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MaybeACoordinator

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Everything posted by MaybeACoordinator

  1. You are moving the goalposts. Killing the entire male population suggests a conventional war. Nuclear war would take out the entire population.
  2. You can't wish lost men and materiel into existence, esp when you are country of 130m with an economy the size of Texas. He had the nerve to invade Ukraine because he thought it would be relatively easy. It hasn't been, not by a long shot. Why on earth would he think picking a war with NATO would be easier? Why do we seem to believe he'd be able to knife through even 25 miles of NATO territory with what we be raining down on him from above? And on his cities at home? He's having a hard time dealing with ground forces armed with glorified bottle rockets.
  3. On paper but let's see who passes the Football Faith and Family test on draft day.
  4. Tell that to Tibet. And just because the other non-Han Chinese who have been captured inside China and would as soon rather not, like the Uighurs. Come on, man, Putin is not going to kill his entire male population on some Genghis Khan like war of total conquest. To even be able to consider that, you need to fuckstomp your first mid-major opponent and he is failing at that totally. We really think this war machine is gonna hydra out of Ukraine into Poland, Romania and Slovakia, while he simultaneously moves in on the Baltics? All that materiel and all those soldiers ain't gonna replace themselves, esp since the country is now a pariah.
  5. You are correct on these points but all of this stepped up when we started meddling in their affairs over....Ukraine. Putin flipped his wig when he saw his boy Yanokuvych have to haul ass outta Dodge in his pajamas or whatever and rightly or wrongly he blames the US for those protests and he thinks he could be next. And all those bullet points are mere annoyances compared to a possible ww3. Five years ago I was right there with you, but now I have come to believe that Fox News is the greater enemy domestically and China the more fearsome adversary globally. Yes Fox and the Russkies can walk in lockstep, but Fox is far better at it than they are. Our brainwashed elders and friends did not get there through RT (unless they are weirdoes like one of my aunts) but through Fox.
  6. Not sure what you are referring to but I don't think whether Moldova falls under the Russian sphere of influence or that of the west is worth a single American life. Call me a pussy, or call me Machiavellian, or some combo, but all of this goes back to Thucydides: Strong nations do what they will, weak nations endure what they must. It would be nice if our rulers operated by any other rule than that, but they don't. Our gov't doesn't give a shit about the Ukrainian people save for those of Ukrainian descent or have a Ukrainian / anti-Russian voting bloc. (Chicago, etc.) If we really gave a fuck about oppressed minorities, there would be a Kurdish state, a Tibetan state, a Uighurstan, a Palestinian state. We did a good job of bringing a good deal of the former Warsaw Bloc into NATO: the Baltics, Hungary, Czechia/Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland. We pushed the Iron Curtain back hundreds of miles and brough democracy and self-determination to millions of people, but we cannot take it to them all.
  7. If it's a seriously terrible take, it's one I share with John Mearsheimer. Here are his credentials. He predicted this exact scenario eight years ago. I encourage anyone to read more than just "Why Ukraine Is the West's Fault" and dig deeper into his analysis. He is NOT a Putin apologist. He is a believer in realpolitik and he thinks our foreign policy experts are fucking up, yet again. In his view, Ukraine is of zero strategic value to the United States, and all of Europe is of declining value. He believes Putin would stop at Ukraine, not because he wants to in his thuggish heart of hearts, but that he simply can't do any more than that, as we are seeing on the ground. He believes we should stop focusing so much on Europe and get our shit together in Asia, where the true threat lies.
  8. While I disagree that strategy is political, especially of the partisan variety, I will take this stuff to the other thread.
  9. That is not what Mearsheimer is saying. He has pointed out that this war has been brewing for eight years, we've egged Ukraine on all along with false promises, Ukraine has acted recklessly in aggravating the gorilla next door...His contention is there was a time when Ukraine could have accepted its place in the world as a buffer state and it would not have been that bad. At the heart of all of this thought is Thucydides: Strong nations do what they will, weak nations suffer what they must. Ukraine is a relatively weak nation but one of their bargaining chips is neutrality. Instead of using it they listened to America's crack foreign policy team (almost all of y'all agree about our other recent disasters -- why is this different?) and now we are teetering on the brink of nuclear holocaust over a country of no strategic import to us. Great job everybody well done. He also points out that is useful when thinking of global strategy to be able to put yourselves in the shoes of the enemy. When Khruschev tried to put missiles in Cuba, we almost went to nuclear war. Imagine if China or Russia brokered some deal to put their military on the ground in Mexico or Canada. That is what NATO Ukraine is to Russia. To us, Chinese Naval Station Veracruz; joint operating base Monterrey. We have a Monroe Doctrine. Russia has something similar and Ukraine is the centerpiece of it. Mearsheimer acknowledges that Putin is a thug who in his heart of hearts would love a "Greater Russia" or Soviet Union remix but he believes, as I do, that Putin is smart enough to know that he simply cannot pull that off. Not today, not tomorrow, not in any of our lifetimes. How the fuck is he going to manage Ukraine as a client state with his army in shambles and then launch fresh invasions on three Baltic states who hate him maybe even more than the proudest Ukrainians thereby triggering a NATO heymaker? It is just not possible. He doesn't have the juice.
  10. Why are you singling me out? I am hardly the only poster talking about it.
  11. Fuck off with this macho talk. It's just stupid. Ukraine was a festering gray area. Putin had accepted the Baltics as lost. And again even if not, and even if he did take back the Baltics, (which would not happen), are you willing to die over that? Are you willing to see your kids die with radiation burns over that, before you die in agony the same way? You know, everybody in Texas called Sam Houston a pussy too when he wouldn't swear to the Confederacy. Y'all are swearing to a Confederacy of Doom and I won't be party to it. Houston predicted total destruction of the South and Texas and he was right. In the event of nuclear war, I will be right. Neither Houston nor I wanted to be right, and as he wanted to do everything he could to preserve the Union, so I want to do everything I can to preserve peace. Peace brings time; time brings change. Everybody chill the fuck out and let news of Putin's failure percolate as much as it can through Russian society before we escalate things over the brink.
  12. Surely our own billionaires have picked up on this cue. We need to scan Flight Aware with that in mind. Also I have the Marine Tracker app -- I will see where the superyachts are heading. I don't think anywhere on the North American continent would be ideal, so I am thinking some of the further flung Carribbean islands. New Zealand / South Seas. Vlad will be nuking Hawaii so that's out. Indian Ocean has some real paradises -- I always wanted to check out the Maldives.
  13. Even Biggio and Cam kind of came out of the gates meh....I was glad to see they had come up with some young MLB talent but they were not exactly setting the league on fire early in their careers. But that was a turning point for awhile. Abreu, Luis Gonzalez, I figure which '90s pitchers were truly homegrown...The farm system had it going for awhile until Unca Dray wrecked the Venezuelan pipeline and everything else that made it top-flight.
  14. I think Hidalgo over-roided. When he had that monster season he was maybe 205 pounds tops, and still really fast. I think he figured if he could hit 45 homers at that size, he would hit 90 at 240, so he spent the offseason loading up, showed up at Spring Training looking and moving like a Mackovic linebacker and it was all downhill from there. Clemente? People were talking Willie Mays. You could kind of put Caminiti in this box too. Dickie Thon was my first choice but that's more in the tragedy column.... I dunno as a kid I never got too excited about any of the Astros homegrown prospects because it just seemed like none of them ever made it. Apparently I formed that opinion really early because I was never overly disappointed when guys like Wine, Drew and Anthony didn't pan out.
  15. I wish I had been put on them at some point. Not six -- who gives a shit about grades then? And yeah, at that age it's more about making shit easy for horrible teachers than really helping kids. But I am legit ADD, and I really believe it would have helped me in HS and college. I just can't focus on shit I don't find interesting, like most science and most math, under normal circumstances, but on Adderall and such, I find everything interesting. And I am able to slow my brain down and take things step by step. My son is the same, and we have similar stories, though not as dramatic, about his teachers. And after HS he was going off the rails -- experimenting with every drug under the sun but mainly just smoking weed and playing video games. We got him a script for Vyvanse and that helped him a lot, but he still needed something more 'cause he was still fucking around. Total lack of confidence because most of his life up to that point had been sort of low-key disappointments and little failures....So he was still being a pain in the ass so we forced him into the army and they turned his ass around in boot camp, permanently. He's just had an entirely different demeanor ever since. He's still the same smartass and very kind kid he ever was, but he walks tall now and has a confident swagger. Still taking Vyvanse and is now back in college and kicking ass on the school newspaper -- over all my objections, he is following me into my shitty career choice. Oh yeah, and his a total dreg on society. (Fuck right the way off, @StassneyHorn; I am sorry your parents didn't care enough about you to raise you right.) Raises hand sheepishly. I did this in HS. Played "along with" my albums until my fingers literally bled and developed calluses just like Stevie Ray Vaughan but never learned to even tune a guitar or more than like two chords. Which I played out of tune. I might as well have been destroying my fingertips on sandpaper for all those many hours of "practice" did me on guitar. On the other hand, when I am on Adderall, I can actually play harmonica. It stuns other people and myself when I've picked one up high and actually played well. Again, it's about focus. I can narrow down to my role in a band rather than trying to play everybody's part at the same time.
  16. Are you kind of ADD / ADHD? That's how it works on people like us.
  17. It was definitely stashed in the outhouse for a reason....Shit you not, there is a "ladies undergarments" section and I am sure kids were yanking it to the illustrations in 1895.
  18. John Mearsheimer has been saying for eight years now that this has always been the Russian plan. If you orient yourself to the West, we will wreck you. Wreck, not occupy.
  19. Old Sears Roebuck catalogs from 120 years ago would sell opiate based alcohol cures and alcohol based opiate cures
  20. Similar to "porn addicts" who figured out it was actually cocaine causing them masturbate 7x daily.
  21. I totally agree it's used as a filler in heroin and other opiates and it has developed plenty of fans who seek it on its own in spite of the risks....Heroin and fentanyl are death wish drugs, psychologically, in a way coke is not. I guess maybe a fent / coke mix would go down like a speedball, which is supposed to be an amazing high, but unless you want to kill your customers, you'd better tell them that's what they are getting. Getting all anecdotal: in Houston about 10 or 15 years ago there was a little gang of junior Bandidos called Todo Moto....they putted around Montrose on their Harleys and sold drugs and kicked up to the big boys. They were like a farm club....But they were disbanded because they were such idiots they would mix up bags all the time. Ask for coke and they'd give you meth or the reverse. The Bandidos quickly realized these kids were inept, this was bad business, and Todo Moto is no' mo'
  22. They don't care about killing people, but the difference is, they murder women and children in Mexico to protect their organizations, so they can make money. They want to create addicts, not dead bodies, again because they care about money. Say you are the captain of a street level drug crew and your flunkies mix up a batch of hot shots and kill five or six of your best customers. You would not be happy about that. As to the replaceability of dealers, I dunno, you just brough that up out of the blue.
  23. My mom was a heroin addict. Long story, but she got hooked off her first hit -- my godfather's brother was a GI in Nam and he sent it back to Houston. Mama had a pre-existing propensity for opiate addiction (she'd been horribly burned as a child and hooked up to a morphine drip for a month). Maybe she could have got through the '60s without "relapsing" like that or maybe not, but in some ways she was a casualty of the war. And to a more limited degree, myself and my three half-siblings as well. She abandoned all of us. Or maybe you wouldn't, because you were a college kid. I'm not buying it. It's bad business. There's a never ending supply of addicts, so why kill so many out of the gate? And I have to believe that fent has a blunting effect on coke. People who want coke want coke, not a heroin like high. They want to grind their teeth and lick their lips and hoot and holler, not nod out drooling. I don't believe the cost-benefit analysis holds up -- you are delivering a different product than what's expected and killing a significant number of customers hoping to create more addicts? How does that make any sense regarding Spring Break drug dealers? Why would they care if these cadets became addicts or not -- they are not going to be buying any more drugs from that dealer. Or is that dealer just "paying it forward" -- creating fent junkies for a faraway chapter of the International Brotherhood of Scumbags. This logic reminds me of some rando I got in an argument with who was swearing up and down that the cartels and ISIS were working together to destroy America. ISIS maybe, but the last thing the cartels want is the downfall of America. This dude was telling me the cartels were guiding ISIS terrorists to the border and helping them acquire bombs and heavy weaponry. Lol. I could say the cartels driving ISIS off into the Mexican desert assuring them that was the way it was going to happen, before stopping the truck, machine gunning them all, and then mailing their severed heads to the FBI as perverse tokens of good faith. "See? We are all on the same team here." I think sometimes people allow notions of morality and evil to take precedence over what drug dealing really is, especially at the hand-to-hand level. Yes, the cartels routinely commit atrocities against each other, but at the bottom end of the business, it's simply about maximizing profit. I mean, I guess I could see them trying out this theory. After all, the other alternative is they are killing people through sloppiness, so it's not like this business is running optimally in either case. But I tend toward idiocy and carelessness rather than an attempt at diabolical genius.
  24. This is where we differ. I believe there are short-term wins on the way to our inevitable doom as a species. I think this will happen here. Russian troops have a pretty long tradition of mutiny, too. A lone trusted assassin is not the only hand that can win this game.
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