wolfriverjoe

That's very true. But that doesn't really apply here. Putin planned a 3 day assault to take Kyiv. A year later, he's still in Moscow, and BIDEN met with Zelensky in Kyiv. Again, the Russians have been trying to take a small and strategically pointless town for months, with no real results. Except a LOT of dead Russians (and Ukrainians) and huge losses of materials & equipment. Putin keeps saying 'if the West does this, it will be considered an attack on Russia and there will be consequences. Those 'red lines' keep getting ignored and the consequences are little more than nasty words from Putin. Russia is pretty much done for. These aren't my words, but they are pretty clear about the situation: Read the third point carefully. Over a million young men fled Russia to avoid dying as draftees in Ukraine. They won't be coming back, at least not as long as Putin is in power. Last point: The idea that Russia would absorb Belarus was from late 2021. Back when people were afraid of Russia. That simply is not going to happen today.

Oh piffle. You're using FACTS again, Professor. His base are the people who believe (among other things) that Antifa burned Portland to the ground, Trump won the election, Covid is a Chinese engineered bio-weapon AND a hoax (at the same time), the vaccines have tracking chips in them and have killed millions. Of course they believe that Chicago is a violent, dystopian hell-hole (instead of Florida being one ).

Oh right. Like anyone's going to forget you. YOU.

Yup. Prigozhin has reportedly had his access to Russian prisons (and recruiting prisoners) cut off. He's bitching that his thugs are not getting enough ammunition, which they had been getting before. People who watch more closely and are more knowledgeable than I are implying that his 'star' is no longer rising. It's not terribly surprising. Anyone who starts to accumulate any sort of power is viewed by Putin as a threat.

Well, right now if Russia decided to attack Belarus, they couldn't. Over 90% of their army is in Ukraine. Anything they would want to pull out of Ukraine to attack Belarus is desperately needed to hold back Ukrainian counter-attacks. And even if the Russians could spare any forces from Ukraine to attack Belarus, the Belarussian army may have something to say about that. The whole world has come to the realization of how incompetent and impotent Russia is.

Well, I think the lawyers are learning. Get paid up front. In advance. And when that money runs out, stop all work until the next advance payment is made.

Same here. I voted R for just about every major election until 2012. I haven't voted R AT ALL since 2016. And doubt that I ever will again. MTG tweeted that the 'red states' should 'divorce' the rest of the country. She seems to forget that: A - The stupid fools tried that 160 years ago. And failed. B - The 14th Amendment bars those who participate in an insurrection from holding office. I'm not sure where the 'participation' line is, but she's getting closer & closer. Funny how the R 'leadership' is not really answering any questions about this.

Or an IOU.

The problem with that scenario is that the Ukrainians aren't going to let him keep some 'small portion of Ukraine'. They want pre-2014 borders. You know, the ones Russia agreed to. And they are going to be able to make that happen. Putler put together what little assets he had and tried to have ANY sort of 'victory' for the anniversary of the invasion. What he ended up with is a few thousand more dead and the destruction of a whole lot more Russian armor. The Vuledar offensive was a debacle. Bahkmut is still held by the Ukranians (and Russia has been trying to take that since August). There's a recent report from the UK that well over 90% of the Russian army is in Ukraine. And barely holding on. Putler is trying to enslave a bunch more people to send to their deaths at the front, but anyone who can has fled. Those who can't flee are hiding. The 'professional' Russian army is done. What's left is old men and people too stupid to run or hide from the draft. OTOH, Ukraine is ascendant. Modern tanks are on the way. The crews and maintenance people are being trained. There's a ton of pressure on the West to provide fighter jets. Those will likely be approved in the next couple months. While getting F-16s & F-15s operational in Ukraine is a big job, getting Polish Migs up and running would be a lot simpler and faster. The only real question is what will happen to Putler. He's done a really good job consolidating power. He has a much stronger grip than I thought a year ago. He has NO check on his power. Nobody can oppose or even disagree with him. Anyone who starts to look like they could be a potential rival gets either taken down a peg or two or tossed out a window. So there really isn't anyone in a position to overthrow him. Not unlike Iraq, if he was removed, there isn't anyone who could take his place. It would be chaos. In a country that has nukes. There's a decent argument that the nukes likely aren't functional any more, but it's not certain. As an aside, thermo-nuclear bombs rely on Tritium for the second stage to go. That has a fairly short half-life and is at or near the top of the list of 'most expensive things in the world'. Does anyone really believe that someone in Russia didn't steal that tritium? But he can't lose the war and still hold much authority over the country. As with any mafia clan, losing a conflict or appearing weak is deadly. It's a fascinating dilema. It's going to be an interesting spring & summer.

Kinda funny how all the 'Covid is a hoax' crowd claimed that everyone who died had their death blamed on Covid, yet THEY are now claiming that everyone who dies is dying from the vax.

Not anymore. They've spent the last 30 years being "Fair & Balanced" and so far to the right that they make Bill Buckley look moderate. There is NOTHING they could do to convince the majority of moderate & liberal viewers that their 'news' was anything other than Republican propaganda. I don't even watch the local Fox station's news. It's as fucked up as the national one. Personally, I'd need to see multiple years of being actually fair and balanced before I'd spend more than a minute or two on them.

That is exactly why Trump was so successful He said "fuck you" to EVERYONE. and got away with it. All of his followers wanted to be able to do that. Many of them have gone on and done that. Some are going to prison for it.

Not the first time they've screwed up a situation like that.

Or correct. Typical Rhys rhetoric. Well, first off, the US has the largest defense budget in the world. By far. Something like 40% of the entire world's spending. More than the next nine COMBINED. That means we're likely to provide the lions share of the aid to Ukraine. Simply because we have the stuff. Much of what we're giving is existing stocks. Stuff that's sitting in storage, some of it expiring reasonably soon (as opposed to Russia who's using stuff that is long expired). The M1 Abrams that are going are old stock sitting in storage. Bought and paid for a LONG time ago. Besides, from a strictly pragmatic point of view, the Russians attacking is the best thing that's happened to NATO in a while (no, it's not really 'good'). We are finding out what would have happened had Russia attacked Europe. We are finding out what equipment works well and what doesn't. Javelin ATGMs are great. Switchblade drones aren't. Attack helicopters are not terribly effective and extremely vulnerable. We're finding out that Russian tanks have serious flaws and vulnerabilities. We already knew that Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) is essential to control of the air (neither side is doing it, so attack aircraft are very vulnerable). We're learning what tactics work and what ones don't. We've learned that allowing the kleptocrats to steal all the defense funds leaves the military in a really bad position. We've learned (again) that when a bully threatens to beat someone up, placating him simply goads him into more attacks. The only real way to stop him is to STOP him. Fortunately, most of the rest of the free world is taking this lesson to heart. Lots of folks are wanting to join NATO. And make it clear, they want to. They aren't being forced or coerced, as Putler and his trolls would like everyone to believe. We've learned how effective propaganda is, and at the same time are learning how to counter it (we have a ways to go on that front). And the price we are paying for these lessons is super cheap. No American troops are involved (nor any other NATO nation's troops) Note: It hasn't been officially acknowledged, but the presence of US Special Forces, UK SAS and other 'special ops' types is a virtual certainty. But that happens in just about every conflict on the planet. Very true. Germany wouldn't send Leopard tanks, or allow any other country to send them, until the US committed to sending Abrams. The general idea was fear of Putler. He kept drawing 'red lines' regarding NATO aid to Ukraine. As each of those lines was ignored and crossed, he just made more stupid threats. Funny how Putin's threats of nuclear and radiological ('dirty bombs') disappeared after Biden sent the message that doing that would be a REALLY bad idea. As it becomes apparent how weak Russia really is, the likelyhood of better artillery (HIMARS with the longer reach), jet planes (F-15s & F-16s), and all sorts of other stuff is becoming greater. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Well, if it happened a bunch of times, I'd be more suspicious of Raytheon, rather than 'some hostile nation'.

We need more people who are working for what's best for the country. They won't agree on what that is, but if they are trying to make the country better for ALL the citizens, we'd at least be going in a positive direction. Instead, we have Republicans who have openly stated that their goal is to 'defeat' anything the Ds propose, even if that course is detrimental to the country. Too much risk that it would capsize.

One more time - Who are the 'them'?

Please define "them". Which 'them' is this particular 'them' that is trying to not be paid attention to? Google? Nope. They want you to keep using their stuff. So they can make money. YouTube? Nope. They just want you to keep watching (anything). So they can make money. Gym Jordan (or any of the other YouTube 'creators)? Nope. He wants you watching his shit. So he can make money. The advertisers (on YouTube, Google, here, everywhere)? Nope. They want you paying attention to their shit. So they can sell you stuff. And make money. This sort of 'them' and the idea that they are nefariously 'pulling the strings' in the background is pretty silly. I'd expect it from a few folks on here (Rhys/100th Monkey is probably the worst at it but there are others). I thought you were smarter than that.

Why should Ukraine negotiate with a man who has NEVER kept to an agreement in the past? Putler agreed to leave Ukraine to the 1991 borders in the Budapest memorandum. Obviously, the idea that Ukraine would not allow his hand-picked puppet to rule them was enough for him to invade back in 2014. He 'promised' last year that he wasn't going to invade. Biden told the world that he was lying. And was right. Ukraine isn't going to negotiate with murderers. They haven't forgotten the Holodomor. The behavior of the orcs starkly reveals what would happen if Ukraine were to surrender. The thing is, they don't have to. Russia has pretty much lost. It's mostly a question of how many defeats it's going to take for them to accept that fact. They don't have '300,000 troops standing by' They're drafting 60 year old grandfathers. They're 'recruiting' convicted criminals out of prison. And they're losing. They're throwing untrained 'soldiers' at prepared Ukrainian positions in human wave attacks, where they get slaughtered like sheep. Of course, the Russians have 'barrier troops' behind them during the attacks, to shoot their own soldiers if they try to retreat. Some reports have suggested that Wagner recruited 50k prison convicts. And lost 40k of them killed, wounded, captured or deserted. Similar reports have claimed that Russian conscripts are lasting mere days in Ukraine. From entering the country to dying, being wounded, captured or deserting is often a week. Russia is buying drones from Iranian manufacturers. They're buying artillery shells from North Korea. They're using tanks made in the 60s. Their "Black Sea Fleet" is afraid to leave Sevastopol. Russia is totally screwed. They're losing their people, they've lost much of their armor. They've lost most of the little transport capability they had. And that wasn't much. Fun fact: World War 2 ('Great Patriotic War') saw a LOT of gear given to the Soviets. While the Soviets made thousands of armored vehicles and millions of guns (from large bore artillery down to pistols), they made virtually ZERO trucks. So they depended completely on the allies for ALL of their logistical capacity. They didn't learn much in the 70 years since, because their logistics in Ukraine are shit. No food, no ammunition, no nothing. That's one of the reasons the orcs have looted everything in sight. Ukrainian artillery (US made HIMARS) is destroying any supplies they manage to get near the front. They've thrown away their future too. They've ruined ALL of the markets for their arms. Nobody's going to buy their garbage, now that it's clear how shitty it is. Nobody's every going to be afraid of them again. A very realistic future includes China taking Siberia. Russia won't be able to defend it. They won't have the troops or equipment. And Putin (if he's still alive, which is pretty unlikely) won't be able to go to the international community for help. If he went to the UN, he'd get laughed out. I don't think it's unrealistic to see a world where Russia ceases to exist in the next 5 years. Kruschev claimed 'We will bury you!!!'. Right. Sure. Putin has thrown all that down the toilet.

Funny thing: Virtually everyone using 'woke' these days is an 'Alt-right' type using it as a pejorative.

I've seen the stories where the Ukrainians are 3D printing stabilizing fins to attach to hand grenades. They reportedly have gotten very good at dropping them on/in some pretty small targets. One thing the old war movies got right is how effective a standard hand grenade is when put inside an armored vehicle. But there's a difference between a hand grenade and an RPG warhead.

Well, when I was dabbling a bit in R/C helicopters, the LiPo batteries were somewhat volatile. I would put the battery in and hook it up as the last thing before takeoff. I would think that keeping potentially volatile batteries and high explosives apart until the last moment is a prudent choice. I have yet to see any video of an actual drone carrying an RPG warhead. A quick search shows there are a bunch of multi-rotor drones capable of lifting 5 lbs. I don't know them anywhere near as well as you do, so I can't say which ones are and which aren't. It's entirely possible that the pics of the drones with warheads is a fake. They may not want to show exactly how they do it. It's not entirely impossible to believe that this is all faked, designed to scare the Russians. There's a bit more to the stories than I would expect for a propaganda/fake technology sort of thing, but I wouldn't be totally surprised to find that out.

Hi Jerry, I quit smoking last century (no joke, quit in 1999). So 'thanks but no thanks'. And it IS an interesting question. For myself as a (mostly retired) rigger, if I found something that bad, and the owner refused to accept that it was not airworthy, I'd refuse to pack/work on it, and then let all the other riggers in the area (I know most of them) know about it, with adequate details. This has happened locally - Someone had some seriously dangerous gear, but refused to get rid of it. They went 'rigger shopping' to try to get it repacked. I got a phone call from another area rigger, Not the one that initially refused to deal with it, but one further down the phone tree ('I've called all these people, if there's another rigger you know who I haven't listed, please get in touch'). I thanked the caller, let them know that I would not work on it without consulting them (if at all), and never heard anything more.

Accidental double post.

Well, the founding fathers didn't think women should have the right to vote, or much other rights. So Barrett should step down. And Thomas only counts as 3/5 of a person, so his vote on the court should only count that much. Right? I'm pretty strongly in favor of gun rights. But even I think this is REALLY stupid.