Bwaaaahahahaha.
You are the epitome of a laughing stock…you win…here’s your “biggest boob” trophy. 🏆
Oh you dumbshit….The Washington Free Beacon (a right wing publication) and Paul Singer, (a far right mega donor) paid for the Steele dossier about Trump, then later sold it to Clinton. That’s a fact.
Republicans created the Steele dossier, and most, like 90% of it, is confirmed to be correct, none of it was ever proven false (EG- if the dossier said an anonymous source said Russians have pee tape blackmail material against Trump and it is never found, the dossier wasn’t proven to be wrong at all, it just reported the claim). People (like Manafort) went to prison for charges stemming from it.

But you [are] a foolish ignorant man has no idea of any reality because you watch slanted one sided internet propaganda from anywhere as long as it’s anti American. It’s never correct, it never includes legitimate sources, and it’s 100% anti American, anti constitution twaddle and inconsistent lies.

Since you believe anything you see online, watch this unverified report and enjoy… https://youtube.com/shorts/_f1bYWlfApQ?feature=share
And…
https://youtube.com/shorts/lV-pDw6fUTY?feature=share

You said near 3 weeks ago that Bakhmut HAD fallen and was under 100% Russian control, proven by the faked Russian propaganda film of someone raising a Russian flag somewhere and declaring victory, but Bakhmut is still not taken, Russians are losing 1000 troops a day, and Ukraine just got 40000 more troops and billions more worth of current military equipment, Russia is using 70+ year old equipment they’ve never trained with and is dropping bombs on itself.
I’m taking sides, I’m with democracy and stability by treaty.
You are too-siding with Russia, despotism, expansionism, and lies.
Russia is losing ground, losing soldiers, losing equipment, losing borders, losing its long term stalemate with NATO, losing billions from sanctions, and is losing this war. Facts are facts, and you’ve never met a real fact you could agree with.

Russia entered Ukraine because they tossed out the Russia installed “president” (his first “election” was thrown out as a total farce). Yanukovych delayed signing a hugely popular pending association agreement with the EU, choosing to accept a hugely unpopular and bad for Ukraine Russian trade deal, leading to his removal from office and, surprise, cushy retirement in Russia.

NATO had nothing whatsoever to do with Russia breaking the treaty from the 80’s in which they and the United States guaranteed Ukraine’s sovereignty and border security in perpetuity if they gave up their nukes. That included Crimea, which Russia invaded too over nonsense lies.
They declared Crimea under terrorist attack (it wasn’t) and invaded “to protect the citizens”. They did the same in Ukraine, recognizing the terrorist separatists as the legitimate (unelected) government and declaring the real government were terrorists attacking peaceful Russians in Eastern Ukraine. (The same peaceful Russians that shot down a commercial airline full of innocent people completely uninvolved in their conflict).

Putin said the purpose of the operation was to "protect the people" in the predominantly Russian-speaking region of Donbas who he falsely claimed that "for eight years now, [had] been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime". Putin said that Russia sought the "demilitarisation and denazification" of Ukraine, and insisted Russia wouldn’t occupy any of Ukraine….all pure lies. He now says he intends to remove Ukraine from the map and Ukrainians from the gene pool.

It had absolutely nothing to do with NATO….NATO wasn’t considering giving Ukraine, Sweden, or Finland membership before the land grab invasions. You lackwit. If anything it was fear that Ukraine might join the EU….but really it was the loss of their installed Russian president that was beholding to the Kremlin, not any of the lame excuses they’ve made since.

You just love to rewrite history and always expect everyone else to be as ignorant of reality as yourself. Sadly for you, some people have memories longer than a methed out gnat and know why things happened, not just what the perpetrators of crimes say today that contradicts everything they said yesterday and before.
There’s no agreement to not expand NATO. Who told you that, Putin?

But has the actual history, or the nuclear treaty, or the ousting of the Russian planted president by the populace and installation of their chosen president (exactly what you hoped for with Trump on Jan 6 except instead of 2000 people it was the entire country performing a coup) been given on your fake propaganda websites? If so, you missed it all.

@bobknight33

Seriously, I'm finishing off an apple juice box my kiddo drank half of for dinner, clearly labeled on the top and I'll produce a picture if you like, JUICE BLEND FROM USA, CHINA, UKRAINE


Like. It's NOT Joe Biden's fault that the apple juice cost more. Trump's trade war with China that was "Very easy to win" is still ongoing at a stalemate's pace, raising the cost of most things out of china for US citizens alone. Then of course China had the lock entire cities down for crazy lengths of time that hindered shipping and production, again raising costs.

Ukraine got denied defense promises that the US had made prior to trump , then a few years later, Russia invades- leaving any product that uses wheat starved of raw material to work with.


That shit ain't Joe Biden's fault. You act like you care about fact finding.

WHAT IS BIDEN RESPONSIBLE FOR?
WHAT DID HE DO TO CAUSE THIS?
HOW DO YOU KNOW BIDEN'S ACTIONS ARE IN-FACT, CAUSING THIS PROBLEM?

This is a nonsense argument and the reason this video is also nonsense. If you hold christianity up to the same standards then it is clearly not a religion of peace either. It's a stalemate, therefore a pointless line of argument.

No one knows what the clown is going to do on Monday. He will most certainly drop the sanctions at some point and let Putin keep Crimea. Ukraine is likely to stalemate long-term. If they can make a "good deal" he will hand Putin "eastern europe" on a plate. Never mind that he buys his brides there. RT just provides the philosophical sauce. These are whole countries full of human beings that are on the line, not some semantic details.

Rachel is a Hillary fan? What else is new?

The troops in Poland are purely symbolic. Troops are not necessary at this point. Commitment is important, but the clown is committed only to making himself look good.
What would be the point of getting Russian troops out of Eastern Europe if they could come back at will? How can you argue against NATO at the very time when Russia thinks it can take over any part of Europe that is not protected by NATO?

In any case you only want to publish stolen e-mails if there is something criminal in them. If not you are the criminal for stealing them.

If Hedges works for RT then he is a russian propagandist by definition. That does not mean that some of what he says cant be true.

Some bits it glosses over :

Puppet dictatorship is basically a description of every US and Soviet backed b-list nation on earth back then. The fact that it's a puppet state shouldn't be used to imply anything.
For example, the U.S.S.R. had modernization programs for its satellite states, building power plants, roads, hospitals, universities, etc, in an attempt to fast forward development and catch up with the west asap. They also did this while spouting secular rhetoric.
In a general attempt to undermine soviet efforts (*both sides tried to contain each other's influence world wide), the U.S. looked for any groups within the U.S.S.R. satellite nations that would be an 'in' for U.S. power/influence. For Afghanistan, this was the people most offended by the U.S.S.R.'s [secular] agenda, and most likely to make good on foreign anti-soviet backing - the religious Jihadists. Everyone knew very well what it would mean for the local people if Jihadists took over Afghanistan - but at the time, the soviets were considered a bigger problem than Jihadists (possibility of nuclear annihilation), so better to have Jihadists in power than soviets.

Also, Assad's release of prisoners was officially part of an amnesty for political prisoners - something the people and foreign groups were asking for.
Saying that Assad tolerated AQ or Isis is misleading. These groups gained power during the Arab spring, when a large portion of the civilian population wanted a new government, but lacked the military power to force change. Militants stepped into the situation by /graciously/ offering their military strength, in exchange for economic/resource/political support to help make it happen. After a short while, these groups coopted the entire effort against Assad. Once they were established, they simply put the people under their boot, effectively replacing Assad with something even worse within the regions they held. Assad lacked/lacks the military power and support to expel the militant groups, so they fight to a stalemate. But a stalemate is by no means tolerance.
One similarity that Syria has to Afghanistan, is that the anti-government kernel within the population that birthed the revolt, did so for anti-secular reasons. In Syria's case, it was in large part people from the region that had earlier attempted an Islamist uprising during Assad's father's reign (which was put down by the government, culminating in the 'hama massacre', leaving some intense anti-government sentiment in the region).
In any case, the available choices for power in Syria are 'political dictatorship' or 'religious dictatorship'. Whoever wins, regular people lose. It's not as if regular people have the arms necessary to force anyone to listen to them. Anyone with any brains or initiative knows that their best option is neither, so they leave (hence all the refugees).

The video also omits the ambiguous alliances in the region. Early on, you had the UAE, Saudis, and Turks supporting ISIS - because an enemy of your enemy is your friend. It wasn't until ISIS started to encroach on them that they tempered their support. Turkey remains ambiguous, by some accounts being the gateway/laundromat for ISIS oil sales... because ISIS is a solution to the 'Kurdish problem' for Turkey.
If you watch some of the VICE documentaries, you can see interviews where locals on the Turkish border say that militants and arms cross form Turkey into Syria to join ISIS every night.
Then you have countries like Iran and Syria fighting ISIS, but by official accounts these countries are the west's enemy. Recently, French leadership (after the Paris bombings) has stated that they are done playing politics, and just want to get rid of ISIS in the most practical manner possible, and are willing to work with Russia and Assad to do it.

It's worth noting that ISIS' main enemy/target is 'non Sunni Islam'. U.S./Europe tend to only mention ISIS attacks on their persons/places, and it leaves western people thinking that ISIS is against the west - but in fact the west is merely an afterthought for ISIS. For every one attack on a western asset/person, there are countless attacks on Shia, etc.

-scheherazade

The foreign policy of both Russia and the US is far more motivated by domestic policy than "imperialism" or "cold war tactics".

Putin just needs to appear to be winning. Winning wars, media arguments, just winning anything. Crossword competitions, ice hockey games, fishing, push-ups, literally anything. With not much to be gained in Ukraine quickly, he can switch to helping Assad to quash rebels and appear to fight the IS. Russian air support and logistics will have small losses and big PR gains. Putin is clever so he will avoid direct confrontation with the IS leading to a long stalemate and much destruction, in Iraq mainly.

Obama needs to do stupid unworkable things like "spread democracy", "help Israel no matter what", "broker peace in the middle east" and "support 'friends' of the US, some of them as bad as Assad" - its nearly impossible for him to have a sane middle east policy. There is nothing Obama can do in the short term in Syria. He probably cant reconsider his position on Assad and there is no reasonable path to topple Assad gracefully. Also no direct path to fight IS - Turkey will fight Kurds before fighting IS, Israel has to be careful.

Is Iran the key then? Iran is definitely not to be trusted http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11903290/Eight-of-Irans-womens-football-team-are-men.html

And you would blame Bush? That ship has sailed. Leaders need to lead and Obama and the Dems haven't.

Damn right Democrats are at fault. Then have been in control the first 4 years and did little. This last year with the Republican it been a stalemate.
The unemployment rate is down around 5 but the U6 is up at near 11%. These are the ones who been unemployed so long that they gave up on looking.

The first Mass Effect game had a fantastic writeup on combat in space, and why it was supposed to be a more anti-hollywood, incredibly boring event in that universe.
Most encounters could be resolved in seconds from hundreds of thousands of kilometers (well outside visual range), and it only took a single shot to end the encounter, either through instantly disabling critical systems, or overheating the heatsinks onboard (which were constantly venting excess cosmic and solar radiation as it was), causing any sort of energy shielding to be impractical for similar reasons.
Nearly all military encounters in space were ultimately stalemates, because things could be resolved so immediately and with such deadly finality, it forced the space-faring civilizations to ask questions first and shoot as a last resort. I can't remember the exact description, but essentially a "fight" in space was two or more opposing ships simply showing up and sitting around doing nothing until the situation resolved itself, or one side had clearly more guns than the other (but there may have even been reasons for why the latter result wasn't common either, but it's been so long I can't recall).
Regardless, I love that vision of space travel and hypothetical military maneuvers because it portrayed the reality of such events from a really hardcore scientific approach. Obviously the rest of the writing team was unable to work around those limitations, since the rest of that game and the rest of the series pretty much resorted back to the Star Wars formula almost immediately. I wish their writers had been as talented as the guy who constructed the universe and it's laws, because it was an amazingly refreshing take on sci-fi space travel.

Aussie forces held the southern line till the Mericuns could get their new carrier fleets up and running.

Moral of the story: If your gonna go after Australia, dont get bogged down in a drawn-out stalemate...cause our friends will mess you up

I feel that we've reached a stalemate. Perhaps I'm the only person who perceived shang's initial comment about enjoying violence to mean that HE ENJOYS VIOLENCE. My first thought when reading his comment (and what I continue to believe) was that he was trying to get a rise out of the vegetarians and animal lovers. Why else would he make a statement about wishing the bird in the video would be eaten by a predator and that he enjoys violence and hunting? This video had nothing to do with violence or hunting so why bring it up? I wasn't taking his subsequent comments seriously either because I thought it was a ruse to ruffle some feathers (or so to speak) and that is why I responded in a joking manner. Not everyone appreciates my humor, and in this case it appears I've pissed more than a few people off. What can I say? I am an acquired taste.

You think I don't know any hunters that aren't psychopaths? That is not a correct presumption on your part. As I stated in my previous message, I grew up in a community full of hunters and I have a great amount of respect for most of them. Many I still have as friends that continue to hunt. My father-in-law also hunts. Normal people hunt for food. They don't "get off" on hurting animals. They don't have an addiction to killing. (or at least that's what they tell me)

You referred to those who don't believe in hunting as "single minded, unenlightened self-righteous twats". I'm more than a little surprised that a vegetarian didn't have anything to say about that, or someone that has an issue with guns. Who are we to say that hunting is right and anyone who disagrees with us is wrong? To me, that is a self-righteous statement.

Since there's nothing more I can say to enlighten you or the rest of the group, I'll be on my merry way. I'll finish off by attaching a link of a debate on whether animal hunting should be banned. The results are 50/50 and include plenty of comments.

http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-animal-hunting-be-banned

Last note: pumkinandstorm, I am not offended in the least and have also enjoyed the discussion.

From yt:

A stalemate between owners and players that threatens the upcoming NFL season and the widening scandal that forced beloved Ohio State University coach Jim Tressel to resign in disgrace are only the most recent reminders that football has always provoked a huge amount of controversy.

In the early 20th century, football was a literal bloodsport, writes John J. Miller in his new book The Big Scrum. After a series of game-related deaths, President Teddy Roosevelt called together the presidents of the three biggest football colleges (Harvard, Yale, and Princeton - yes, a very different America) and jawboned them into cleaning up the game to stave off legislative attempts to ban it outright.

The result, says Miller, was the creation of the distinctively American game football featuring forward passes, quarterbacks, spread offenses, and more.

The author of several books including the historical novel The First Assassin, Miller writes for National Review and is the new director of the journalism program at Hillsdale College. For more information about Miller, including links to his popular podcast series, go here (http://www.heymiller.com/).

Miller sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to talk about The Big Scrum, the scandal-ridden history of college football, and exactly what budding journalists need to learn in college (hint: it's not journalism).

About 6.31 minutes.

Shot by Jim Epstein, Meredith Bragg, and Josh Swain, who edited the piece.

>> ^marbles:

>> ^Opus_Moderandi:
>> ^marbles:

I believe in The Law as described by Bastiat here. Laws are derived from the individual's natural rights, not by society's mindless whims. The Constitution is what establishes the government and defines it's responsibilities.
I don't believe it's a huge issue, but it's not trivial either. There's certainly bigger issues out there that we need to fight, but small battles count too. One thing these protests really expose is the role of the police force and how they have morphed into a paramilitary occupation force taking orders from the government, rather than a force of fellow citizens working for the welfare of the community and guided by the rule of law.


marbles, tell me honestly, how many people that go to the Jefferson Memorial, on an average day, go there to dance? A rough estimate...?
The thing that makes this pointless is that they are fighting for something that no body wants to do anyway. The only people that care about being able to dance at the Jefferson Memorial are these activists.
Who is this a small battle for? If they were protesting something people do every day or WANT to do every day, I'd be on board. If they were protesting something other, non-activist people did and were arrested for, I'd be all for it.
But, the only instances of the issue they are protesting are their own examples. They don't have any non-protest examples of this great outrage.
That makes it ego maniacal, imo.

I would guess it's a rare occasion that someone goes to the JM to dance. Approaching 0. So why the crack down on it? If someone wants to go to dance, shouldn't they be free to do so as long as they respect other people's personal space? So why the law? What's the point in outlawing something no one does?
My argument addresses the crux of issue: That lawmakers and judges are deciding where the Bill of Rights actually apply. They don't have that authority.


Maybe they thought they'd never HAVE to enforce the law. But who can say? I think this argument has reached a stalemate. Everybody seems fairly set in their opinions so... rock on.

>> ^grinter:

how did the deity get there?


LOL "how come mars doesn't have that?"

That's brilliant. But i bet if you pointed it out to him, he'd just say "ok, so how did they get there too?" Then he'd buildd up an argument consisting of about 15 different wrong ideas, then as you carefully disprove each of the 15 points, he'd brush over it. When you got to the last of the 15 ideas and thereby prove him completely wrong, he'd just restate his argument. At which point you carefully disprove each of the......

I've talked to so many people who do this kind of thing.

Also love how he goes "cmon...." as an argument against science!

Edit: Nearly deleted my post when i saw the quote below. That basically stalemates the argument, and you both say "ok, so neither science nor god put the moon there " Brilliant strategy grinter

>> ^Unsung_Hero:

>> ^westy:
Nice story ,
having said that if i was in a war zone id rather not have some guy next to me playing tunes on the trumpit.

You have to remember that this was WW2 and there were no thermal scopes, infrared, ect... So when it got dark it was pretty much a stalemate between sides and they would wait til dawn to resume fighting. On an off chance they would attack under the light of flares but that was few and far between. So playing music didn't necessarily expose you or your mates to enemy fire.


dude thay had carrots in ww2 widely known fact that carrots give you 20/20 night visoin , how do u think we bombed them crouts !