Yes but to converge the two sides have to acknowledge the arguments of the other side, unfortunately I am probably not arguing well enough and Im perfectly willing to just give up.

Anyway you seem to be able to research complicated topics well, you can read up about the history and end of the gold standard and about deflation for your own sake in your own time :-)

Fighting against fiat money, reserve banks, inflation and national debt is like fighting against democracy or free speech.
Sometimes democracy gives you Trump, sometimes free speech gives you porn (or worse, Fox news), sometimes the economy gets out of hand, but mostly these things work better than their alternatives and prevent or minimize crashes, based on the experience of the last 200 years. Every time someone thought better, they made things worse.

I wonder actually...
He is such a narcissist maybe it does hurt.
Mostly I just forgot to press the sarcasm button.

What does he care about? Because his legacy project for Mother Russia looks like it is backfiring. His own legacy is also about to go down the drain. It will be difficult for his western friends to remain his friends, just like that pedophile whatshisname that was friends with everyone but no one will admit it now.

Putin broke his own treaty, his word, sent his soldiers into a sovereign country where everyone speaks russian. Some of those soldiers dont know where they are and what they are doing there, have no gas and no food after 4 days. He is lying to his own people and censoring information. Some legacy.

Unfortunately no one in the USofA gives much of a shit, but maybe Europe can get its act together based on this shitstorm.

At least the UN is a place where everyones voice is heard. Practically it is otherwise not very useful.

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.

Trump was right about the pipeline. There.

Except Trump being right about something has zero information value because he was wrong about so many things. Cherry picking and whataboutism only gets you so far.

Even Germany is now somewhat reluctantly coming around.

How exactly would Trump stop Putin I wonder? Any ideas beyond wild guesses?

There is no excuse for what is happening in the Ukraine now, there is no propaganda that can put this on the shoulders of anyone but Putin.

The danger in this situation is powerful people in the west are being friendly to rich russians and apologetic about the Russian regime. Business deals are less important than national safety. Being best buddy with Putin does not give Trump the power to stop him.

Ok now the International Judo Federation has stripped Putin of his honorary presidency.

He is finished. Thats like Trump thrown out of Mar-a-Lago.

The joke on Russians is they cant even pronounce "Luhansk".

So the latest rumour is that by the village of Ljubimovka a group of local gypsies stole a Russian tank.

Now my personal reason to want to believe this story. Back when I was doing my then compulsory army service our country was still housing thousands of Russian troops which had come 20 years earlier in 1968 to keep the peace or something (temporarily). I was stationed at a maintenance and storage unit (managed the kitchen). Our unit oversaw the infrastructure of part of the local training grounds where Russian troops regularly trained. One of the main activities, besides facilitating the sale of military diesel fuel was to remove stranded vehicles the Russians simply left behind broken or overturned in ditches. Breaking them up and selling for recycling was pretty lucrative - our labor was free, trucks and cranes were military equipment (also free), tanks contain a surprising amount of copper and aluminum, steel armor is heavy. I dont think Russians count either their troops or their tanks.

Better video:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1497478435240923136

Is she retarded? Its an invasion, stupid!

What is the supposed mixed messaging? What confrontation?

Its an invasion, your hero has started a war, Bob.

I think we are now no more than 30 years from usable fusion power.

Same as when I was born.

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.

Seriously, fuck Trump. What an asshole.

Is this real?

Fuuck if it is. Lost for words. Brain haemorrhage. Kindergarten level thinking.

Trump watching a bank get robbed: "This is very clever, they have guns, big guns, and theyre going in, very clever, with stockings on their heads, I know stockings very very well, and now they come out with sacks of money, this is genius".

He is like a stupid teenager watching a movie.

Putin is already talking pre-1997 NATO borders shit, must be stopped. People are dying.

*promote