GeorgiaDon

If you read the whole article, maybe not so much "mercy". The conviction and fine were for "hooliganism". She is also the subject of an ongoing investigation under the newly passed law regarding spreading "false news" (IOW contradicting the Kremlin's official propaganda). That is the law with the 15 years in the Gulag penalty, and she may well still be hit with that.

Door #3 would require a country to almost completely revamp its economy to a wartime economy, without actually being at war. I submit that that would be impossible from a political perspective. Anyway what would that actually accomplish? It's not as if the Nazis would have failed to notice the Allied countries suddenly starting to recruit/conscript 10% of their population and train them to fight, or that all the car factories were suddenly churning out tanks, etc. Similarly Door #4 seems a bit silly, to declare war but announce that you aren't going to do anything until you are completely ramped up to a wartime footing? Anyway what set me off about this was your assertion that all the effort and sacrifice of the Allied countries was meaningless because they weren't landing troops on Normandy the same day that war was declared. To put a personal touch on it, my great-uncle walked with a limp for the rest of his life after some German shrapnel almost removed his leg, my paternal grandfather had nightmares all his life from his experiences fighting in Italy, and one of my early mentors was almost given up for dead on Juno Beach. I would not want to be the one to tell them their sacrifices were meaningless.

I believe the first quote is Harris trying to explain the situation to Trump. However it didn't work as some of her words had more than one syllable. The second quote is from former beauty contestant Caitlin Upton, who was auditioning to be Trump's wife # 4.

??? That is completely different from the Allied response to Nazi aggression. I honestly cannot see any way to compare the two. The US and Britain have not invaded Ukraine BTW. Russia has, which proves that their word cannot be trusted on anything. They also do things like agree to evacuation corridors for civilians, and then bomb those civilians when they try to evacuate, which is a war crime. Good luck prosecuting anyone though.

Doesn't that set up the following choices for a country? Door # 1: permanently maintain a sufficient military to instantly respond to any situation. Judging by WWII (which is what we have been discussing) that means a standing military of no less than 10% of the total population, with all the vehicles, tanks, ships, aircraft etc necessary for them to be able to be instantly deployed into combat. Alternatively: Door #2: never ever declare war, no matter the situation. Don

Operation Torch[edit] Main article: Operation Torch American troops on board a landing craft going in to land at Oran. November 1942. The United States entered the war in the west with Operation Torch on 8 November 1942, after their Soviet allies had pushed for a second front against the Germans. General Dwight Eisenhower commanded the assault on North Africa, and Major General George Patton struck at Casablanca. Interesting! If the UK, Canada, Australia, French, etc. and (by Jerry's standards) the USA's declarations of war were ineffective because of no immediate effect, one has to wonder what happened to the Nazis. Perhaps the Soviets took care of the problem entirely on their own?

Canada (as one example) had 1.1 million people, more than 10% of its total population, serve in the military during the war. At the start of the war the total military was less than 50,000. During the course of the war Canada built and deployed the 4th largest air force and the 5th largest navy in the world. Just how quickly do you think it would take to accomplish that? Are you saying if troops aren't in theater within 24 hours they don't count? If your position is that those countries that declared war (years before the US was dragged kicking and screaming into the conflict) were "meaningless", then I would say that the 1.1 million Canadians who served, the 55,000 who were wounded, and the 42,000 who were killed would collectively say fuck you!

I assumed that oil is oil, and that loss of overseas sources could be compensated for by increasing domestic production, but it turns out reality is more complicated. Back in the '90s and early 2000s a lot of refining capacity was built to process "heavy sour" crude, which is crude with a hydrocarbon composition that is harder to "crack" (refine to make gas) and has a high sulfur content. Since then the US sources that have been developed, such as fracking, produce "light sweet" crude (low sulfur, shorter hydrocarbons) that requires a different process to refine and therefore can't be processed by refineries built to process heavy sour crude. So the problem of gas supply demands not only a supply of crude oil but also building new refineries to handle the specific chemistry of that crude, which is very expensive and takes years. Older refineries can be retrofitted but the process requires them to shut down and basically be rebuilt which is almost as costly and time consuming as building from scratch. The refining industry isn't willing to take the cost of shutting down for a few years when they can import heavy sour crude to process. Also retrofitting the refining capacity of the country would dramatically reduce gas supply for years as the new refineries are built. That is why the US finds itself being a net oil exporter: we import heavy sour while a lot of domestic production is exported to other countries that can process light sweet crude. (link here)

In summary, Republicans who support Trump are nothing more than Putin's pawns or as Vladimir Lenin is credited with saying, useful idiots.

I wish NerdGirl was still around to offer some perspective.

I assume you mean Tucker Carlson?

Is NATO ready, right now, for an all-out war with Russia, including having tactical nuclear weapons used against NATO forces and European cities? Russia apparently has a significant advantage in such weapons, and there is little reason to doubt that Putin would use them. By "tactical" nuclear weapons I mean smaller yield (but still highly destructive) weapons that can be launched as an artillery projectile to take out an airfield or similar target. These differ from strategic weapons designed to take out entire cities. The risk of an all-out war is that NATO could lose the former Eastern Block and Balkan countries if they can't achieve a clear victory over Russia. With Putin running the Russian side of things, a scorched-earth approach is all too possible.

While none (or at least hopefully few) of us would disagree, it was an astonishingly stupid thing for him to say out loud. It is a remarkable propaganda victory for Putin as it plays directly into the Kremlin line that the war was instigated by the US to attack Russia. It is already being played as such on Russian state-controlled media. Graham is a Senator, and as such his words can easily be construed as stating US government policy. This proves that he is either too stupid to understand the consequences of his actions, or he doesn't care, or (like Trump) he sees some advantage to catering to Putin. No matter the reason, he is totally unfit to be in any position of political power.

Can Trump possibly go any lower? On Fox (Faux) News: .@MariaBartiromo: "Do you expect China to invade Taiwan sooner rather than later?" President Donald Trump: "I do because they're seeing how stupid the United States is run. They're seeing that our leaders are incompetent. Of course they're going to do it. This is their time." Actually it's a rhetorical question. There is no bottom to how low Trump is willing to go for his own benefit.

brenthutch may be old enough to be retired, but calling him "dated" seems harsh. Anyway where would he put all that oil?

I think by now Putin must realize he has destroyed any possibility of economic interaction with Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. I fear that he may now be thinking that the only way forward is to go for broke and try to reestablish the old USSR or even Russian Empire, so Russia can exert economic domination over a bunch of subjugated "countries". The alternative is permanent economic devastation, unless China and perhaps India can be a big enough market for Russia oil and gas to replace Europe. Hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. He chose appeasement and that was a position a lot of people supported at the time. Unfortunately for his place in history, Hitler quickly proved that Churchill had the better crystal ball.

Well, he did say that while going through the line for pie.

Here is a link to a fascinating and terrifying interview with Fiona Hill, an expert on Russia and Putin who worked in national security for both Democratic and Republican administrations. There is a whole lot of historical meat to the interview. Take home, though, is that Putin dreams of restoring to old Russian Empire, which extended well beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union, he is willing to use any methods to achieve that including nuclear weapons, and the West including NATO have had their heads in the sand for a long time. Absolutely Putin does not intend to stop with Ukraine, although his methods may not be military invasion in all cases, but rather breaking up states and making them subservient to Russia as is already the case with several former USSR countries.

Stupid statement. The Biden administration does not own or directly control oil production, unlike the Saudi royal family in Saudi Arabia. At most, the Biden administration could put some more land up for auction. Oil companies would have to explore, find economically useful reserves, and build infrastructure to get the oil out of the ground and transported to refineries, a process that would take years. As it is, the Biden administration is releasing oil from the national petroleum reserve, which is much faster although them amount won't make a big difference. The Saudis have significant unused capacity, as do other OPEC countries. Collectively they could increase production by several million barrels a day in a short time. They planned to increase production by a few hundred thousand barrels/day before the invasion, and they are not changing that because they don't want to offend Russia.

I'm NS born as well, but I grew up all over Canada as well as Germany and the Netherlands (military brat). Got my US citizenship in 2008.

4 Canadians. Or 3 1/2, depending on how you care to count dual citizens.

Saudi Arabia/OPEC has decided not to increase oil production to compensate for the reduction in Russian shipments. Yet again proving they are no friend of the US or Europe.

Yes, and Putin/Russia is sitting even further out on the branch. I'm not surprised, though, that people who find it unacceptable to be asked to wear a mask in the midst of a pandemic would be mystified about why people would be willing to inconvenience themselves to help dissuade a despot from attacking a country that has done nothing to pose a threat.

So after all the insinuation about drones driving the walruses over the cliff, it turns out most of the walruses died days before, when no drones or camera crew were there to disturb them, because they were frightened by polar bears. Who is it who is actually being dishonest here?

I suspect that if Thomas was to pass away the Heritage Foundation would immediately hire a taxidermist to turn him into something animatronic, like some Disney theme park character, so he continue to sit on the Supreme Court forever. He never asks questions during oral arguments, and his clerks could write his neolithic opinions in perpetuity, so no one would ever know. Then Biden would never get a chance to appoint some raving socialist in his place!