Coffeesforclosers

It's like there's a concerted effort to drain nuance from public discourse or something. And it's the other side's fault, of course.

I got called a Leftist for pointing out that people on the staff of Russia Today aren't reliable sources of information on the Ukraine War. We should start a club.

Do you know how much more fulfilling life is once you unplug from social media and stop following the 24hr news cycle Infoganda complex? My god, I wonder what my career would be like if I went into my bosses office every day, foaming-at-the-mouth screaming about every single problem I'd found.

China Walks Back Diplomat’s Apparent Questioning of Ex-Soviet States’ Independence. I really did think for a second that they would just double down.

TDS meets BDS. Or is it all just merging into Other Guy Derangement Syndrome?

China’s ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, said former Soviet republics have no “effective status” in international law Well that's quite a mouthful of foot Lu Shaye had there. Unless of course he just said China's quiet part out loud.

Ok, no worries. No they aren't. But all propagandists are the same in that they are counting on us, their targets, to 1. not bother to do their homework or 2. become jaded and give up trying.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/12/12/u-s-children-more-likely-than-children-in-other-countries-to-live-with-just-one-parent/ The UK has a comparable rate of SPHH, 21% for them, 23% for us. Do they have a comparable rate of gun violence?

4D Chess by Josh. He's letting everyone that his game is going to "mature"...so it's time to get serious about the OL.

Well, we can agree he's a dirtbag with..questionable...character to put it nicely. He doesn't though because he's a propagandist. His job is to get me to swallow the agenda he's pushing by any means necessary, and come to the conclusions he wants me to reach. If I want Op Eds on how the Interventionist agenda is a mound of *****, I go other places, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincy_Institute_for_Responsible_Statecraft. Or I read basically anything by Dr. Andrew Bacevich. He's a university trained historian who's been tearing Interventionism to bits since his only son was KIA in Iraq. His institute's perspectives run from guys like John Mearsheimer, who's position is basically to give Russia whatever they demand so the threat of a Great Power War goes away, and moderates from there. So honestly, I don't know why I should give Scott Ritter or anything he says the time of day, when there are so many other people articulating his POV without pushing his agenda, or carrying the sort of scumbag history around that he is. He's not worth your time defending.

Interesting. I dont think it's an Ad Hominem attack to disregard anything said by someone who works for a propaganda ministry. That in itself is disqualifying, but I'm interested in your thoughts to the contrary. Check Ritter's wiki page. He's a character.

Do I get included in the "left sheep" category because I pointed out that a sex offender on the staff of Russia Today is an unreliable source? When it's obvious the thread author thinks sex offenders on the staff of Russia Today have meaningful opinions?

I'd never heard of this guy until I came to this forum. His YT is a mountain of doomposting. But you know, since he churns out between 4-6 videos per day, you know everything is thoughtful, impartially researched, carefully considered, and measured in delivery...I almost said that with a straight face.

DeSantis brand is calibrated for the modern, social media based, validation driven media environment. So obviously it's going to be based on virtue signaling. That's why he's getting pulled down these pearl clutching, nanny state rabbit holes instead of campaigning for the nomination. Trump hit him for being a groomer and a pedo-enabler, and he'll keep it up until DeSantis finds a response. These feel-good laws were supposed to vaccinate DeSantis against this strategy and failed.

Finland joined NATO yesterday. Sweden's application is still hung up thanks to objections by Hungary and Turkey. Sweden's had dealings with various Kurdish groups that Turkey doesn't like. Hungary has been consistently... sympathetic shall we say... to Russian interests while trying to preserve its NATO/EU ties.

All of your key points start with the words "I feel...". So take a step back and engage your reason. You know, the one thing traditional media and social media don't want you to do.

You replied 8 minutes after he posted. Thats about a minute and twenty seconds per article. You must read pretty fast.

We got to this point because so much power has been ceded to the Executive branch by a dysfunctional legislative branch. President is not a hereditary title. Ex President is not a constitutional office.

He has billions of dollars. He'll have the best defense money can buy, and he can retain them forever. Right or wrong, he'll beat this the same way every billionaire beats this. Unless he does something really stupid.

It's good news for sure, but don't echo chamber yourself inside a positive feedback loop. The Quincy Institute has some pieces from the Realist perspective on how to resolve the war. They're at least measured in their tone and thoughtfully argued, though as usual you wonder about what evidence it's based on. George Beebe is alright.

Huh. Interesting. Alright I'll keep an eye on this story. I don't read Polish so hopefully it'll filter through into media in a language I do read. What's going on in Israel has been chewing up a lot of my current events time. But so far, Peter Zeihan's call that May will be pivotal month in Ukraine has lease on life.

Most of the headlines I could find on the subject indicate Wagner's still there. That's been going on for some time now unfortunately. The Russian army is horribly inefficient, but that doesn't make it ineffective. Moreover, Russian society is still largely resigned to their army being horribly inefficient, and is unwilling to make their leadership pay any kind of price for it for now. It's a conventional war between mobilized nations who believe in their respective causes (or won't oppose them), whatever the logical merits of those causes are. The war won't end until the sides either stop thinking they can win, or start thinking they will lose. There's also always the chance some total ***** calamity occurs like France in 1940, but that doesn't seem likely.

Open Source Intelligence Lists of equipment destroyed, damaged, abandoned and captured. Something's up. The last few days there's been a spike in losses on both sides when it comes to tanks, apcs, and IFVs. Russia's got the initiative right now, so my guess is that there's a Russian tank attack going on. And the attack achieved some sort of success, because Ukraine is committing tank units to stop it. And Ukraine's counter attack had some kind of success, because their tank losses are about 1/3 Russia's, and Russian losses include captured vehicles. Oryx's twitter has regular updates. All this coincides with reports of a big tank battle around Adiivka. So those reports are probably true. The last time Russia committed masses of armored vehicles to an offensive was against Vuhledar, and it was a disaster for them. Adiivka is about half way between Vuhledar and Bakhmut, so punching through Ukrainian lines there threatens both places. It also makes sense for Russia, since the Russian Army operates most of their armored vehicles, while Wagner is mostly an artillery/infantry force of expendable shock troops. So Wagner keeps grinding itself to bits in Bakhmut while the Russian Army smashes tank units into Ukrainian defenses to the South. Where Russia hopes to create a breakthrough that forces Ukraine to pull back to avoid encirclement. And where Russian offensives take advantage of developed, relatively secure lines of supply through the LPR/DPR. Basically a replay of what Russia achieved at Popasna last year, which forced Ukraine out of the fortresses of Lysychansk and Sevierodonetsk as well. I guess I understand why Ukraine wants to fight it out where they are, even though my casualty averse western sensibilites think its nuts from time to time. They know the terrain. They've got strong fortifications. They can't assume they'll get back any towns they abandon. And they assume any population they give to the Russians will be filter camped and deported to Russia, or subjected to forced assimilation backed by intimidation and violence.

Read Sherpa's conversation with All Pro. It's proceeding exactly how I expected it would.

Really what we should be asking is why the hell this has to be an "either/or" proposition. I'm not against building the wall, and I'm not against helping Ukraine stack Russians up like logs. But my two parties are for some reason...