Russia invaded Ukraine to expand. They came up with a dozen lame excuses, like protecting Russian speaking people in Crimea from being insulted and to stop the local government (who they called extremists) from taking abandoned Russian military bases, NATO expansion was never a reason they gave for invading.
In Ukraine proper, his stated excuse was that the new Ukrainian government (formed after the Kremlin installed puppet government was ousted) was comprised of NAZIs who were ethnically cleansing Russian speakers in the East, a total fabrication.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/in-putins-words-why-russia-invaded-ukraine/
Try keeping your revisionist Russia centric anti democratic fantasy history to yourself. I know some random internet blowhard failure broadcasting from mommy’s basement told you this alternative fact nonsense, you have got to stop trusting them.

There’s been more NATO expansion in “buffer” nations since Russia invaded than in the 50+ years beforehand, with more coming because they invaded their neighbor…again.

Ukraine will be a NATO country now, so is our business.
Ukraine was in a treaty with the US, so was already our business. We guaranteed their borders against invasion in exchange for their nuclear arsenal. No nation will ever do a nuclear disarmament treaty with America, we don’t keep our word or we would be fighting there.
Russian expansionism isn’t stopped by ignoring it, it’s encouraged. Trump encouraged the expansionism into Ukraine proper (Crimea was Ukraine) when he recognized Russia’s claim on the seized territory, giving the green light to expand their military operations in Eastern Ukraine (that they denied existed but absolutely were there fighting during Trump’s administration and even before, recall Russians shot down a passenger plane in Ukraine in 2014 and never left).

The EU is supportive enough of Ukraine that they just unanimously agreed to $54 billion in military aid, and the EU is our closest trading partner so again, our business. The MAGA ploy to block any aid to Ukraine to aid Russia (hoping it would look bad for Biden) has failed, the EU miraculously stood up as a unified front and agreed to fund Ukraine.
NATO has agreed to admit Ukraine as soon as possible, something never considered before the invasion.


Ukraine is a lost war, lost by Russia…Russia just won’t admit it yet, but their country will be feeling the loss for decades…loss of their army, loss of an entire generation of young men, loss of their economy, loss of hundreds of trade agreements/partners, loss of trillions of dollars, loss of international standing and cooperation, loss of stability. At this point, even if Russia took Ukraine tomorrow, it would be a loss for Russia. They destroyed their prize, and themselves in the process, and the rest of the world is happy to destroy them through a proxy while Russia engages directly and is crushed daily.
Winning!

https://youtu.be/WhILMFdifhk?si=k-egPJ1oDrqKrd_S

Ukraine has already won this war by destroying Russia. It’s exceedingly likely they will also drive the Russians out and may even take some of Russia a s a buffer zone…Russia is losing badly.

You have no idea what you’re talking about, as usual. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. Crimea was part of Ukraine. Biden had nothing to do with it, Trump encouraged them to go farther by recognizing Crimea as Russia to appease his benefactor, Putin…and historically Bush sr made the trilateral agreement essentially guaranteeing to protect Ukraine’s borders with US military power in exchange for nuclear deploliferation in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union in 92. Should we ignore the international treaty and destroy our reputation, making it impossible to make any international agreements at all? You likely think so as an honorless liar.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trilateral-process-the-united-states-ukraine-russia-and-nuclear-weapons/

I know you don’t know the history, but that’s no excuse for making up nonsense.

Putin’s continuing expansionist policy has forced the hand of NATO to admit multiple countries that before the invasions weren’t even being considered, and make plans for admitting Ukraine, not the other way around you fool.
The waste is to throw away a victory for democracy and against a likely return to communist socialism just to hand Biden a loss…as if it were his war.

And another MAGA “bombshell” turns out to be another rehashing of another two year old nothing burger. You guys sure grasp at old straws a lot.

Now you idiots are trying to twist a car payment into some China China China nonsense, claiming this well documented under $5k repayment of 3 car payments Joe made for Hunter when Biden was not in office or running for office is somehow proof that China bought Joe and he changed policy for them (for under $5000)…but the $35000000 given to Ivanka while Daddy was in active trade negotiations, *nothing to see…the hundreds of millions directly from the Chinese government hidden by Trump in secret unreported Chinese bank accounts, *shrug…how about the $2000000000 handed to Jared in direct exchange for classified information (that they used to target and murder spies, political rivals, and enemies we outed) despite having zero investment experience and being 100% denied by their vetting process, *la-la-la-la-la.

You people are such hypocrites it’s unbelievable. You are completely covered in 5 different kinds of horrific animal shits head to toe while actively having explosive diarrhea in the middle of dinner and screaming to high heaven incessantly that the person at the other end of the table has bad breath despite every woman there mentioning his minty freshness.

I swear I’m shocked you haven’t started insisting the oceans are red, or tried to poison them because they’re blue. The just plain insane stupidity your cult spouts daily would have you committed if America had a mental health care system anymore, but thanks to Republicans in the 80’s we don’t and you’re all out there screaming on the corner.

There’s lots of reporting on Hamas saying they want to eradicate Israel (without the ability to even do damage 99.9% of the time, certainly not eradication), but very little reporting of the Israeli government saying the exact same thing about Palestine while actively doing so using US supplied advanced weaponry at bombing rates never before seen, and dropping them on civilian populations.

There’s little mention that Palestinians die at around 20 times the rate Israelis die despite having less than 20% the population of Israel (and extreme high death rates mean 50% of Palestinians are children).

Gaza is an open air prison where inmates serve life for the crime of being Arabs in their native land. Electricity flows a maximum of 3 hours a day in good times, food is scarce, and under 10% have access to clean water. There are no jobs, and there’s a very good chance your family will die together at home from indiscriminate bombing.

They have nothing to lose because Israel has taken everything from them over 70 years of ever expanding violent military occupation including their humanity.

The Israeli military spokesman said this campaign is intentionally not targeted, and is designed to do maximum damage to Palestine not to target Hamas. That’s another war crime.

Why in the fuck are we supporting and supplying clear undeniable, even proud war criminals!? That should make congress and Biden war criminals themselves. Send them all to The Hague to defend their actions if they think their actions are defensible.

If we use Israel’s metrics, that makes all Americans war criminals prime for righteous retaliation by the law abiding world. Not a good plan.

Edit: Side note- Israel has apparently made no move at all to negotiate hostage releases. In fact, they claim the hostages are held in the very tunnels they are bombing, so they are in fact targeting the hostages. Don’t let them get away with the lie that they are invading and raising the city to save them. They refused to consider pausing bombing for two days in exchange for their release, pretending Hamas might be miraculously completely resupplied and reinforced if they did.

“ my solution would be every able bodied Jewish man and woman join the French (or Polish, Russian, British) army and fucking fight…”

I agree that’s the noble thing to do, but I can’t condemn the ones that choose to seek safety in numbers with Jewish Palestinians as exclusively invasion minded aggressors. My 6 million tag was maybe a bit sharp, but you also know that the Nazi’s took Paris and as much as it sucked to be French or European under Nazi occupation, you also know adding Jewish to that carried a lot of extra consequence and danger to your family.

My POV is agnostic of everything save Isreali people today having a right exist as a nation. Which at this point from my POV leaves 1947 as somewhat academic.

It’s your insistence that Jewish people, and the existence of Israel, have always fundamentally been invaders that I was objecting to as it is so intensely at odds with factual history.

You gave a brief nod on not being a scholar of Palestinian history, but then proceed to just count all Jewish refugees as good as Zionist aggressors from day 1(or close enough), and the local Arab population as nothing but pure, kind caring victims of these invaders.

I will state again, that is ahistorical propaganda and NOT what actually happened. And for my POV, its enough generations back as to be Academic, but for your POV it is fundamental because without being able to writeoff Israel as invaders from day 1, nuance enters the calculus and suddenly the conflict is flooded with shades of grey because lots of parties all contribute to the bloodshed, and many with reasonable motivations from both sides yet too.

Please find me any reputable sources to refute the reality of 1920-1940s Palestine:
-Mass Jewish immigration fleeing European oppression raised tensions between Jewish and Arab Palestinians.(as one must expect)
-Arab palestinians were already chaffing and resisting British colonial rule(as one must expect)
-These tensions led conflict, initially more ‘civil’ with the Arab majority trying to refuse all business, sales and trade with all Jews.
-Escalation followed throughout that time, but in drips and drops and NOT a ‘surprise the Zionist army has arrived’! style of aggression

The violent escalation was a fight here, a beating there. Little individual fights, escalating into deaths. Retaliations slowly grew, with each side exchanging small escalations.

-the culmination of this was eventually all out civil war, and the Jewish side immediately accepting a UN mandated 2 state solution

-this culmination coinciding with the end of WW2 and revelations of the true extent of the holocaust can’t be ignored, it certainly shaped the Jewish mindset in the conflict.

-Their mindset was pretty clearly not inaccurate either, as the immediate response of all neighbouring Arab nations was a declaration of war on the new ‘state’, with bold claims of how quickly the Jews would be swept into the sea. The confidence was so high, a call was sent it for ALL Arab palestinians to abandon and flee the entire region of Palestine to better enable the complete cleansing of the land.

The above is all pretty much inarguably factual, and I’d bargain you could get an Arabic and Israeli scholar together to more or less agree on those facts which is saying alot.

——
Propaganda from both sides would like to declare that the Arabs harboured deep Nazi sympathies, and thus Israel was pure and true in all it did. Or from the other side, more or less your narrative of Zionist bad guys launching invasion from day 1(ish).

Both though are just sprinklings of half truths, with anti-British resentment naturally breeding some leanings towards the axis, and even genuine Nazi cleanse the Jews believers. And absolutely Zionists featured prominently within the Jewish population. Neither of those partial truths though make the propaganda of either side true, but instead just an incomplete and intentionally biased picture.


Again, please find me sources demonstrating I’m terribly wrong on all that, but the only ones I can find are clearly biased and the accurate accounts paint the picture above, the propaganda very, very clearly copies the real story more or less with just deletions of inconvenient bits

More pure projection.
He says liberal news media is all lies….from Faux News itself. No surprise from Bongino, he’s a treasonous liar who’s willing to say anything no matter how brain dead or false to ingratiate himself with the Trump cult for cash. I’ve pointed out before what a dishonest fabricator he is.

Still trying the fake Hunter Biden laptop story!?! You fuckwits. It’s ignored because you morons had to tamper with the data before turning it over to anyone…and because Giuliani reportedly handed it over to a Russian agent at one point. Also, he was closely connected to Andriy Derkach who was a Russian agent in Ukraine making Burisma accusations and claiming to have a second Hunter Biden laptop.
By the time law enforcement was able to look at it, there was no evidence left, only data that had been altered by criminal liars with a clear agenda to smear Joe by any means. That puts it all in question, and considering the source and the private citizen target it’s not worth anyone’s time. Deluxe nothing burger royal with cheese.

Nice attempt to distract from Faux News being 100% complicit in the failed coup, knowingly pushing the fake narratives that there was massive democratic fraud and the election stolen when now we have internal communications where they ALL admit there was absolutely no Democratic fraud at all and Trump definitely lost big time, and his spokespeople are crazy liars that make up almost everything they say, but they’re going to go along with the lies because if they do, Trump will reward them and if they don’t, he will destroy them (Tucker said this).

How many unflattering or criminal stories about Trump did the righty media fail to air? How often do they tell you how , with Trump’s approval, Jared sold classified information to the Saudis in exchange for a personal investment of $2 BILLION dollars in his new investment company that did not meet basic investment requirements for the crown prince’s funds but he gave them to Jared anyway….quid quo pro?
How often do they report on how many times they repeated known lies to further the failed coup and its defense?
Or the officials who quit because they knew the big lie was criminal?
How many stories on how the CDC said clearly that Trump’s haphazard disjointed contradictory covid message and lack of plan is to blame for over 1/2 of all infections, disabilities, and deaths? Said so when Trump was president.

Sorry, friendo. This whining look in the mirror is nonsense coming from a network dedicated to lies that still makes its viewers less informed every time they watch. Verifiably. It is still the best righty “news”, and it is verifiably wrong 95% of the time or more.

*debunked

Great to see Tesla getting hammered by its CEO's trolling. Thank you Tesla for bringing EV to the fore of automotive change. but it's time to break that near-monopoly (not Tesla fault though), and bring in exchangeable batteries at gas/e-power stations.

Professional economist here (hence, perceived as right wing) who began studying economics due to concern about climate change (hence, perceived as left wing).

[1] The classic statement of when markets 'work' is the 'first fundamental theorem of welfare economics'.

[2] 'work' in this sense means 'leads to a Pareto-optimal outcome', which means an outcome in which no one can be made better off without making someone worse off. This is a low standard: an outcome in which I have everything is Pareto-optimal.

[3] the conditions for the welfare theorems are generally not satisfied in practice. Here, as alluded to in the ad, carbon emissions are 'externalities': if an oil company sells you gas, which you then use, both of you are better off, because you're assumed to have taken into account the effects of your exchange, and decided to proceed; other parties have not, so may be worse off.

[4] in general, failure of the welfare theorem conditions isn't enough to make the case for government intervention: the outcome may still be 'constrained' efficient - meaning that, given the inherent constraints in the problem (e.g. asymmetric information), the market outcome is Pareto efficient.

[5] again, even if it is, you may not like the particular constrained efficient outcome the market yields (e.g. I get everything).

[6] in the case of externalities, the theory is pretty well established - if we want efficient outcomes, we need to align the private and social costs. There are two basic market-based tools for doing that: quantity tools (e.g. carbon permits) and price tools (e.g. carbon taxes). Which performs better depends on the sort of market imperfections.

[7] obviously, we will never have a perfect estimate of the efficient price or quantity of carbon to emit in a given year. Equally obviously, to me at least, this is a classic case of an externality with a well developed body of theory pointing in the direction of some level of controls.

[8] in my experience: people familiar with the economic theory tend not to be 'pro-market' or 'anti-market': they tend to want to understand how the market can be used to deliver societal objectives and, when it can't, how to correct its imperfections.

Are you really that ignorant? (That’s a rhetorical question, I know you are)
1) watch Argo. There were multiple attempted rescues, starting within days of the revolution.
2) read about Reagan who made a secret, illegal deal with the terroristic Iranians to not release the hostages until after the election to hurt Carter’s chances, then he later sold them weapons in another illegal deal to pay for another secret illegal war with the Contras. If a Democrat did anything near that, he/she would be (rightly) shot as a traitor if not legally then by some nut job….when Cons do it the anti American crimes are ignored and cons celebrate the treason.
3) Also read about the year+ of negotiations by Carter that actually gained their freedom on Jan 20 81. Would have been much sooner without Republican interference. Carter was the one who initially “held” (seized) those $8 billion of Iranian funds, and stopped buying Iranian oil costing them billions more…all legally, unlike the sneaky, illegal, back room collusion with and payoffs to the terrorists Reagan tried, knowingly and intentionally extending the hostage crisis for his personal political gains. The “deal” wasn’t struck on Jan 20…the Iranians delayed the release at Reagan’s request in exchange for promises of special treatment from president Reagan.

Like Biden, Carter actually solved a problem created largely by Republicans despite Republicans doing their utmost to work against America. Gas prices dropped nearly 10% in the last month and continue to drop despite a massive shortage world wide thanks to Russia and Saudi Arabia. Republicans have fought against every effort to lower them, voting against all mitigation efforts in a unified “fuck your gas prices” block.
They even voted against a bill to force oil companies to stop price gouging because it would have dropped prices significantly the day it passed, also helping inflation significantly, and cons REALLY don’t want prices to drop under Biden, certainly not before November.
It’s just like when every Con just voted to protect and keep neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and violent extremists in the military and federal police forces because they don’t want their voters to lose their jobs. Keeping their power is far more important to them than helping the country, and their main methodology is to try to hurt the country then blame the president….odd since they excused the former president from any and all responsibility for his lack of leadership and absolute horrific disaster that was his last year in office, from 1 million dead to -3.5% GDP to millions unemployed to rising inflation to supply chain failures to disastrously ruining the reputation of our elections to dividing the country horrifically to actually trying to overthrow the elected government by force…all for his own personal gain….and you whine that Biden hasn’t fixed everything yet!?

Pretty dishonest for Republicans to do everything in their power to stop any attempted plans on inflation, gas prices, or hostile foreign powers, then blame the president they blocked from fixing the issues they caused. It’s not weak leadership, it’s an anti American party with veto power and a chip on their shoulders willing to hurt the entire nation rather than let Biden (and America) have a “win”.

Now…how did Trump handle it when foreign powers kidnapped and dismembered an American? He covered it up, made excuses, declared the Saudi prince innocent (and Trump was recorded laughing about how he “saved his ass” over that murder)….then his son in law was given a $2 billion payment for future services his company was completely incapable of supplying.

So let’s measure Trump….
Nice guy, no. Moral, no. Ethical, no. Honest, no. Smart, no. Loyal, no. Trustworthy, no.
Fickle to the utmost, yes. Weak leader, yes. Treasonous, yes. Dictatorial, yes. Narcissistic, yes. Criminal, yes. Anti-democracy, yes.
Most American deaths-yes. Worst unemployment, yes. Worst economy, yes. Most domestic terrorism, yes.
Worst president ever by far….unequivocally by every measure. He actually made idiotic GW look benign by comparison.

Newt has it researched as usual, some minor points:
- Ukraine is in the UN
- Ukraine in its pre war state could not get into the EU, there are economic criteria for that to have a chance to work. What was proposed was a free trade zone and economic help. The EU was slow as fuck. The Ukrainian political situation was volatile.
- Ukraine could not be admitted into NATO after 2014 as it was already in a proxy war against Russia.

What a US president with a brain could have done in Trumps term was broker a deal with Putin that would make land concessions to Russia (russian speaking regions based on referendums maybe?) in exchange for future EU and NATO affiliation for the rest of Ukraine with vague promises of weapon and troop movement limitations. Nearly impossible but it could be tried if one stayed a step ahead of Putin.

Trump patted him on the back instead and took selfies.

That is the point of discussion, right?

I know a true gold standard is inferior to a well functioning reserve bank issuing paper money and an international exchange standard based on mutual trade agreements.

I am not sure I can explain it well or convince you, but I like you so I try.

Unfortunately the matter seems to be complicated.

The fact that something has, as you put it, "real" value is actually a bad thing, as clipping gold coins is as old as gold coins.

So let us assume gold coins are out and we are going to use some form of symbolic money...

Nope this will not fit in this thread.

That is a pretty solid definition of exchange value. You can go shopping with that.

A dollar has value if you can buy shit for a dollar.

Gold likewise has no exchange value if you cant exchange it for goods and services. Its rare and chemically stable and good for memorial coins, has many technical uses and looks cute, but otherwise it hardly matters what symbol for money you choose. There is 200 years of experience with fiat money and gold and silver standards and fiat money has been better, not just usually better or better in some scenario, universally better.

Symbolic money is practical and facilitates quicker turn around prevents deflation makes speculative runs on currency harder and smoothes the economic bumps in the road in general.

GDP is just a metric. Not a bad one but not the actual goal.

USofA is teh most developed. Should have used growing. Deflation in an economy that is growing kills growth.

Restarting countries not only get to ignore their debts, they immediatelly start borrowing again.

The only countries that dont borrow are countries no-one will lend to and countries so rich in some silly resource they can float high in the international currency system without borrowing. Borrowing is good for bussiness.

What is outrageous idiotic bullshit? Believing pegging the value of your paper note to some hoarded luxury makes it a better representation of the mean value of goods and services bought and sold? I could do without gold except for the jacks on my audio cables (just kidding). It does not matter what I exchange for food and gas, if it gets me food and gas, its good money.

Money is what you can pay taxes with. Do they take gold?

If you insist your dollar has the value of some weight of gold how does that influence the willingness of someone else to sell you shit? Unless they specifically intend to buy gold at a fixed price they dont care. They are going to use your dolar to buy some other shit from someone else. So if you take the actual currency out of the equation, when you decide on buying and selling shit you are intuitively comparing that decision with all the other decisions about buying and sellin that you know of. The currency is just a good way to count the measure of usefullness of a product or service and compare among many. Pebbles, bottletops, dollars, gold, pearls, all just a number.

A dollar could be backed by gold or it could not, this has zero impact on the transactions made. What matters is how many transactions are made, at what value, and how much money is available to the entire marketplace in a given period of time. Transactions quickly pass the ability of a gold standard to keep up. If you want a gold standard you have to slow transactions down because you dont have the money for them.

This is why markets need some regulation, otherwise someone might sell the universe twice and then default on one. But a gold standard, at least the type of gold standard I believe was talked about in this thread as a miracle cure, would be too limiting.

Actually, I've been finding oddball films like this to be somewhat comforting.

Looking for a reason why bob is who he is? sometimes people are fucking insane. We need to accept that.





Early exchange.

Could you look for my dog maybe when you're out running?

I dont run.

What? I see you run by my house every day.

nope. I hate running.

Why are you lying to me?

Look, you can believe what you want

O_O