Vlad didn't invade, it was pre-emptive Self-defense / preservation
[QUOTE=RamDavidson84;3022171]Personally, and I think what Trump and Nato have been doing all along, is to make sure we get paid for all the weapons and supplies sold to Ukraine whether they defeat Russia or Not. A cold way to look at it, but what a tremendous waste if we don't get paid and large swaths of Ukraine are lost. And it always takes two to tango. I think Russia is mostly to blame, but Ukraine knew from day one that if it ever tried to align itself with the west this was a possibility. Now, Ukraine has always been front line fodder for Russia's wars and a source of cheap labor for Russian infrastructure projects, so it's no surprise they would try to flee the influence and grasp of Russia the first chance they got with the fall of the Soviet Union. But you must also put blame on Ukraine's politicians running their government, because USA and NATO are the ones footing the bill and it's our gas prices rising from these sanctions. Ukraine and these other Republic's fight for Independence is what caused the Soviet downfall in the first place, of course Russia will seek some sort of retaliation a generation or two later if it benefits them economically. These leaders in Ukraine knew that and they pushed their agenda anyway. I am not saying they are justified, I am just saying if you slap a man in the face, don't be shocked when he slaps you back. So even though it's horrible this war is going on and I am happy our leaders are trying to end it, I am hope behind closed doors the orange giant is making deals with Russia on our behalf so America doesn't go broke because Ukraine played their cards horribly against Russia.
How many Ukrainians dead? Was it worth it? This is why Trump took that harsh stance against Zelensky, who BTW has such a shady background, please read how this guy got elected president in the first place. He was a fucking actor! Probably planted by CIA to win election to get Ukraine support for a stronger alliance with NATO. That is a stretch I know, but wouldn't surprise me one bit.
Everyone should also understand, Russia controls the largest treasure chest in the world with the amount of territory they can extract natural resources from. Their land / population ratio is very small compared to western nations / NATO and they know it. The west / NATO already brought down the Soviet Union once and weakened the east, in part for cheaper energy prices / access to that treasure chest. From the perspective of a Russian, when Ukraine violates these treaties to never join NATO, its an extreme provocation and they would rather die in battle than lose more land to the west. Again, I am not saying they are justified, I am just saying Zelensky and Ukraine knew this all along and do have some blame in this war that I am paying for it with my taxes. It could potentially cost a tax payer thousands of dollars after this is all said and done. Fuck no, I am not paying thousands of dollars of my money over some stupid politics in Ukraine. What has Ukraine ever done for USA besides ask hand outs?
This all sounds bad, but USA is not world police and that is not where I want my money to go. I want my tax dollars in my pocket. After we fund this war, what's the next war we have to pay for because everybody knows the good old USA will always do the right thing and fund a war against an evil tyrant? So I am for ending the war and I don't want to see anyone die, but if that means Ukraine has to lose territory, well that's what happens when you play your cards against Russia the way they did.
Trump's Agenda in order.
1. End the dying on both sides.
2. Get paid for weapons sold.
3. Eventually lift sanctions to lower costs for consumers.
4. Depend the freedom of sovereign Nations from aggressors. Last on the list, right where it should be.
No matter what political party you are in USA, this is the policy that benefits you the most. And of course this is just my opinion. I am not the expert, but from what I have seen this is my best guess on this topic.[/QUOTE][URL]https://www.politico.eu/article/pope-francis-nato-cause-ukraine-invasion-russia/[/URL]
[URL]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/14/pope-francis-ukraine-war-provoked-russian-troops[/URL]
Another GEM from my favorite NYT Jew, Inshallah!
Opinion.
David Brooks.
The Rise of Right-Wing Nihilism.
Aug. 21,2025, 5:00 pm ET.
Four young adults, one wearing a red MAGA hat and another in a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of Donald Trump, a fist raised and surrounded by Secret Service agents, immediately after a 2024 assassination attempt.
Credit. Irina Rozovsky for The New York Times.
Listen to this article · 8:50 min Learn more.
Share full article.
66.
David Brooks.
By David Brooks.
Opinion Columnist.
Democratic friends, let's try a thought experiment. Imagine you woke up one morning and all your media sources were produced by Christian nationalists. You sent your kids off to school and the teachers were espousing some version of Christian nationalism. You turned on your sports network and your late-night comedy, and everyone was preaching Christian nationalism.
That's a bit how it feels to be more conservative in the West today — to feel drenched by a constant downpour of progressive sermonizing. What would you do in such circumstances? Well, at least at first, you'the probably grit your teeth and take it while silently seething.
In 2018, I happened to watch the Super Bowl at a sports bar in West Virginia. President Trump was about a year into his first term, and the corporate advertising world was churning out ads with vaguely progressive messages. I watched the guys in the bar sort of hunch over, grim-faced, their body language saying: This is the crap we have to put up with to watch a football game.
The next year I helped organize a conference of people building local communities. We made sure that at least 30 percent of the participants were from red states. But during our discussions, the progressives in the room seemed to assume that everybody there thought like them. They dominated the conversation and left almost no space for other opinions. I watched the red-state folks just hunch over. For three days they barely spoke.
Advertisement.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT.
This progressive / conservative disconnect — which is also, frequently, an elite / non-elite disconnect — is a problem across the West. For reasons I don't fully understand, educated elites are more socially progressive than non-elites.
The German economist Laurenz Guenther studied survey data across 27 European countries. He found that members of parliament were not more progressive than the general public on economic issues, but they tended to be significantly more progressive on social issues. This was true across nearly all countries, on nearly all cultural issues, among nearly all establishment parties. Guenther writes that populist parties are rising because they fill the gaps that the establishment parties are not representing.
Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.
Most of us, when you put us in an environment with a stifling political orthodoxy, just learn to cope. Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman are psychology researchers at Northwestern University. They conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergrads at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan.
They found that an astounding 88 percent of the students said they pretended to be more progressive than they are in order to succeed academically or socially. More than 80 percent of the students said they submitted class work that misrepresented their real views in order to conform to the progressive views of the professor. Many censored their own views on cultural issues — on gender and family issues, for example.
Northwestern and Michigan are not exactly hot houses of wokeness, but these interviews suggest that many, if not most, students feel compelled to publicly lie in order to conform to progressive orthodoxy, even while privately questioning it.
Editors' Picks.
These Moms Want to Design Your Dorm Room.
Need a Labor Day Getaway? Six Alternative Destinations.
The Unseen Dangers of Floodwaters.
Advertisement.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT.
Other people, of course, don't just cope; they rebel. That rebellion comes in two forms. The first is what I'll call Christopher Rufo-style dismantling. Rufo is the right-wing activist who seeks to dismantle the. E. I. And other culturally progressive programs. I'm 23 years older than Rufo. When I was emerging from college, we conservatives thought we were conserving something — a group of cultural, intellectual and political traditions — from the postmodern assault.
But decades later, with the postmodern takeover fully institutionalized, people like Rufo don't seem to think there's anything to conserve. They are radical deconstructors. In a 2024 dialogue between Rufo and the polemicist Curtis Yarvin, published by the magazine I'm-1776, Rufo acknowledged, "I am neither conservative by temperament nor by political ambition: I want to destroy the status quo rather than preserve it. " This is a key difference between old-style conservatism and Trumpism.
But there's another, even more radical reaction to progressive cultural dominance: nihilism. You start with the premise that progressive ideas are false and then conclude that all ideas are false. In the dialogue, Yarvin played the role of nihilist. He ridiculed Rufo for accomplishing very little and for aiming at very little with his efforts to purge this university president or that one.
"You are just pruning the forest," Yarvin said dismissively. He countered that everything must be destroyed: In general, Yarvin is a monarchist, but in this dialogue he played a pure nihilist. One version of nihilism holds that the structures of civilization must be destroyed, even if we don't have anything to replace them with. He argued that all of America has been a sham, that democracy and everything that has come with it is based on lies.
The Rufo / Yarvin dialogue was sent to me by a friend named Skyler Adleta. Skyler had a rough childhood but has worked his way up to become an electrician and is now a project manager for a construction firm. He lives in southern Ohio, in a community that is mostly Trump-supporting. He himself generally supports the president. I know him because he is also a fantastic writer who contributes to Comment, the magazine my wife edits.
Advertisement.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT.
Skyler told me that in his community he is watching many people lose faith in the Rufo method and make the leap into pure nihilism, pure destruction. That is my experience, too. A few months ago, I had lunch with a young lady who said, "The difference is that in your generation you had something to believe in, but in ours we have nothing. " She didn't say it bitterly, just as a straightforward acknowledgment of her worldview.
Faith in God has been on the decline for decades; so has social trust, faith in one another; so has faith in a dependable career path. A recent Gallup poll showed that faith in major American institutions is now near its lowest point in the 46 years Gallup has been measuring these things. But the core of nihilism is even more acidic; it is the loss of faith in the values your culture tells you to believe in.
As Skyler and I exchanged emails, I was reminded of an essay the great University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter wrote last year for The Hedgehog Review. He, too, identified nihilism as the central feature of contemporary culture: "A nihilistic culture is defined by the drive to destroy, by the will to power. And that definition now describes the American nation. ".
He pointed to our culture's pervasive demonization and fearmongering, with leaders feeling no need to negotiate with the other side, just decimate it. Nihilists, he continued, often suffer from wounded attachments — to people, community, the truth. They can't give up their own sense of marginalization and woundedness because it would mean giving up their very identity. The only way to feel halfway decent is to smash things or at least talk about smashing them. They long for chaos.
Apparently, the F. Be. I. Now has a new category of terrorist — the "nihilistic violent extremist. " This is the person who doesn't commit violence to advance any cause, just to destroy. Last year, Derek Thompson wrote an article for The Atlantic about online conspiracists who didn't spread conspiracy theories only to hurt their political opponents. They spread them in all directions just to foment chaos. Thompson spoke with an expert who cited a famous line from "The Dark Knight": "Some men just want to watch the world burn. ".
Advertisement.
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT.
This may be where history is leading. Smothering progressivism produced a populist reaction that eventually descended into a nihilist surge. Nihilism is a cultural river that leads nowhere good. Russian writers like Turgenev and Dostoyevsky wrote about rising nihilism in the 19th century, a trend that eventually contributed to the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. The scholar Erich Heller wrote a book called "The Disinherited Mind" about the rise in nihilism that plagued Germany and Central Europe after World War I. We saw what that led to.
It's hard to turn this trend around. It's hard enough to get people to believe something, but it's really hard to get people to believe in belief — to persuade a nihilist that some things are true, beautiful and good.
One spot of good news is the fact that more young people, and especially young men, are returning to church. I've been skeptical of this trend, but the evidence is building. Among Gen Z, more young men now go to church than young women. In Britain, according to one study, only 4 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds went to church in 2018, but by 2024 it was 16 percent. From the anecdotes I keep hearing, young people seem to be going to the most countercultural churches — traditionalist Catholic and Eastern Orthodox.
They don't believe in what the establishment tells them to believe in. They live in a world in which many believe in nothing. But still, somewhere deep inside, that hunger is there. They want to have faith in something.
Radioactive shrimp, the gifts from Asia never stop rolling in
[URL]https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-08-21/walmart-its-radioactive-shrimp-health-and-safety-our-customers-always-top-priority[/URL]
BKK Pinocchio, you might be the biggest liar on the entire internet
[QUOTE=EihTooms;3020119]For the 2nd time Donald J. Trump has gone to War Against America on American Soil based on one of his now 35,000+ lies.
The first time was based on his lie about the 2020 election being stolen from him. It wasn't.
This latest Trump's War Against America is based on his lie that the Nation's Capitol is rampant with crime. It isn't. In fact, crime is down in the City, has been declining since crime began to spike up dramatically under Trump during his previous term as has crime all around the country and the City is now not even in the top 20-25 most "crime-ridden" cities in the country.
Trump simply loves War.
Trump loves taking America to War.
Trump loves keeping America involved in Wars, as he did for every hour of every day of his previous term with the War in Afghanistan.
This is another unnecessary Trump War.
It should never have happened.
It wouldn't have happened if Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or any other Dem had been President.
This is Trump's War Against America, not theirs. Actually, it's his 2nd War Against America.
[B]'This Will Go Further: Trump Puts D.C. Police Under Federal Control and Deploys National Guard, Warns Other Cities May Be Next.
Aug. 11, 2025[/B]
[URL]https://time.com/7308788/trump-washington-dc-national-guard/[/URL][/QUOTE][URL]https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/08/21/cnns-enten-vance-is-right-violent-crime-is-underreported-thats-not-unique-to-d-c/[/URL]
I try to never be a grammar syntax diction or spelling NAZI
[QUOTE=AxelHeyst;3021971]Yeah, the whole world is watching. I know you hate Trump, but let's see what happens. I hope Trump is successful because it will save hundreds of thousands of lives, but everything is contingent on Putin who we all know is a murdering psychopath with thousands of nuclear weapons at his disposal. [B]Here is my criterion for success:[/B].
A) Putin does not accept a cease fire, but Trump retaliates by shipping more advanced offensive weaponry to Ukraine and by cutting off all western finance and banking to Russia in an effort to cripple the Russian economy and cause a palace coup. This is the big stick approach.
B) Putin agrees to a cease fire which is then followed up with a strong and resolute Article "5" Nato type security guarantee which includes European troops stationed on the ground near the frontlines in Ukraine to deter any future Russian attacks.
C) I will conclude that the whole thing was a huge fucking waste of time or worse, a "failure", if one of these two events a) or b) does not occur.
A lot is riding on this, but like I said, it all comes down to Putin, and nobody knows what this murdering lunatic will do including launching a strategic nuclear strike on Ukraine. He is capable of anything.[/QUOTE]But when you make an error like you did it really does undermine your whole post, I'm just sayin.
IMO you should of used criteria for plural, as opposed to criterion, singular.
Don't ever speak for me. Cause you don't know me!
[QUOTE=AxelHeyst;3022139]You and I are not that far apart. Trump is NOT pushing for a peace treaty which recognizes Putin's occupation of Crimea or Eastern Ukraine. I would oppose that 100%. He wants a cease fire and an end to the bloodbath. After which the Ukraine gets modernized and heals, and eventually Putin dies or is killed, and a real peace treaty which returns to the Ukraine ALL of its stolen land is agreed to.[/QUOTE]In reality we are half a world apart. You praise one war criminal while calling another out. [B]That is why you altered my post when you quoted it[/B].
[QUOTE=AxelHeyst;3022139]The alternative, to keep fighting, means a couple of hundred thousand dead every year with the most likely end game scenario that Russia will eventually break thru the front lines and win the war outright.[/QUOTE]The alternative is for [U]Ukraine[/U] to decide, not the puppet of the Russian Federation (AKA the POTUS of the Dis-United States of America).
If [U]Ukraine[/U] wants to keep fighting to the last to the last bullet, to the last gun, to the last knife to the last man, this citizen of the Dis-United States of America supports them.
[B]Period. Full Stop![/B]
If your were getting raped in the ass and I suggested that you just continue to take it because I believed is was you best course of action. Would you take it like a *****? Or you would you man up and continue to fight it?
No more just pruning the forest
[QUOTE=Elvis2008;3022335]MDS, the first half of the opinion piece was great and then he writes some of the dumbest shit I have ever read. This bullshit gets in the way of what we MAGA folks are so pissed off about.
First off the reason we do not have more people like Trump is because of Citizens United. To run for office today, you have to be a billionaire or kiss the ass of one. It has diminished the power of average citizens more than anything. Obviously, this ruling has to be thrown in the trash. This more than any other law destroys the votes of ordinary Americans.
The deep state / bureaucratic state was founded on two cases. Thankfully, one has been overturned. That would be the Chevron ruling, What that rulind did was it granted administrative agencies broad deference in creating regulations based on administrative interpretations of laws and thus granted administrative agencies of the executive branch broad lawmaking powers. We saw how fucked up this shit was with Covid when we had unelected bureaucrats in private companies like the CDC making law. This effectively took law making out of the hands of Congress and gave them to unelected bureaucrats. This law fortunately has been gutted by a recent decision.
And the other ruling allowed them to be unaccountable, that would be Harlow v. Fitzgerald, The Court held that "government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. " Sounds reasonable? It is not, The Supreme Court has recognized that not all constitutional violations will give rise to a Section 1983 claim. In order to be actionable under the law, the constitutional violation must be "sufficiently egregious" such that it "shock (s) the conscience" or amounts to "conduct that deliberately disregards fundamental rights. " And that is just suing the states in 1983..[/QUOTE]"You are just pruning the forest," Yarvin said dismissively. He countered that everything must be destroyed: In general, Yarvin is a monarchist, but in this dialogue he played a pure nihilist. One version of nihilism holds that the structures of civilization must be destroyed, even if we don't have anything to replace them with.
He argued that all of America has been a sham, that democracy and everything that has come with it is based on lies.
Long Live the Motherland! Real men Love Russia
Birdbrain is taking her antics on the road for a TOUR
This should be quite entertaining.
LMFAO.
[URL]https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kamala-harris-mounts-a-new-traveling-horror-show/[/URL]
But will she sell more than 3 copies?
AKA Birdbrains Voters Remorse and Regret
[URL]https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-disappearing-democratic-party-voter/[/URL]
Remorse and regret that they too didn't vote for our lord and savior.
But there's still time to join the Trump MAGA train, better late than never.
Put them in the same cell block in Florence Colorado
The Pelosi for years of Insider Trading, and Scumbag Bubba and his ugly husband in the next cell for years of Foreign Money Laundering.
[URL]https://www.zerohedge.com/political/shocking-new-documents-expose-multi-front-effort-protect-clintons-while-framing-trump[/URL]
A real shame Scumbag Joe handed out all those pardons but none for these Scumbags. LMFAO.
