollars in assets in the United States that are currently frozen, there is a huge pot of money that victims could collect on. That would be a huge problem for the Russian economy and the Russian government's finances. And the Russian government knows that and has been trying to avoid that designation. It really is a huge piece of leverage that we shouldn't pull the trigger on lightly.
  5. If that’s the kind of treatment a Texas school can expect from the refs, I CANT FUCKING WAIT to go to the SEC.
  6. So this is the first time I've gone to Texas-ou as a guy who doesn't live in Dallas. When I lived here, I'd of course drive. But now, I'm at a hotel in Downtown, so I can take the DART train or an Uber. What's the best option? How big a clusterfuck is the DART? And is Uber available after the game? Should I just say "fuck it" and drive like I always did?
  7. No--it's a multifuel engine. It'll run on anything. We run it on JP-8, because that's our universal fuel. We use it for tanks, IFVs, helicopters, aviation--everything. But it'll run on diesel, gasoline, kerosene--pretty much anything that burns. Yeah--that is the issue. It gets a smooth half-mile to the gallon.
  8. Wait a minute--you didn't think Cheetara was sexualized? Mmmmmm, Cheetara.
  9. That's why I have always said--Nevada is the Republicans' Florida. The polls always make them think they're going to win; the election results always say different. But sure--keep fucking that chicken.
  10. I think we know how our tanks perform on the modern battlefield from our two wars against Iraq. We have this image of the Iraqi Army just throwing up its hands and quitting. But there were some major tank battles (Medina Ridge, 73 Easting, and Baghdad). So I think we have a pretty good idea of how the M1A1s and M1A2s will fare against what the Russians are rolling out there.
  11. I don't know. I would strongly suspect that many of them are in Europe. But I have no idea. But I don't think it would take very long to get them to Ukraine from the States. For 500 tanks, assume about a month to get them out of storage and then another two months for transit, and you have those tanks there before spring. And this thing is still going to be going in the springtime.
  12. We have nearly 4,000 M1A1s and M1A2s in storage right now. And unlike the Russians, we store our shit so that it can actually be used. Those are superior to anything the Russians are rolling out there right now.
  13. It’s pretty clear to me that Belarus isn’t getting out of this with it’s sovereignty. The only question is whether the flag that ends up flying over Minsk will have a blue stripe between the red and white ones.
  14. Good god--there's now a pop-up on every single post. It's made the site completely unusable.
  15. So a somewhat off-topic question, . . . if the United States and the EU (and I presume some other allies, including Japan, Australia, and South Korea) can agree to a price cap on Russian oil, why can't we agree on a price cap on all oil. Kind of an oil buyers' cartel to counter OPEC?
  16. Ok--that refreshes my memory. So that means that the Cook PVI and a poll's sample are two different things. @The Dog kind of conflated the two. So if the nationwide vote is D+1, then a Pennsylvania sample of R+1 would be about right.
  17. Man--I've got kids now. So I don't have time to drink that much beer; I've got to maximize my alcohol intake as efficiently as possible. So that means Velvet Hammer.
  18. What exactly is the evidence that Pennsylvania is R+2? That doesn't make just a whole lot of sense to me.
  19. It kind of needs to be soon. Because you can begin to see the outline of the warlord-ization of Russia. Between Kadyrov and Prigozhin, you already have two sizable private armies in Russia that are probably as well-equipped and capable as the federal army. For the moment, the Kadyrovites and Wagner remain loyal to Putin. But that could change at any time (either because Putin is deposed or because Kadyrov/Prigozhin mutiny). And if that happens, it's not at all clear to me how that would go. It could very well be that you have something that looks like China from 1910 to 1949. But with nuclear weapons. And I don't think that's a particularly good thing.
  20. This has the whiff of setting up Kadyrov to fail and making him a(n e)scapegoat. Dipshits. Turn your fucking turret around and aim the cannon as high as it will go. That's the signal for a surrendering tank/IFV.
  21. The Russians announced that they were withdrawing from the ISS. But I have no idea what the timetable for that is.
  22. And we as a society at some point decided that money has value. What you're pining for is the 1980s, when most Texas games weren't on television (and those that were televised were on Raycom Sports or some shit). But the monopoly that controlled CFB television rights got broken up, and the game is too valuable not to put it on television. So the 1980s are never coming back. Now it's just about maximizing the value of the game for the television audience. You can shake your fist at that particular cloud all you want, but it's not going to change anything. The in-game presentation/experience is always going to suffer because television requires that it be a four-hour affair.
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