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MaybeACoordinator

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Everything posted by MaybeACoordinator

  1. Imagine how it would weird people out if you walked up to "He Stopped Loving Her Today."
  2. It's not so much what they did -- we won't know for a few years -- but what they didn't. And that's draft a bunch of in-your-face FCA types. Maybe somebody got the message through to whoever was pushing that line to stfu if they want that franchise to win.
  3. I dunno, it's fun having the homeless man's version of Willie Mays as fifth outfielder.
  4. That is practically a verbatim quote of shit my ex used to say. The physical abuse was by far the least of it.
  5. Can I put my head in her lap while I weep and suck my thumb?
  6. Best part So of course this is a grift. I just hope it's a grift by someone in on the joke.
  7. At least some of them have informal bans on political discussion in public, yard signs, etc. Their god-king is not orange but lime-green. Article is well worth the read. Yeah that's kind of the appeal, according to this article. I would say that the place would be a nightmare for me but hey, people who are into that sort of thing are really into that sort of thing. I would hope one of the onsite amenities is a discreet VD clinic but I bet those old codgers don't give a fuck. It would probably just be fun gossip tracking down the sources of outbreaks. And I bet you would sell out a Willie-, George Strait- or Jerry Jeff-themed housing development real fast. Bonus trivia: it is exactly 180-degrees wrong to call JJW "the Buffett of Texas." JJW took Buffett under his wing and showed him how to be the JJW of wannbe Gulf Coast trash. Double bonus trivia: The two of them co-wrote "Railroad Lady" (famous in its Willie version) on a train down to Key West. Buffett had never been but Walker knew it well.
  8. Although his family had a big hand in founding Fort Worth, Townes Van Zandt was an Astros fan.
  9. I thought so too but remember he was in the vomit comet and that other simulator at NASA. Repetitious.
  10. My mom slapped like that one time -- under strikingly similar circumstances -- but she miscalculated and the other side of my head whipped into the corner of a brick wall, knicking me on the right temple. I had a tiny, tiny cut but I bled like a stuck pig because it opened one of those surface veins you have up there. She was mortified and I went from Brat Who Had it Comin' to Blinded Ralphie acting the martyr in front of his parents for poisoning him with soap in seconds.
  11. There are two layers to this war. There is Russia vs Ukraine on top and bubbling under that a vicious, Balkans-style civil war, just as in the American Civil War, you had some areas like the Appalachians and Bleeding Kansas / Missouri where the rules were different and the war far, far more brutal. Also, there is a real vanity of small differences issue with the Slavic people. There was a considerable schism once in the Russian Orthodox church over whether believers should cross themselves with three fingers or two.
  12. It's hard to believe how little buzz it's gotten in Houston. I think I used some of your exact phrasing after I saw it; I also think it's the best "Houston movie" of all time. And look, here we are, with a six post thread on a board with a shit-ton of Houstonians and even more people who grew up in Houston. Either something failed with the marketing of this movie or maybe you just can't market straight-to-Netflix movies adequately. I think it will do fine over time -- it will be one of those movies like Office Space or Idiocracy that has a very very long tail. Generations of Houstonians will love it -- they already do. I know of everyone from Millennials to Greatest Generation people who have flipped for it.
  13. This pic represents what I would love to see for Ukraine: Standing tall, robust, unmolested by outsiders from either side. The idea that one side or the other can "win" is illusory. Peace may hold for a few years but then trouble will start from within or without and potentially from either side. The idea that everyone to the rear of Ukraine is going to be friendies with them forever is new and untested. For the last time, let's work toward a ceasefire, get to the peace table, and find a way for Ukraine to operate under its own power and not ours or theirs, but with the protection of ours. If your first response to this is "But Putin won't allow that," then okay, then the use of force is necessary. But we've not yet given him a chance to keep to his word. Instead he's kept to his pattern of wrecking countries on his borders that get uppity with Russia in the NATO way, like Georgia. Who we encouraged and then abandoned. Let's get him to the peace table, talk him into a withdrawal, and see what happens after that. At best, the approach we are on now will lead to another Russian Revolution. The last one had results we did not plan for and were rather regrettable. At worst, the approach we are on now leads to nuclear war. In the meantime.... We need to quit thinking of Ukraine it what we would like to see right now and what's best for them in the long run. And what's best for them in the long run is non alignment with protection.
  14. No that is not what you have been saying. You have been cheering on the death of every Russian conscript, war criminal or not, and you advocated the re-detonation of Chernobyl as a defensive measure. And wished you'd invested in Raytheon and Lockheed Martin at an opportune time to cash in on this war. I tried. Immamac nuked it. He destroyed America in the process but who cares. Actually, she could. Peter Lawford said she was well known for giving the best head in Hollywood before she married Ronnie. No wonder he was grinning all the time.
  15. Well, you booted me off the CR and now here, too. Not very charitable to the First Amendment's principles, but it's your board, and if you want everyone in lockstep, so be it.
  16. Consider this: Mongolia, long the buffer state between Russia and China, has a GDP per capita of $4000. Despite having vastly more resources, that of Ukraiine is $3,700. I mean, Mongolia has got nothin'. The national diet is meat, roots, and the milk of beasts we don't drink from. Maybe some cheese from same. Ukraine on the other hand is the breadbasket to the world and yet their people are among the poorest in Europe. A lot of that has to do with corruption....And then of what trickles down after that, they have to pay more for a national defense budget that would go away in large part were they neutral.
  17. Quality responses! Bravo! What do you two propose we do now?
  18. WRT to foreign policy, after 120 years of failures to export Americanism, it is becoming more and more apparent to me that we are Charlie Brown and the mean ol' world is Lucy. I think some, maybe even most, of our foreign policy apparatus believes that exporting the American way, forcibly if necessary, is for the greater good of the planet. Time and time and time again, Lucy has snapped away that football and we've wound up on our ass. Even as we at home criticize our institutions as obsolete and corrupted, we attempt to export them all over the globe. Perhaps it would be better if we turned inward. Resolved the constitutional crisis we are undergoing. Did something to fix healthcare and infrastructure and income inequality as we spiral deeper and deeper into a dark Gilded Age. I'd rather fix a bridge than send five moe Javelins to Ukraine when the alternatives are a neutral Ukraine or a bridge collapsing here.
  19. The most concise argument I've seen yet for a neutral Ukraine and it doesn't even mention Mearsheimer but rather shares the opinion of scholars more focused on the region. Spoilered for length: A long snippet: Pascal Lottaz, while still calling Russia a “rational crook,” astutely pointed out how it was impossible for Russia to not recognize NATO membership offerings to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 as a direct provocation (or worse, confirmation of Western indifference to Russia), but also highlighted something many in the West have ignored: that failing to get Ukraine to implement the Minsk II agreement was tantamount to the West telling Russia that its strategic needs and opinions just didn’t matter. Perhaps more importantly, Lottaz also highlighted something I have argued for more than 15 years: that Russia has always studied American international behavior carefully and will follow the realism-power principles it displays (note, this is different from the international governance normative principles America often publicly espouses). Consequently, for the current crisis in Ukraine, it matters to Russia that it can highlight an American display of invasive power backed by dubious provocation claims (Iraq), an American acknowledgement of territorial status change without larger international consent (Kosovo), or unilateral American recognition of border changes that resulted only through a non-internationally approved war (Golan Heights). While Lottaz went on, as the list can truly be made expansively if not exhaustively, the strategic relevance is unquestionable: as America behaves, so Russia feels justified in pursuing like-minded behavior aligned to its own security interests. That the West has routinely rejected this fact or simply ignored it seems based on the dubious idea that no one should have a problem with American actions because America deems itself the “good guy.” Russia, in this world view, is obviously the “bad guy” and therefore cannot be allowed to utilize the same strategic security largesse. Not surprisingly, Russia has always rejected this rather weak “good guy/bad guy” theory of international relations. Which is why the concept of pushing for a formally recognized neutral Ukraine is so important. In the most basic of terms, it means Ukraine is off-limits to everyone. Russia would have no authority to forcefully assert its interest over Ukraine just because it is more powerful and the bigger regional player. The West would also be obligated to end all the flirtation (real and imagined) when it comes to Ukraine being part of NATO. Thus, just as Switzerland has been with so many major powers surrounding it historically in Europe and Mongolia in greater Asia, Ukraine would be an effective buffer state that is able to openly and prosperously engage both sides to its own advantage, but never for the purpose of setting both sides on edge and against each other. While the above-mentioned fine scholars have argued for quite some time as to the mutually beneficial nature of such a strategy, a nod of acknowledgment again has to go to Lottaz, who graciously recognized that in many ways, before the incursion, Russian policy on Ukraine pushed the basic structure of neutrality for years, but to no avail. This fact leads to an uncomfortable diplomatic elephant in the room: if so many astute Western scholars can agree on a policy direction and some even explain how it likely aligns with professed Russian security perspectives, then why did the idea go ignored until after Russia actually felt compelled to invade? The answer to that awkward question is what needs greater examination and far greater airplay across international mainstream media. Arguably, this idea of Ukrainian neutrality went ignored because the West was simply unwilling to admit that it needed to let Ukraine be neutral. In other words, why let Ukraine go neutral (which would be to most a semi-acceptance of Russian priorities) when it could be brought at least symbolically into the Western fold (which delivers a much more satisfying slap to the Russian security/diplomatic face)? So, when one accepts that Russian policy on Ukraine since the 2014 Minsk II agreement has pushed for de facto neutrality and the precedent for accepting neutrality exists (Russia basically gives the same consideration for Moldova, Turkmenistan, and Mongolia within what it considers its natural sphere of influence), but that neutrality has never been seriously acknowledged by either Ukraine or the West, then it suddenly starts to be a little less murky as to why Russia might feel a more radical (and unfortunately more violent) maneuver was needed to get their attention. The fact that the neutrality argument is finally being spoken by Ukraine and Russia to each other (even if it is still just the very beginning of bargaining at a formally-recognized negotiating table) and the West seems diplomatically amenable means three things for the global community: first, whatever the overall loss of life in Ukraine because of the incursion, it could have been easily avoided; second, this new status for Ukraine is likely the superior option not because it is the best for any one side but exactly because it leaves all sides a little dissatisfied but able to claim political contentment; third, it is finally time that all sides abandon their Cold War instincts when it comes to dealing with each other and start recognizing the need to establish a new 21st century relationship that isn’t stubbornly frozen onto the logic and suspicions of the 20th. That stubbornness sacrifices innocent lives and prevents innovative peace in favor of familiar discontent and mistrust. It is time the world became disenchanted with this familiarity.
  20. We don't know any of this. And on several occasions on this board posters have urged them to take no prisoners. We do know that on several occasions the Ukes committed the (mild, bullshit, ticky tack) war crime of putting POWs on TV to discourage others to fight. On one other occasion they committed the flagrant technical of showing the Ukrainian soldier taunting the mother of a dead Russian soldier on his confiscated cellphone. I don't believe 98 percent of the official Russian bluster about the conduct of this war. I also don't believe at least some of the things the Ukrainian gov't and armed forces are saying about the conduct of this war. Everybody knows they've issued some patent bullshit since the days of the Ghost of Kiev but every day all o' y'all again continue to believe every single dispatch their media issues. The other day it was how the Russians had allegedly deported 500000 Ukrainians to camps in Russia. Come on y'all. Think about the logistics of that. Well, we nearly ended drone strikes before this all broke loose, so there is that. For four of five whole months our missiles weren't being launched at someone, somewhere. And here we are in another proxy war with our arms manufacturers making a fortune while we sit it out. You know, at the end of this I will be very surprised if the Ukrainians and Poles don't end up hating us. Unless we join in, like we sort of implied we would. And I am not sure how many of you are still opposed to American boots on the ground over there now. I imagine a lot more than a week ago and that the number will grow for the next couple of weeks, no matter how hard I try to reason for peace. In the meantime I am cast in the position of appearing to endorse war crimes. This is untenable and so I will bow out and you can have your second echo chamber back, as if one was not enough.
  21. Basically I'd like people to try to disconnect from the emotional imagery and the pure uncut dope of Ukrainian propaganda and think logically about this. Poland and a large swath of Ukrainians DGAF if this results in WW3. They hate the Russians that much. I agree with Brisket's contention that bloodying the Russians' noses is good leverage at the peace table. But there's a fine line between providing for leverage and becoming a hostile combatant, and I fear far too many of y'all are willing to cross that line without a thought in your heads. Damn fool thing in the Balkans logic, and now that the atrocity stories are coming in, and can be presented in a way they never have been before, it's ever more intoxicating...Just remember -- the Ukrainians are just as capable of committing war crimes as the Russians. Maybe more so, because they are defending their land, and I'd be less willing to obey the Geneva Convention in some foreign country than I would in front of my house. We've seen how sadistic they can get with the soldiers taunting the parents of dead Russians on their cellphones. It's understandable but it's horrible. War is hell. And the dude found dead with his hands bound and shot in the mouth sounds like a reprisal on an informer to me. Not that there is anything strange about that in a country that has been invaded. Which is why we need a UN investigation of what happened before we accept every word of the Ukrainian gov't as gospel truth. As for the idea Putin simply wants to exterminate Ukrainians by the millions, well, then why hasn't he? He could have done that by simply launching thermobaric missiles from Russia straight at population centers. Again, Mearsheimer said it eight years ago -- he knows he can't occupy Ukraine so he wants to break it. And he has broken it, and so he's pulling back. This is exactly how things played out in Georgia. We egged them on. Russia went down there and smacked them in the mouth. They appealed to us for more helo than we were willing to give. So either we are willing to get in this thing whole hog or we've just led another country into a proxy war costing tremendous loss of life and devastation while we reap more defense contracts and inflate our military budget.
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