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MaybeACoordinator

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Everything posted by MaybeACoordinator

  1. Have you seen her ranch? It's apparently the size of Luxembourg... The reparations thing is from the same line of Bad Idea Jeans as a NATO no-fly zone. You can't get blood from a stone and if you try you breed a whole new generation of haters. I mean didn't we learn anything from Versailles? Or how the Marshall Plan was a better way to go?
  2. The story I read was when the White political structure collapsed, sleazy real estate developers encouraged the new Black city government to tear down all the old downtown mansions as they were reminders of slavery and lynching days. Which they were, and Marshall had a huge number of lynchings in the early 20th century, and many took place right downtown. Once all the demos got going there came to be a "fuck it, tear it all down" mindset across all races. Before anyone even thought that preservation might have some value the era of dstruction also claimed the city's synagogue and Bishop College, a historic HBCU. The main building had been a former plantation home; it's owner sold it to freedmen in 1880 for use as part of the college. These buildings were all leveled as well as the old opera house and the building that housed the government of Missouri in exiled during the Civil War. Not to mention dozens old homes and commercial buildings. All during this time, the economy wasn't doing that great. Usually when a town tears everything down, it's thriving, like Houston or Austin. That wasn't the deal there. They kind of killed what could have been their golden goose -- the old buildings also had the potential to make the town a tourist attraction like Jefferson. Instead it just regressed to the mean of less historical East Texas cities which is not a good place to be. Now in their place you have drive-thru banks and fry pits....Bill Moyers is a native and this might come from his documentary.
  3. And already trying to find if any of these kids are hockey blue chips
  4. Canada has a very large Ukrainian immigrant community and lots of living space for people used to cold.
  5. You must have just blazed through because Jefferson looks nothing like the poor fucked-up towns of lower Arkansas. It's the most unusual town in NE Texas, full of preserved 1850s houses turned into bed and breakfasts. Population is about 2000 but it has fine dining and multiple bars ranging from good ol' boy to wine bars. As has been pointed out, this is where OP should have gone. Or to a cabin lakeside at Caddo.
  6. As has been pointed out, not the case. One of my son's army buddies was hell-bent-for-leather on going but on the advice of a friend pretty high up in the Deep State, I advised him not to go. My friend and I had a 45 second conversation, the gist of which was "He will be killed." By thermobaric bombs, specifically. Not sure if the kid's still going. Yet another reason I look on those pics of those gung-ho kids more with sadness than fervor. This sober alcoholic woman I know is married to another sober drunk. They have a deal. "If it gets to where we are eating our pets, we're off the wagon. We eat our pets -- everybody drinks, even the baby."
  7. And so many hot women who are all easy because they are poors /Brazilian dude
  8. For those still talking about No Fly Zones, think of it like this. In modern warfare, any given country's ground, waterways, and airspace are the exact same thing. To establish a no-fly zone, you must send in warplanes to another country's airspace with hostile intent and almost always lethal effect. This is exactly the same as a land invasion or a naval bombardment from another country's coastal waters. Exactly the same. There is nothing magic about the sky. And if we -- Americans or NATO or fucking Chad -- tries to establish an NFZ over Ukraine, that country would be at war with Russia. If that's what you want, fine: there are two threads about nuclear war you can go post in. I wish I didn't have to point this out again 327 pages into this thread after so many others have already done so more eloquently than me, but as they say, No Fly Zone Talk Not Going Away.
  9. GOP re Putin https://youtu.be/NOc4UWO3R4I?t=42
  10. Here is a good story about the propaganda war and how Ukraine is running a Trans-Siberian Express on Russia in it right now. The cat? I somehow missed the "Panther of Kharkiv": I don't know if that was even a serious effort but there is an element of absurdist humor to some of the Ukrainian propaganda that does make it better than the standard fare "Russians bayonet babies and gang rape virgins and we are golden hearted heroes" stuff. This might be the funniest send-up of wartime propaganda I've ever seen and it's amazing that it was created about a city literally under siege in a country under invasion. F- for truth, A+++++++ for a propaganda win. It also explains my puzzlement of why RT is so weirdly terrible compared to the Ukrainian stuff: And
  11. That's very weird; I did not get the story about Ukraine destroying bioweapons -- it might have been added after I posted or I just missed it. I am very leery of any story involving allegations of chemical / biological warfare and I would not have posted what I did had I seen it or had it been there. But there are also stories about how the Pope is calling it a war and not a "military operation," how the RUS gov't has blocked Pussy Riot's website, how the RUS gov't has arrested thousands in protests across Russia, and how a Sky News team from the UK was shot at with some wounded. That story is all kinds of hinky: Brits pull up to a checkpoint near Kyiv and find themselves immediately under fire from people they assumed were friendlies. The Ukrainians later told them they had run into "a saboteur Russian reconnaissance squad" and that they were many paramilitary Russian death squads all over the country killing Uke civilians. Big if true, right? Which would be good information to know, right? And I would probably believe it even if I read it in the Kyiv Independent but they haven't reported it. Why has RT aired this Ukrainian claim? The longer the war goes on, the less bad news RT is reporting though. As for my critical thinking skills -- that's why I go there. I want to know why they are reporting the things they report and why they omit the things they don't report. To someone who works in the media it's fascinating. It's like forensic psychology. Shrinks are bored by normie patients and I am bored by the sort of normie propaganda Ukraine is churning out -- it's effective, it's necessary, it's everywhere, but I've been studying propaganda in warfare going back to World War I and it's basically the same playbook. This RT stuff is next level shit.
  12. I know I'll get shelled for even bringing up RT.com but their English-language site has been objective to the point of mutinous right up until now. They are not reporting on the progress of the invasion on the ground, but they are not exactly cheerleading and absolutely overloading stories on negative world reaction. I don't know if that's some kind of psyops trap -- see, we can be reasonable, English speakers? -- or if the staff has gone rogue. Go take a look.
  13. Can't stand the CR thread....I do think there's room for a happy medium but it ain't my message board.
  14. This was what I hoped it would be but the mods vaporized it with no explanation. I probably was not the first to start an alternative news thread on the subject but I am just so tired of all the information coming from sights with Ukrainian flags as their profile pic, others I'd never heard of until two weeks ago or even a few days ago, and obviously biased blue-checks and memes of Ukrainian hotties with AKs, farmers pulling busted up tanks around, or grannies chunkin' pickle jars repeated every page. I love the way the war is going but I hate propaganda. In a much milder form, I've learned how insidious it can be....I was staying in a youth hostel in Budapest in '92 and from their coverage it really seemed like fucking Hungary was winning the Olympics. I've seen similar in other athletic competitions in England when I was living there, so it's not just an East Bloc thing. Like I said, it does seem like Putin fucked up royally here but I'd like to see more facts and fewer anecdotes and absolutely zero myths and legends.
  15. Oh I know but by the time they do post, it's verified as true. I went ahead and started it. The current one has me literally dreaming fog of war dreams.
  16. I am thinking of starting a [serious] thread that eliminates all links from obviously biased sources. Reuters, BBC, AP, al-Jazeera, AFP, DW, etc only. The noise-to-signal on this thread is getting unbearable between the blatant Ukrainian propaganda and the shitposting.
  17. It's not so bad. I live smack on the San Bernard in the prettiest part of the county -- amid all the live oaks and Spanish moss.
  18. I am 25.6 miles from the Bryan Mound Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Freeport. My suffering would be short, I believe.
  19. Gen X got this. Years in the arcades. After about level three you were dealing with more and more MIRVs so that's nothing to us....just let us practice for a few days and get that muscle memory back. Some of you will say this would be like letting a Madden champ run our offense. I say we find the Missile Command masters and let them save America. This dude smashed the 30-year-old high score in 2013. I hope he is in a hardened bunker right now being primed with the USAF's finest stimulants.
  20. I've got a tankie aunt. Anti-vax, pro-Putin, extremely left on other matters. I wish there was a way to coldly analyze the politics of all this without partisan shit-flinging. I find the psychology fascinating but not the stupid back and forth on here...Oh well.
  21. "I was in the army but I never dug a trench / used to bust my knuckles on a monkey wrench / then I'd go to town and drink / give the girls a pinch / but I don't think they ever even noticed me...Father forgive us for what we must do. You forgive us, and we'll forgive you. We'll forgive each other until we both turn blue and then whistle and go fishing in heaven." John Prine, World's Greatest 91-Bravo Songwriter "Go get the Roach!" More in reply to @SL Xpress's note that right-wing American Putin lovers might want to kill hardcore progressives...I think they might be surprised to find more than a few who share their love....It's one of those deals where the extremes meet in the middle. I think with the progressives it's some combo of residual nostalgia for the Soviet Union and hatred of American foreign policy. In this light they could see him as a Castro or Sandinista type, and that it is the Russians who are the real underdogs here. I think that cohort grows smaller by the day but it will never go away. There are little pockets of leftists who still adore Mao and Stalin. Awesomeness in bold....However, Putin is not another Hitler. Yes, he has effectively annexed a similar nation on his borders in Belarus, and there's a good argument that like Hitler this invasion is part of a grand plan for more lebensraum, but: A) he is not so far genocidal. Some historians argue Hitler kept pushing east in order to get his hands on as many Jews as possible -- his ethnic hatred ran deep enough for racism to trump strategy. Then there were the summary executions of all the various other untermenschen -- Poles, Slavs in general, Gypsies, gays, the handicapped, etc. and B) He doesn't have the juice to be Hitler even if he wanted to. He doesn't have a somewhat powerful regional ally like Italy, who at least proved a nuisance for a couple of years. Germany or Poland are not going to cut a deal with him to carve up Ukraine, giving him time and the ability to marshal resources. There is not a fearsome rising power on the other side of the world declaring death to all his enemies and actively invading their territories. His own country is....well, let's just say the Russians have never been the industrial dynamo as an even down-on-its-heels Germany like that of the Weimar Republic. Unlike the Germans, his army has made no bold breakthrough in military strategy akin to blitzkrieg tactics. (It suddenly occurs to me that he might be having better luck getting through this mud if he'd invaded with gigantic convoys of oxen and mule teams under heavy air support. Joking I guess.....but little could be faring worse than what he's got going on out there.) Yes, he has nukes. So do we. Advantage: aggy. So there you have it from MaybeAPedanticAsshole....But words have meaning, and "another Hitler" is overused shorthand.
  22. When my son finished AIT at Fort Lee, he said "dad, you know how you get annoyed by 19-year-old drivers? Now imagine them in a tank."
  23. I would share that but Facebook banned me yesterday for saying "Russians are weird."
  24. Russian emigre friends say this is a big mistake -- how else are they going to get info outside of the state monopoly?
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