19719

Personally, I see Republicans and Russians as two sides of the same enemy at this point. Hit one to hit the other.

19720

As someone who considers themself socially and culturally progressive, and more than a little democratic socialist in political leanings, it’s utterly infuriating to see these so-called leftists and progressives completely abandon reason and logic in order to mindlessly double-down on endorsing any and all accusations of American perfidy no matter how ludicrous. To the extent of effectively endorsing some of the most brutal and inhumane regimes in modern history.

I mean, there’s plenty of legit stuff to criticize ourselves over, we don’t have make shit up.

19721

Putin’s latest speech - it’s us against the West (little mention of Ukraine), to the rest of the world, join us:

19722

I assure you, if you stop attacking other countries and stop trying to “annex” places that don’t want you, we will gladly resume ignoring you.

19723

Another traitorous tankie calls for diplomatic talks with Russia:

19724

Join us, we have … we have … ummmm. Hang on, I’ll get back to you.

19725

It’s important to remember that the Ukraine aid numbers are higher than what we’re actually spending on that aid. A whole lot of the equipment has been through the draw down program, meaning we’re sending them existing stock, often stuff that we either consider obsolete or that’s nearing its expiration date when it would need to be trashed anyway. Now, that stuff does take money to prepare and ship. And we are sending other stuff that’s new and other stuff that we’ll need to replenish our own stocks of. But still, point stands that actual money spent is less than value of aid sent.

19726

True. Of course, it’s 2022; evidence has little meaning in political discourse. It’s all about what you believe, man, what you BELIEVE!

19727
19728

Pass the dutchie to the far far left hand side?

19729

I thought I was looking at a Swedish S-tank for a moment :)

The idea is not without some merit - older IR seekers do basically “average” the heat signature of the target, so having a heat source some distance away might be enough to upset the aim point… but I can’t see how it’d be effective against a modern imaging infra-red seeker like a Javlin.

19730

19731

It’s a quote out of context. The whole speech was about how Russia is a country of saints that doesn’t want to harm anyone and is attacked by the West. But even now Russia wants peace and cooperation with other nations, it’s just the West only wants to dominate, not co-exist, and forces Russia’s hand. Also Europe will freeze without Russia.

Putin never wanted a confrontation with the West and he will still insist that Russia is a good partner as long as you don’t get involved in their internal business like pacifying Ukrainian separatists.

19732

All warfare is based on deception, and your future Belarusian overlords mastered it like no one has.

19733

At this point I’m ready to ask the crab people of Alpha Centauri (or even their Techno-Necromancers) to just put us out of our misery. There is no intelligent life left on this ball of rock.

19734

Left? Have you been under the impression there was intelligent life on Earth ever? Intelligent is energy intensive, we are built for speed, intelligent decisions come only as a last resort.

Same as America and doing the right thing per Churchill, who I’m sure never did anything wrong, ever. :D

19735

My Google news feed is blowing up (heh) with headlines about how Putin says he won’t use nukes in Ukraine. Did I miss that in the thread? It seems important.

I’m not sure whether to feel more or less relieved, especially if it’s always opposite day in Russia.

19736

That just means when a nuke goes off in Ukraine tomorrow it definitely 100% proves it wasn’t Putin.

19737

What I find amusing is how people still haven’t figured out that what Russia says and what it does are not related. I’d figured after the nth time of Russia saying x and doing not x, we’d figure out they don’t care about just saying whatever and not caring how it relates to the truth, truth is for non-enemies, and even then, never tell the truth if a lie will do.

19738

It’s clearly a psychological flaw in human cognition that requires more self awareness and reflection than ordinary people can manage to reject completely a statement that someone says to be true. It appears the instinct of most human beings is to dilute the statement, accept some of it is false but accept that some of it is true. From politics to religions to folk tales to mobs, it’s apparently really hard for ordinary people to declare that a statement is simply 100% false. The modern political psychopaths endlessly exploit this and seem to engineer their regimes and activities to maintain this state of mind, to the consternation of the wise.