You have to remember that he was a Democrat for many years.
I don't know if I have ever seen him smile.... always looks like he's mad at the world.
If only Putin had used the wrong pronouns . . .
- Thread starter CO. Hoosier
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I don't know if I have ever seen him smile.... always looks like he's mad at the world.
Maybe he lost his sense of humor when Obama roasted him at the Washington press corps dinner.You have to remember that he was a Democrat for many years.
I don't know if I have ever seen him smile.... always looks like he's mad at the world.
You have to remember that he was a Democrat for many years.
I don't know if I have ever seen him smile.... always looks like he's mad at the world.
Sorry, I had to.
I put Trump smile in twitter and this was the first thing that came up on my search. I chuckled a bit.
The price the people are paying is due to 25 years of continual use of their country as a global money machine by western criminals in league with international banksters.
The bill has come due.
New Party leadership
As made obvious here, there is little difference between those claiming major party status.
There will be a new way...
He may be a no good rotten sonofabitch, but you can't fault his taste.
The tenor and even title of this thread demonstrate that you are the hack people accuse you of being.
Even Bill Maher says that's ridiculous. The fact Putin didn't invade anyone during Trump's Presidency should tell you that.
Take you blinders off.
it’s as if you’ve only read Pat Buchanan pamphlets your whole life
Yeah, and Trump let Germany use the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Oh wait - no, he wouldn't allow it. That was Biden. Probably in order to appease Russia so they wouldn't release more damaging info on Hunter.
Would you have let Russian into the G8 if they kept their hands off Ukraine?
Right up there with his posts about mothers dying? You can tell he is a class act. Another leftist that would get the living sh*t beat out of him if he went out amongst people saying the same stuff.
Well then living up to your handle i see.. Damn I can't wait to get back there and have a waitress say red or green. Yum
You may be a hack, but you got nothing on Co.H. He puts a lot of effort into hiding his hackery. I think he actually believes it works, too. Which is just sad.
You're honest about where you're coming from. You can't hang with that level of hackery with honesty. You need an obscene amount of self-delusion to make it work.
I don't really know what a hack is, but I think, and usually agree with, his posts.
I'm envious of posters like him and IUCrazy because they take the time to present really good arguments (in my opinion), whereas I tend to just respond quickly - I don't think it's worth my time to spend a lot of time crafting a response that will be blown off by who I'm arguing with.
But I appreciate the fact they do take the time. And both do it without a lot of cut-and-pastes, which make my eyes glaze over.
They're not the only ones who write well and convincingly, but they're the ones I agree with most of the time.
I'm just always amazed at how 2 people can look at the same set of facts and come to completely different conclusions - mainly because of politics. Trump and Putin's non-invasion of Ukraine during his Presidency being a prime example.
i dig the frank insight. I spent a few years reading about the human brain as a bio -computer. We’re prob wrong about “free will” though humans clearly do have the capacity to change and grow. Any human can be raised to believe almost anything. The content of the belief is arbitrary but the constant is that our hardware will upload the software around us and will believe the programming is reality.
I think there’s another way to view COH and his posting style. Normally debate is played as a game, with two possibilities. Either win win or win lose. That’s not what COH does. He creates a no-game condition. No chance for him to lose. What he does is he spars. He will never admit to losing a sparring match, a sparring round, or even that you delivered a blow. All he does is spar and dodge and spar and Dodge and spar and Dodge. This is not a criticism, simply an observation. It’s helpful to know what one is confronting.
A criticism would be to suggest that he’s afraid to lose. Afraid to play the game for real, honestly. That’s not what this post is saying.
Any honest post about the Biden Administration or Biden himself will necessarily seem highly partisan to you. Biden is a disaster not only for the USA but for the world. Ukraine didn’t have to happen.
The only way to defend Biden on any of his policies or decisions is to be a partisan hack.
But you keep on posting about me; that’s all you do.
Hm. First of all, posting about me will never land a blow. That is always irrelevant and isn’t even a punch.
Second of all, look at this thread,; nobody has defended Biden. It’s hard to spar without anybody even throwing a punch. Marv at least tried to explain Putin, but made no attempt to defend Biden. Everybody else posted about Trump or yours truly.
After being around my daughter and grandchildren, I'm pretty convinced we are hard-wired in terms of our personality. Yes, we can change, but we're basically who we're born as.
I do think political views can change, if one can use logic and reason and can educate him/herself. But too often, we're swayed by what TV news we're watching or what our friends think. It's easier than thinking for ourselves and the reason these people are on TV is because they can be persuasive.
True confession: I voted for Barry Commoner for President in 1980. Age may have changed me, but I like to think I've made my political opinions and decisions from a logic and fact-based perspective.
Political views certainly change; often to comport with circumstances that change in our own lives. Career choices alone influence how you vote. Self interest is dispositive for many - perhaps shallow folks like myself
I will spar with you on this topic but once, whether I’m able to communicate successfully or not.
You have basically made two assertions in this thread. One, that Trump fired missiles into Syria and “reportedly” Threatened Putin with worse, thus preempting further aggression by Putin, including the future invasion of the Ukraine.
Two, that the invasion of Ukraine need not of happened and it’s essentially Biden‘s responsibility that he did.
In response to your first assertion, a number of posters have made good-faith arguments. Your response was threefold, you parried some of those arguments, you ridiculed some as using tired arguments despite the fact that it was your assertion they were arguing against, and now you deflect by saying no one has argued against your second assertion.
Your second assertion is structured so that it cannot be argued against because no one can know if Biden could have prevented the war now that the war has begun. No matter what anyone argues, you can retort “but the war started.”
Toward The end of your OP you assert that Biden let Putin control the narrative and you assert Biden should’ve been more aggressive. You follow this up by saying what Biden should be doing now in terms of being more aggressive.
The counter-arguments are numerous. I’ll leave it to others to expound. In a nutshell, military analysts have argued the Polish Migs would be of dubious value because Russia has anti-aircraft in place to shoot him down. The US and Western (writ large: any democratic nation) allies are supplying unprecedented amounts of military aid to Ukraine now. The US and Western allies have adopted the most extreme sanctions against the Russian economy ever and the Russian economy is on collision course with the Stone Age if not suspended sooner than later. The NATO allies are united far more than in the recent past and even other countries now want to join. In short, the Democratic, peace-seeking countries of the world are uniting like never before. All of this was precipitated by Biden’s propaganda campaign in advance of Putin‘s invasion after Putin had promised that he was not going to invade Ukraine.
Not only has Biden successfully united democratic nations of the world but he is also set a precedent that Will make China think twice about similar aggressions against Taiwan and perhaps any other ambitions they might have. Until now, the league of nations and the United Nations notwithstanding, this world has been an anarchy of nations. For the first time Biden has created a prospect of creating some world order out of that chaotic anarchy.
First of all, thanks for the serious respons.
My point about the Syrian cruise missiles was not a stand alone point, but one to support the overall point of effectiveness of decisive strong action. It really made no difference whether Trump signaled the attack or not, probably better that he did. The end result was no more gas attacks.
Of course we can never prove Biden caused Putin to attack Ukraine in such a horrendous fashion, although I believe that to be the case.
But we do have evidence that Biden‘s timidity and his lack of foresight increased the risk of Putin’s attack. Biden‘s weakness in Afghanistan; his delaying Trump’s arms shipments, his obsession with the Putin-assisted Iran deal, and his failure to maintain strategic advantage by not telling Putin that all options were on the table if he attacked, were all part of the calculus. Couple that with Biden‘s obvious deficiencies and stubbornness and Putin’s decision making became easier.
I don’t see any evidence that Biden had anything to do with the sudden reversal of long-standing policies in Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany. The Brits are more aggressive with their response than the US. I don’t know if the supply of arms is unprecedented or not, but I do know that the kinds of weapons we are willing to supply is very limited. High altitude SAM’s and anti-personnel artillery would be huge. The Ukrainian military wanted the Mig 29’s and Biden personally stopped the deal. With those Migs would have been parts and ordinance. That refusal was a mistake not only because of how the MiGs could be used, but the Biden spectacle of his decision sent yet another message to Putin that he will have no US resistance.
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Biden's pre-invasion public release of his Intel had a major influence on involving the West. That’s plainly obvious to everyone except, evidently, you.
The US and allies are already putting up resistance and the limited amount leaves plenty of options for escalation. Putin knows this and it isn’t stopping him. That undercuts your argument, if force is persuasive.
The one point where I think Biden should be more open and forceful is in threatening Putin with future consequences. This wasn’t possible at the outset because the west wasn’t so united but now we are. Biden should publicly tell Putin The economic sanctions will last until the Russian military leaves Ukraine and Crimea completely and entirely. Putin wouldn’t like that one iota. He would bluster and counter threaten but that would scare the living beJesus out of every Russian actor aware of the threat.
A 2007 speech by Putin at the annual Munich Security Conference offered the world, perhaps for the first time, an unobstructed look into what was to come. After cautioning that his coming remarks might seem “unduly polemical, pointed, or inexact,” the Russian president launched into a full-throated tirade against American world order and the NATO alliance.
The pattern of NATO appeasement established during the Obama era was followed by alliance infighting under Trump, who frequently butted heads with European partners and moved to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Germany. After longstanding failures by more than a dozen member states to meet the alliance’s financial commitments, Trump even considered dismantling NATO from within, at one point threatening to withdraw Washington from the defensive alliance.
“Putin looked at what Trump was trying to do to NATO and figured: Why interfere when the NATO alliance is having such difficulty with the country that’s nominally its leader?” Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, told The Dispatch.
Why Did Russia Invade Ukraine Now?
Vladimir Putin has signaled his intentions for years, but few in the West took the warnings seriously.
thedispatch.com
1) I absolutely do agree that Putin thought that now was the time to act after the Afghanistan debacle. He (correctly) figured that we would have no stomach to send troops right back into the fray. So the timing was right.
2) The problem I have with the saying that Putin didn't invade the Ukraine during Trump's watch is that it excludes all other factors from the story. There are SEVERAL major events that have happened in the world that could have been major reasons for Putin invading now as opposed to a few years ago.
For example:
A) Up until a year and a half ago, we had a significantly larger military presence relatively close by (Syria & Afghanistan).
B) The "Perfect Phone Call". To put it bluntly, the whistleblower thing put the Ukraine front and center in American / Western media when up until that time, 90% of America couldn't point to where the Ukraine was on a map (I mean, it's probably only improved to 80%, but you get the idea.....). Russia invading right when the Ukraine was already on everybody's mind might have gone over even worse than what's transpiring now.
C) Do I really need to mention the significant event of 2020 that might have prevented a war from starting?
D) China has been prepping for the Olympics for a few years now. We know already that they asked for the invasion not to happen until after they were completed. Do we know that China hadn't been pushing that concept for more than a few months, perhaps even a year or two?
E) According to some news sources, Russia envisioned new sanctions would be coming and had built up a war chest to offset this. While I am not a financial expert at all, my understanding is that the US tends to be a trendsetter on the world economy, as in, when we are experiencing a good economy, within a few years, the other world economies catch up (and vice-versa, when we tank, the rest of world doesn't tank for a little while thereafter). So it may have taken a good amount of time to build up that war chest (and god knows that Covid likely took things back a notch). It might have simply been that the money wasn't there until now.
America is a big fish, but frankly, the world does not revolve around us. There are possibly hundreds of factors even beyond the ones above from other countries that could have sped up or delayed this decision.
if they behaved themselves i would have.
and would have eased up on sanctions.
people don't mind not having something they never had, near as much as giving up something they did.
and i would normalize relations with Cuba yesterday.
total policy disaster and pure meanness by the US, shouldn't be quadrupled down on and perpetuated, just in the agenda of ensuring their failure.
and we need to bring our manufacturing back on shore immediately.
the talk of the US sanctioning China was so beyond ridiculous, it was really pathetically sad.
the recipient has zero leverage over the provider.
the provider, total leverage over the recipient.
total dependency on China is insane beyond belief.
In addition to building up the war chest, since the 2014 sanctions Putin has been developing their economy to be self-sufficient to some degree against sanctions.
One more point, by the way. Your assertions about the effectiveness of strong action ring hollow considering Trump failed to wrest Syria from Putin‘s grasp. He may have stopped the gas attacks but he lost Syria in the process.
In the case of Ukraine the goal is to beat Putin back to Siberia, the cowardly little ****ing bitch.
I'm glad you and the other leftists can tell us what Putin thinks.A 2007 speech by Putin at the annual Munich Security Conference offered the world, perhaps for the first time, an unobstructed look into what was to come. After cautioning that his coming remarks might seem “unduly polemical, pointed, or inexact,” the Russian president launched into a full-throated tirade against American world order and the NATO alliance.
The pattern of NATO appeasement established during the Obama era was followed by alliance infighting under Trump, who frequently butted heads with European partners and moved to reduce the U.S. military footprint in Germany. After longstanding failures by more than a dozen member states to meet the alliance’s financial commitments, Trump even considered dismantling NATO from within, at one point threatening to withdraw Washington from the defensive alliance.
“Putin looked at what Trump was trying to do to NATO and figured: Why interfere when the NATO alliance is having such difficulty with the country that’s nominally its leader?” Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, told The Dispatch.
Why Did Russia Invade Ukraine Now?
Vladimir Putin has signaled his intentions for years, but few in the West took the warnings seriously.
Only you people could take an opinion and believe it's a fact.
It's a fact NATO was stronger at the end of Trump's Presidency that it was at the start, with countries paying more of their GDP into Defense.
Only leftists would consider that a weakening of the alliance.
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