Comments by "Lepi Doptera" (@lepidoptera9337) on "Jake Broe" channel.

  1. 1000 casualties a day for the 400,000 Russian men means that basically all of them are on the block within a year. They can either avoid to be sent to the frontlines by whatever schemes they can come up with or they are almost guaranteed to become KIAs or WIAs.
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  2. Parts of Russia probably still didn't have electricity in 1993... ;-)
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  3. What you are not hearing is that it takes at the very least 50 years of education on top of that to change the minds and hearts of the people. Just ask the Germans... they have been doing almost 80 years of it now and it still doesn't work.
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  4. The way this looks almost no Russian will go home. At least not on two legs. ;-)
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  5. Yes, it would be game over for Russia, for sure. :-)
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  6. Biden has never heard of you, so he could not have called you any names. Who are you, exactly, other than a Russian or Chinese troll? ;-)
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  7. You can't wash something that doesn't exist... like MTG's brain. ;-)
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  8. And they have been walking backwards most of the time. :-)
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  9. Cry some more little Russian troll. ;-)
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  10. Yes. She doesn't even know where Ireland is. ;-)
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  11. NATO won't fight this from the ground. They will mostly fight it from the air. ;-)
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  12. I have met a few Russians in my life... and with exception of one I would not call any of them "good people". ;-)
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  13. That's mean! True, but mean.
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  14.  @ChipmunkRapidsMadMan1869  I am pretty sure we will see a Gay Pride Parade in Vladivostok before Russia advances in Ukraine. ;-)
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  15. What happened to you when they were teaching proper English grammar? ;-)
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  16. What you don't know is that the Obama administration is most likely responsible for Russia being blind on the battlefield, right now. They just made nice with Russia, but behind everyone's back they sabotaged the Russian space capabilities to the point where almost none are left. Putin was very upset about that from what I have seen. :-)
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  17. They probably had fifteen minutes to half an hour of advance notice. Cruise missiles don't fly very fast (these ones are subsonic, so the "travel times" are similar to those of passenger jets). The real embarrassment is that they didn't clear the building and got everybody into the bunker. They were simply completely full of themselves. ;-)
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  18. Europe is a match for Putin but it will probably have to engage actively in the war eventually. There is only so much in weapons systems that Europe can donate, right now.
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  19. The need to completely demilitarize Russia is rational, not cynical.
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  20. How long does it take to completely destroy the Russian army? Probably three years. Could be four. You need to have patience.
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  21. Those machines were safer with holes in them than the Russian product is fresh from the factory. ;-)
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  22. Lukashenko is a dead man walking. ;-)
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  23. Look, Ma! The Russian troll bot is here. :-)
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  24. There are no Republicans these days. There are only traitors and their supporters on the right side of American politics now. Ronald Reagan, now he was a Republican. Even Vice President Cheney was a Republican. After that... sorry, but you guys have to get yourself a new name. :-)
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  25. Why are you telling us that you don't know anything about US national security laws? We don't care about all the things you don't know. :-)
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  26. There is only one frontline in Ukraine. It's wherever a Russian soldier is on Ukraine's territory. ;-)
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  27. Israel doesn't have apartheid. 20% of the Israeli population are Palestinians by descent. I happen to know an Israeli Palestinian couple personally. Even though the IDF does not draft these Israeli citizens, it seems that about 5000 are serving voluntarily.
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  28.  @eljaytu  No, kid. These are the facts. That you don't like facts is a consequence of your failed development. You just have to grow up. Good luck with that, but I am not holding my breath.
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  29. It's the cheap vodka.
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  30. Yeah, it's just local political theatre. Every Polish government will know that the only thing between them and the Russian army is Ukraine. They do not want to test the scenario in which Ukraine loses.
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  31.  @MartilloWorkshop  I am sure that all of those exist in your mind. They just don't exist in real life. The Hamas videos do exist, though and that is the problem for all Palestinians now.
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  32.  @MartilloWorkshop  You are the guy who keeps telling everybody that he is leaving and everybody is looking forward to it... and then he never leaves. ;-)
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  33. This has very little to do with religious beliefs and everything to do with youth unemployment and sexual frustration in the Arab world. There are hundreds of millions of young men who can never get a wife.
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  34. That is not what you and Putin have to be afraid of. You have to be worried that the angry orange haired child will ask his staff to bring the nuclear football. ;-)
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  35. So what made you so angry about the world? :-)
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  36.  @OtallC  An adult just responded to your childish comment, kid. ;-)
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  37.  @OtallC  I am the guy who gives attention to lonely little children in cold basements all over the world. ;-)
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  38.  @OtallC  Omar, kiddo, you knew full well from first and second hand experience that I had to be a guy. Women aren't paying any attention to desperate people like you. ;-)
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  39. You mean Russia had those things in Toropets? Man, what happened there? It almost looked like a tactical nuclear warhead cooked off. ;-)
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  40. So you don't want the US to help the only democracy in the Middle East to defend himself? What does that make you? The troll of autocrats.
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  41. And there is little Nikita, again, pounding his tiny soft ballet shoes on the lectern. ;-)
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  42. Why don't you read up on US export control laws regarding space technology and laws regarding the support of foreign governments, kid? It's all online. The US has nothing to hide. It doesn't hide that SpaceX is NOT allowed to support foreign governments with its technology without approval of the US government, either. ;-)
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  43. I kind of doubt that the average Russian can even spell "US Congress", let alone wants to understand what domestic issues the US has. ;-)
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  44. Russia doesn't want land. They want people. The idea was to take over Ukraine and then press Ukrainian men into Russian military service. They are doing it in the Donbas region right now.
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  45. Yep. I truly don't understand what India is thinking... unless this is simply the result of Modi trying to play both China and the US. I just don't know enough about Indian politics to see the light there.
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  46. That's just Chinese map magic. It has no bearing on reality other than to p*ss everybody off. ;-)
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  47. GOP voters are not proud Americans. They are victims in their own mind and they become easy victims of GOP propaganda.
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  48. If you want to fight Russians so bad, there are plenty of opportunities in Ukraine. They have a foreign legion. What does that make you, again? A FC? ;-)
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  49. Is Hamas a terrorist organization? Yes. What's so hard to say about that? Is COVID a deadly disease? Yes. See, that was easy. Now you try it. ;-)
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  50. You mean UNICEF? UNICEF does a few good things, but the UN as a whole. Forgetaboutit.
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  51. Yes he will. They just like to play political theatre to the last minute.
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  52. Well, technically they would have lost WW II if not for America. So there is that. ;-)
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  53. If a kid wants to spend his entire life hating... how can you stop him? You can't.
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  54. Putin won't be alive in five to eight years. That is why it had to be now or never. ;-)
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  55. Little correction. The book ain't that old. It is not as old as Homer's works. It's not as old as the official founding date of the Roman Republic. Some of it is not even as old as Plato or the Greek's measurement of Earth's circumference. It's a rather young piece of religious crap.
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  56.  @JohnSkeel  No harm no foul. I used to call it a bronze age religion myself... until I looked up the timeline for metal cultures. To my surprise the first confirmed dates of OT texts barely fell into the last century of the iron age... which tells us that people were far better with metal working than with their belief systems. I think we should give them that much credit. The smart ones were smarter earlier than the dumb ones were really dumb. ;-)
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  57. So Russia's wealthiest oligarch is producing the next generation of rockets (including most likely ICBMs) for the US? You aren't making any sense there, kid. ;-)
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  58. Please explain in detail. ;-)
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  59. Russia has clearly stated that they aren't fighting Ukraine. They are fighting NATO. NATO has a total population of almost one billion people and the attrition rate in a fight against the US air force will be on the order of a few ten soldiers per day. No big deal. ;-)
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  60. Money does not kill Russians. Old military equipment (at any price) does. ;-)
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  61. Not if you were drafted against your will.
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  62.  @bujinkanatori  No, it is certainly not.
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  63. Yes, it's amazing that everybody on Earth now has a smartphone, isn't it? Who would have thought just 20 years ago? ;-)
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  64.  @1whazzoo  You can see the plane being blown to pieces? I only saw a cloud of debris and then a tumbling plane. I am not aware of a video of the actual 'splosion. ;-)
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  65. Even F-16s can't fly into Russian air defense systems. Ukraine will have to deplete Russia's air defense system to the point that it doesn't pose any threat to bombing runs, first.
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  66. Is hate the only emotion you are capable off? How about THINKING without emotion for a moment? Would that be too hard? ;-)
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  67. That would be technically impossible and a criminal act for which the FBI would arrest him immediately. ;-)
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  68. Under Reagan? That was possibly the last time that an old actor with Alzheimer's was a rational republican politician. ;-)
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  69. What's with the anger? :-)
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  70. Says the guy who doesn't even have a microphone. Look here, folks, a Russian keyboard warrior wants your attention. ;-)
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  71.  @MANNY33100  You are a good troll. Let me give you some attention in return. ;-)
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  72. What is "forced conscription" supposed to be??? Military service is mandatory in many (if not most) countries. I have been in the military myself. Was it fun? No, of course not, but it was a necessary civic duty. Today I am looking back at the experience as something useful. It gave me an idea of "the other side of life". Even though the "fighting experience" was only simulated, sitting in the forest for hours waiting for a potential "attack" was nerve wrecking. I knew that had it been real, my life would have been on the line. A single shot by a sniper could have meant the end. Once you have that experience, paying taxes for an effective military feels a lot less of a waste than it might otherwise. The state and the men and women who are choosing to be in the military are putting their lives on the line so that everybody else can live in peace. They deserve the best weapons, the best protection, the best intelligence money can buy. Speak softly and carry a big stick is now more important than ever. We will need a much bigger stick in the future and many more soldiers. OK, champ?
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  73. I am sure you have proof for that. Any day now. ;-)
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  74. The problem with China is that even a soft landing leaves an entire generation of young people (which also happens to be China's last) economically stranded. The government has nothing to offer to these people except for ideological bullshit by crazy uncle Xi.
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  75. Syria is playing turtle and has retreated into its shell. Nobody in the region wants to give Israel any reason to act, right now. Netanyahu has proven that he has a big stick and he is hell bent on using it. I think what the world should also realize that the stick the US carries is approx. 20 times more capable than Israel's. So if anybody thinks that they want to mess with us, then they are miscalculating.
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  76. Conservatives need to get a life and vote these clowns out. If whoever is running in your district is anything but an up-right adult, sit out the election. Just don't vote for a person who hates their country. It's that simple. Until you do that, the GOP will never change.
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  77. Talent is nice and well... but if the man it's attached to is burned out, then the talent usually goes away rather quickly and is replaced with increasingly more bizarre decision making processes. One has to accept that Musk's flame, which shone oh so brightly, might be coming to an end.
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  78. Dude, there are no bright people for Trump. There are only people who consider themselves bright for Trump. That's called Dunning-Krueger. ;-)
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  79. The real aim of Russia is to force Ukraine to spread their air defense systems out, which are mostly protecting their military and war production facilities. Ukraine is not taking the bait.
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  80. Nothing. You can ask the children of German Nazis. A whole generation had lost all respect for their parents.
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  81. Cue "Every Sperm is Sacred". The Irish overpopulation problem was created in Irish bedrooms. :-)
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  82. The Twitter acquisition was certainly a grand mistake. I am pretty sure even Musk feels that way by now. Based on the news he was actually trying to wiggle out of it, in the end, but he had signed the contract, already. That's a real problem if you are operating under American laws. Unless you can prove that you were under the influence when you signed a US contract is like god and it shows no mercy. With regards to Ukraine... I kind of doubt that SpaceX does anything without the direct support/supervision of the State Department and the Pentagon. Again... the US has a very strong legal regime in place for the kinds of assets that SpaceX has.
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  83. Well, at least in their own minds they were... that phantasy shattered ten miles from Kiev... which is pretty far East, even in Europe. ;-)
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  84. Russia has nothing to do with it. SpaceX is legally forbidden from supporting foreign governments without explicit permission of the US government. What Elon Musk wants or doesn't want is completely irrelevant here. What they can and can not do is all covered by US laws.
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  85. Depleting Wagner is a necessity for Putin, otherwise Wagner will deplete him sooner or later. :-)
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  86. Russia can't be anything. It was always a nation of brutes who were subjugating most other people as serfs.
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  87. Depends on the altitude. One can get continent wide effects with hundreds of miles of nearly assured destruction of commercial electronics if the bombs are set off above the atmosphere. The more important effects would be to satellites. We would lose hundreds, if not thousands of communications and research satellites. I assume that GPS is EMP hardened, though.
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  88. In that case the US military will simply actively interfere in the war. I kind of doubt that that will work better for Russia. ;-)
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  89. It's so bizarre that righties have stopped defending liberty and have become the next Neville Chamberlains. ;-)
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  90. No, not really, but maybe it should be. ;-)
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  91. Tens of thousands of Russian soldiers KIA and WIA by cheap drones want you to hold their beers, I think. The personal aerial mine is a horrific weapon.
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  92. Putin's reactions are those of a psychopath. He's the scorpion in the fable of the scorpion and the frog.
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  93. Only on the outside. Inside she might be closer related to the reptilians.
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  94. Actually, some NATO members like the Poles are. I wouldn't worry too much about that. NATO is catering to the party, right now, it provides the music and fireworks display and it will participate on the dance floor, if necessary. ;-)
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  95. Well, you seem to know a lot about Asperger's. Are you personally on the spectrum? ;-)
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  96. What makes you think that this is up to Germany in the first place? Germany is, for all practical purposes, Europe's demilitarized zone. The Bundeswehr is more of a moral support system than an army. And that is how it should be. The last time Germany was strong it didn't end well for anybody.
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  97.  @Andreas-d7d  I didn't say that Germany isn't supporting Ukraine. It certainly is, but people who expect Germany to take an active military role in Europe similar to the role of the US at the worldwide stage are painfully unaware of the historical context. Germany still has the military industrial might and the necessary population size to dominate locally, but that does not mean that it will or that it should.
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  98. We haven't seen all that much new equipment on the Russian side, though... so something isn't working on the Russian supply side. ;-)
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  99. If he swears that, then it must be true... or it's just another day on the internet and a contrarian wants attention because he only gets left swipes on Tinder. ;-)
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  100.  @mindman1234  The Russian bot programmers are getting desperate. As if publishing bullshit on social media is going to change the direction of Ukrainian artillery projectiles... ;-)
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  101. Most Russians are victims of communism just as they were victims of the Russian Empire. That is not the problem. The problem is that you have a generation of victims who want to come out on top for once and they are choosing the worst possible outlet: the self-centered phantasies of a tiny megalomaniac.
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  102.  @jessehachey2732  I take it that you wanted to respond to the OP? ;-)
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  103. The US has been and is still supporting Ukraine with its most important assets: space intelligence. Why do you think did the Ukrainians shoot down the Russian radar planes? Because Russia is short on space intelligence. At most they are getting it from China, right now. I wouldn't be surprised that one of Biden's last acts will be to covertly shut down Chinese spy satellites before he leaves office. We have the means. We have been doing it to the Russians for decades. It was an open secret in the Russian aerospace community that Russia has been blind for a long time. That wasn't just because of blunders in their space programs. We never left the cold war... you could see it in Putin's increasing frustration with the West. His country was under attack, he just couldn't admit that they were losing the cold war. His childish reaction was to start a hot war, which he is losing right now. If the Chinese get too involved we will do the same to them that we did to Russia and they won't even be able to admit it that we are behind their failing infrastructure.
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  104. If we are, then nobody seems to have noticed. Even North Korea seems reluctant to join Russia. :-)
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  105. So what? You are a troll. ;-)
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  106.  @superjorn  I didn't say you were a bot. You need to pay more attention. ;-)
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  107. The UN is political theatre. Does it serve a purpose? It probably does. Imagine Khrushchev not having his little shoe on table banging moment at the UN... he might have been banging his fist on the big red button, instead. People and governments need emotional outlets. The UN provides one at the governmental scale.
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  108. Putin wouldn't have to wait that long. Poland will come to Ukraine's defense long before Russia reaches the Polish border if push comes to shove. That's why freezing the conflict is the only remaining hope for Putin. He knows that he has a NATO war at his hands if Russia advances. Which it doesn't, of course.
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  109. Ah, thank god! I thought even the Russian trolls were gone. :-)
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  110. No, they weren't. If Israel wanted to kill Palestinians, then there would be no more Palestinians.
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  111. Around the eight minute mark he says something like "... we got so many units here. Come here, see me, I put you in a unit...". That's delusion right there. He had no authority to assign anybody to a foreign defense unit operating in Ukraine.
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  112. If Russia starts winning in Ukraine NATO will step in to prevent the Exodus of 30 million Ukrainians into Poland, Hungary, Romani and Slovakia. Russia didn't think this through.
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  113. Why do you assume that the representative of NATO tells the whole world, including Russia, what NATO's actual plans are? ;-)
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  114. You won't be able to explain that to a Trump voter. Virtually all of them seem to think that "their" tax dollars are being fed into an oven in the White House.
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  115. If a cop tells you to stop what you are doing, then you stop what you are doing. If you get shot for not obeying, then it is your own fault. The woman was stupid. It's a simple as that. These people knew that they were breaking the law and they got what was coming to them. It is that simple in a nation of laws. This has nothing to do with immigrants, legal or not. A cop says "STOP!", then you stop. He has the right to tell you what to do. That's what he was hired for by US, THE PEOPLE. To keep the peace. You are not keeping the peace, then WE, THE PEOPLE, through our armed representatives, can stop you, if required with lethal force. That's it. Please grow up
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  116. There is nothing natural about what is happening in Ukraine and the Middle East. It was engineered by very small numbers of very power hungry people.
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  117. Every country has a MTG. Ours just happens to be called MTG. ;-)
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  118. She is simply crazy.
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  119. You aren't that bright, either, kid. Please read up on US laws with regards to support of foreign governments with military and space technology. Elon Musk didn't shut anything down. SpaceX simply abided by American laws. :-)
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  120. All Hamas needs to do is to give up, hand over the hostages, and report for judgement by Israeli courts. This can be over in half an hour. That a free, democratic nation can't defend itself with normal police methods against terrorists is complete bullshit. There are no international laws that apply to domestic terrorists.
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  121. Maybe, but not today and not tomorrow, either. :-)
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  122. The UN doesn't even know what to communicate about. Its diplomats are not being given the actual marching orders. They are only being told what the public is supposed to know.
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  123. It's a pretty city. It almost looks like the Asian equivalent of San Francisco. ;-)
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  124. They may not have been given a choice by the people with automatic guns that were escorting them on the plane. ;-)
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  125. That people become jaded has nothing to do with the media. It's a necessary human adaptation to bad news. A person who dwells on bad news has no emotional energy left to deal with reality, so we simply learn to screen it. 95% of the house burning down is, by the way, the evolutionary normal for every species, not just humans. 5% remaining is perfectly enough to rebuild. The human population was approx. 400 million in the 16th century... that was without modern medicine. With modern medicine we could replenish ourselves within a few hundred years. Not that we should, if it ever came to such a collapse. We need higher quality, not more quantity.
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  126. He was counting on China... but China only helps winners, not losers. ;-)
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  127. I saw this on the internet, so it must be true. ;-)
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  128. Because there will be in the future. It's all staged as in "well calculated stages of escalation".
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  129. Let me see... 40% price increase at home vs. dying in a meat grinder. Yeah, that will really want Russian men to commit to the army. ;-)
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  130. Nobody can get out of Gaza right now. Israel will probably eventually filter everybody who wants to get out... but I suspect that men will have a hard time proving that they were not Hamas affiliated.
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  131.  @philips3352  That's my point... the only people we know about who didn't participate in the atrocities are women and children. Will Israel let the men go easily? Probably not. It might take years to process them. Israel has all the time in the world... it is possible that many men will die of old age in one of the camps that will be erected before they will be able to prove their innocence.
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  132. As you can see that infrastructure is now in place. It took less than a year to make it happen... so the "dependence" that Russia was betting on did never really exist. Natural gas from Russia was a convenience and proper economic choice... if we leave politics aside. With politics it was the wrong choice, of course.
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  133. Ooooohhh... the Trump voter is triggered. ;-)
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  134. Both are coming for the end game. Don't worry. It's just not the endgame, yet.
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  135.  @jettser17UK  NATO is involved directly. Everybody knows that, it's just a diplomatic dead end for Russia because they can not even afford a war with Ukraine, let alone with NATO, so they can't really hit back. They would be obliterated within days if they tried to attack NATO militarily. NATO's contributions to Ukraine's intelligence is what has neutralized most of the Russian moves. They are under 24/7 surveillance and NATO is giving Ukraine real time targeting information. Russia is learning the hard way that it can not pound itself out of that kind of strategic situation.
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  136. Sorry to disappoint you, but it is the republican party. It's not just three bozos in a stolen clown suite. It's all of them. :-)
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  137. Lying is the only way you can survive in Russian society. By now it has become a genetic trait.
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  138.  @wanderer5766  I am not going to disagree with you on that, maybe except for practical reasons. One should also keep in mind that some level of psychopathy is inherent even in better managed societies. I would say that 30%-50% of mankind are emotionally and intellectually deficient by humanist standards. In the US it's the Trump voters, in other countries these people are sympathizing with other fascist political cults. They don't want to think so they like to elect strongmen who aren't thinking, either.
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  139. No, they don't. They have been told lies since the day they were born. That's how you get stupid people to do stupid stuff.
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  140. The obvious solution is to retreat from Ukraine, including Crimea, before this gets worse. And it will get much worse. :-)
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  141. Dude, if you are a real Trump supporter then the civilized world has lost you a long time ago. Good riddance, I would say. Now please see yourself out. We don't need you and your trite around here. :-)
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  142. We can do one better: Matthew 26:52 “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."". That's a warning. The only one Russia will get from a Christian nation with a very large stick. ;-)
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  143.  lucabaki  The tragedy of Russia is not that it's a bully. The tragedy of Russia is that it's a small bully who still can't believe that he will never be the big guy.
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  144. It's more likely that Elon Musk likes attention. He behaves more and more like a simple attention troll lately.
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  145. The real cost is the replacement value, not the money that has already been spent on these weapons in the past. You also have to understand that the Pentagon has multiple sets of ledgers. One is the public ledger for Congress that is required by law. Then there is a classified one that covers actual operations cost for all programs, including the top secret ones. Very few people ever get to see that one. And then there is, at least, one more, which is a planning budget that contains many future scenarios. I am sure that there is currently a lot of political wrestling about how those moneys will be raised in the coming years.
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  146.  @Coercer2010  Western politicians aren't interested in stealing from toddlers. They are having way more fun pounding Russia to dust, right now. ;-)
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  147.  @alexturnbackthearmy1907  Well, somewhere between the air-defense systems and the people in the room somebody missed something important...
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  148. Is Allah a brand of hookah? You have clearly been smoking too much of it. ;-)
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  149. Our military industrial complex is completely controlled by the US government. You need to read up on the laws in that area. ;-)
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  150. And there is the Russian troll bot who feels sorry for himself because American democracy works and keeps the checks and balances on the crazy. ;-)
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  151. He simply did what the law told him to do... or, in this case, not to do. :-)
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  152. They will easily pay us back with artillery shells and drone armies after the war. Ukraine is going to become the world's premier low cost weapons manufacturer. That's actually a scary thought.
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  153. Israel is performing a police SWAT operation on its own territory. Absolutely no international law applies here. You need to get a life, child. ;-)
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  154.  @chrisohagan8131  The IDF isn't attacking civilians. It told everybody who is not Hamas to get out of the way. Whoever does not is simply entering the Darwin Awards. Does it trouble me what Palestinian parents are doing to their children? Yes. Can I talk sense to them? No. Can you? Good luck.
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  155. Meanwhile...worldwide EV sales are hitting 18% this year. They will be 20-25% next year and easily overtake ICE sales by end of the decade. Oil producers know this and they have to play a long game because of the investment in new fields. Their business model is literally going to dry up within the next two decades. The only way to extract money from the remaining oil in the ground is to sell it cheaply while they can. So why would the US not flood the world with the cheapest shale they can produce?
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  156. That the ATACMS are coming now has a very simple reason: they will be used to take out Russian air defense systems that could endanger the F-16s. One system does not make sense without the other. The US knows that. Ukraine knows that. Russia knows that.
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  157. Right now not even the US has them. Let's not launch chickens we don't have. ;-)
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  158.  @bigdog91paper  The we will launch whatever chickens are left in the coop. ;-)
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  159. He can do that, but Ukraine will sooner than later acquire a capable air force and it will produce long range weapons on its own. The long term outlook for Russia isn't improving, no matter how many people Putin sacrifices.
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  160. Let me give you some attention then. You clearly need it. ;-)
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  161. How are they falling for Adult Santa in the first place? Failing bullshit detector.
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  162. There isn't much to say about that... Israel is getting to feel the (righteously) pent up anger of the Palestinians... as directed by Iran. It will end with even more dead Palestinians and even higher walls, like always. The Israelis aren't going to learn from it, the Palestinians aren't going to learn from it and Iran will simply try to rinse and repeat. There might be some more or less spectacular retaliation in Iran by Mossad. We shall see if the Israelis have some plans for that. Will anything change for the better? No. That piece of land has been poisoning the hearts and minds for thousands of years and it won't stop doing that.
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  163. It's probably much more simple than that. Ukraine asked for the system to be enabled. SpaceX lawyers did what they are required to do and they reported the request. The Pentagon/State Department said "No way in hell!" and then SpaceX just sat this out. Musk is not allowed to communicate this to the world legally, so he has to take the bullet. I am pretty sure SpaceX will get a billion dollars in additional funding over the years for this little "sacrifice".
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  164. We have tried and theoretically analyzed many different forms of democracy. All of them are suffering from one kind of problem or another. The real issue here is not the organization of democratic systems but the average intellect of the voters, which is just too low to make it work well. One can not raise the IQ of the population by making institutional changes. One could, theoretically, implement meritocracies where people of higher (proven) intelligence get to have a larger political impact, but that itself is going to lead to corruption very soon as intelligence does not preclude people from selling their influence to the highest bidder.
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  165.  @colby25 The Italians have tried it with a dozen parties. That didn't work well as you may imagine. Germany had a three and then four and now five party system for decades. It still hasn't solved issues that have been on the table since the 1970s or earlier. I think both Brexit and Trump have proven beyond doubt that it's not the system... it's just the stupidity of over half the population that causes the problems. There might be one productive thing that one could do: age limits for voters. It's kind of pointless to have 80 year old people voting who won't be around to reap the fruits or bear the brunt of their decisions. Voting should be limited to those who have an actual long term stake in the fallout of their political vote.
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  166.  @flybefree  Ranked choice doesn't help if a majority of people would still be voting Trump. What you would see is that the left would fracture and the right would gather around a strongman, even if he would get only 30% of the first vote. If respect was of any value to the current voter, then Trump would be sent packing with 1% of the primary votes. The truth is that not even Ronald Reagan would be electable by today's GOP primary. I agree that the super PACs are a bad idea.. but the current supreme court thinks they are covered by free speech, so we are not going to get rid of them anytime soon. The filibuster has actually saved the day more often recently than it has ruined it. But, again, these are tools. What counts is the mindset of those using them. You have to remember that even Hitler was democratically elected and Putin had real majorities in the past. Democracies don't protect themselves if the people don't protect them.
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  167. I have a feeling that he may have gotten a visit from some government "diplomats" before that "act of generosity". You have to keep in mind that he is already in trouble with the feds and they can simply seize his main toy, SpaceX, because of its strategic importance to the US. Are you surprised that the man wants a weak Trump government that will leave him alone? You would want that, too, if you were him.
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  168. SpaceX is operating every day under national security laws. You clearly don't know the legal environment of the American aerospace industry. ;-)
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  169. If Ukraine can significantly reduce Russia's diesel production, then Russia will also lose part of its crop production this year and it might not be able to stock shelves across the nation. This will put additional political pressure on its periphery since we can be sure that the big cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg will be exempt from shortages. Russia will, increasingly, look like Panem...
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  170. Nobody is afraid. Ukraine was told right from the beginning of this conflict that the aim here is the total destruction of Russian military assets in a grinding conflict. They are fully aware that that is the only way to deal with Russia once and for all. A quick defeat without a million Russian casualties won't help anybody. We are getting there. Russia will have lost approx. half a million soldiers by the mid of next year, with a further million or more wounded. It will have lost most of its heavy armor and artillery and will be depleted of air defense systems and missiles. Give this conflict at least another year, then Russia is ripe. ;-)
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  171. What he failed to mention was that he was planning to invade Russia a couple weeks later to take a good chunk of land out of it for Ukraine. ;-)
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  172. Yes, they will let thousands of farms fail to keep their deranged base believing in "white America". It's that simple.
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  173. The administration also didn't send artillery. Then it didn't send armored vehicles and tanks. Then it didn't allow F-16s. Are you noticing a pattern here?
    1
  174. There never was a Palestinian country. Palestine, the region, went from Turkish rule to British rule to Israeli rule. Palestinians were offered an honest two-state solution again and again and every time they reacted with violence. I kind of doubt that they will get those offers ever again.
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  175. How's that drinking problem of yours? Getting worse, it seems. ;-)
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  176. There are only two ways they US could "purchase" Canada. The first and conventional way is war. The second is if Canada changes its constitution and allows for a peaceful merger of the two countries. I suspect that this would also require a change in the US constitution.
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  177. So you are saying that Russia can't distinguish a satellite tv dish from a radar antenna? Must be all the vodka that Russian soldiers are consuming. ;-)
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  178. Look, Ma! The Russian troll is triggered. ;-)
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  179. Unlikely. China's economy is dying, right now. The last thing Xi can afford right now are American and European sanctions.
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  180. Maybe he can finally go back to having a peaceful life? I kind of doubt it, though. The world will be reeling from instability for the next 20-50 years. China, North Korea, Iran and other bad players are not going to go away.
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  181. Too much magic mushroom, Nikita, too much magic mushroom. ;-)
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  182. There is a simple reason why Russia is attacking random civilian targets at this time: they want Ukraine to disperse its air defense systems, which would leave valuable targets more vulnerable. What are the valuable targets? Ukraine has been building up its own defense industry over the last year and a half. They are now producing long range weapons systems and they will soon have missiles that can reach Moscow and beyond. Those facilities need to be protected and they are. Russia is, for good reasons, extremely afraid of the products of these facilities. :-)
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  183. Why are you surprised? That's what the GOP was all along. A wolf in sheep's clothing.
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  184. Well, Russia is welcome to attack NATO directly, if it thinks that this is a proxy war. Let's see how that will play out. ;-)
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  185. Just keep drinking and your problem will resolve itself. ;-)
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  186. Narcissists are not necessarily vain. There is a clear moral difference between Trump and Musk. Musk believes in building instead of destroying. He plays most of what he does extremely straight. He has been self-critical in the past, both on the technical and business level. He used to listen to feedback from reality. It remains to be seen if he still does.
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  187. The airbases are defended by the best missile defense systems and the planes probably scramble every time an attack happens. There is nothing of value to hit there.
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  188. It was always intended to be one. I don't know why anybody feels otherwise. It's not even clear why there should be a good argument to make the UN some form of higher power. There is no such thing as a "neutral institution". Institutions are always being taken over by someone or something. Plurality is always a safer choice.
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  189. Why so impatient? There is plenty of ground war between now and next year to be had. Would you want to spend another winter in Russian trenches? Neither do the Russians, but they will have to. Long suffering is the best suffering, as they say. :-)
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  190. Russian bot two. ;-)
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  191. At least they will be calling it "an accident". ;-)
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  192. The Palestinians could have ended it at any time during the last 60 years. Towards the end of his life Arafat even tried... and he was most likely killed by his own people for trying.
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  193. What is China supposed to transport on such a road, kid? Don't be ridiculous. ;-)
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  194. The Castro family. ;-)
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  195. Yes, that was total bullshit. ;-)
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  196. You joined May 19, 2023? That means Russia is not just running out of ammo and weapons. It's also running out of hacked YouTube accounts. ;-)
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  197.  @CaveSquig  Then it must have been the drinking. I agree. The alcohol will ruin the inhabitants of the island. ;-)
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  198. Enough to get you triggered. :-)
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  199. Lukashenko would love nothing better than to get rid of Putin. Between Putin and his people it's far more likely that Putin is going to be his demise.
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  200. Why don't we just let this play out till the bitter end... with the Russian president's body blowing in the wind? ;-)
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  201. It's two ships less to worry about. It's also one drydock less to worry about because Russia will not use that one again. ;-)
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  202. It's not even clear if Putin is still alive, it seems. All the sightings lately seem to be doubles. Russia may be running on autopilot right now. ;-)
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  203. Israel won't do that. They will, however, clear large parts of it, if not all of it. That's something the world should have done a long time ago. Why do you think did Egypt close its borders? Because they love the Palestinians and Hamas? Hamas is Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It's the new ISIS. Nobody in the Arab world wants to get dirt on their hands because of these people.
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  204. Did you pull that brown number out of your own rear or someone else's? :-)
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  205.  @MattSchuster2565  It's all publicly documented, kid. Why are you telling us that you are too lazy to read up on it? ;-)
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  206. You can be sure that Ukraine will amass a stockpile of weapons that will be capable of hitting everything in Russia all the way to Vladivostok. It's not that hard. SpaceX has shown the world how to produce orbital rockets for pennies on the dollar. You can bet that the Ukrainians are learning. :-)
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  207. Less than a thousand of those were made and most would be intercepted by Russian defense systems. The era of large, expensive delivery systems is coming to an end. Ukraine's best bet is to build thousands of cheap long range drones and to launch massive swarms at once that can overwhelm the air defense systems. Russia will, of course, try to do the same.
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  208. The problem is not the garbage in Puerto Rico. The problem is the garbage inside Trump's mind.
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  209. Definitely the latter.
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  210.  @СерхиоБускетс-ф7я  I don't have to study Russian bullshit, kid. You didn't have to, either. You are just not smart enough to put your mind to proper use. ;-)
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  211. Yes, we do understand that you have a lot of Nazis. You had them for a long time. ;-)
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  212.  @CampusTheBridge  That's what Hitler said when he took the pill. ;-)
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  213. Well, now it's selling like hotcakes. ;-)
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  214.  @lafa1432  Now it's selling like gilded hotcakes. :-) Just wait until the F-16 and F-35 orders are coming in. ;-)
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  215.  @lafa1432  The F-16 platform certainly still has a long lifetime. I don't know if there is enough production tooling left to ramp up beyond the four a month that they are still making. The advantage over the F-35 is cost... although the Gripen seems to win that category if I remember correctly. What seems obvious to me is that having reserves of highly capable platforms will be appreciated post-Ukraine. The time of "lean" militaries is probably over.
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  216. The ATACMS only make sense as a precision weapon for the kind of air superiority wars that the US fights. They are not a means to disable production facilities. That didn't even work with WW II style carpet bombing.
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  217. Xi is also not laughing. Putin was supposed to make short process of Ukraine, which would have set the stage for an invasion of Taiwan. Instead Western weaponry and military doctrine turned out to be far less decadent and far more deadly than the Eastern planners had imagined. The economic consequences of Russia's actions also came into razor sharp focus. The West is more united now than it has been in decades. Putin's cozying up to North Korea is strengthening the ties between South Korea, Japan and the Philippines. The world is steeling its muscles and pointing its spear tips towards Russia... and China. What should have been proof of a weakening of the West has become the opposite and it is making a laughing stock out of Xi and his imitation Mao political beliefs.
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  218. The contracts do not give power to SpaceX. They tie SpaceX down. Are you sure you have ever seen how legal contracts work? You seem to have all the wrong ideas about them.
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  219. It doesn't need to, but I think at this point they want to. You can tell by the number of prisoners of war that they aren't taking prisoners. ;-)
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  220. Look, Ma! The Russian troll bot is here. ;-)
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  221.  @willtipton  And why are you feeling sorry for yourself, anyway? ;-)
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  222. Europe is talking... with its military industrial complex. ;-)
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  223. The entire Nazi theme came from Putin's rear. You don't have to listen to that. It is literally made up bullshit.
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  224. Ukraine knows that the Polish know that the only thing between Poland and Russia is... Ukraine. Relax. :-)
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  225. Probably nothing. Yes, she is that stupid... she sells out for free. ;-)
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  226. Anger does not a good advisor make. We all understand how Ukrainians feel. We would feel the same way... but feelings don't make facts. The fact is that SpaceX is 100% controlled by the US government as far as its services to foreign governments go. If the US government says "No.", it's a "HELL NO! And don't you dare unless you want to get a 5am morning visit from the FBI.".
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  227. Why are you telling us that you can't afford a Tesla? We don't care. Neither does Elon Musk. He is busy building the world's largest car company right now. ;-)
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  228.  @anthonymumford4277  Let me ask you, again... why are you telling us that you can't afford a Tesla? We still don't care. ;-)
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  229. How can human beings load and unload crates with artillery shells? One shell is just about the limit a typical human being can carry a short distance. Lifting two would require a very strong man and three or four are basically reserved for professional weightlifters.
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  230. In this case he is bound by US laws. He can't tell you what actually happened, which is most likely not what everybody wants to think. ;-)
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  231. 300,000 Russians against 1,000,000 Ukrainian drones. I am betting on the drones. ;-)
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  232. Musk is greatly expanding America's space technology. He is doing more than you can imagine. That he is doing it while spouting nonsense doesn't matter.
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  233. The US doesn't need to test. We have scientists who can design a functional new nuke before lunch using the perfectly debugged design codes. Where we are lacking is investment in production facilities. I don't know if we can make new pits easily.
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  234.  @bobbyfred3761  This is all irrelevant because these are not legally enforceable contracts to begin with. Nuking your own soil is also hardly an escalation. At most it's an environmental disaster. If the Russians do it to spike us it is, at most, the stupidity of the attention troll.
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  235. Well, you are obviously not a conservative any longer... or, whatever you may be, the "new conservatives" are not like you. ;-)
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  236. They won't make any difference. The tank is dead, independent of its make and model. What Ukraine needs is aviation... so you could make that argument for F-16s, though.
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  237.  @stuarthamilton5112  FPV drones have taken out more heavy equipment and soldiers than tanks in this war. End of story. ;-)
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  238. The US spends $1.4 trillion on social security every year. That's almost $4 billion a day. Total spending on Ukraine has been on the order of $75 billion, almost all of which goes back right into the US economy. If Republican's were honest about reducing spending, then they would reduce social security, which is the major line item, or they would raise taxes on the rich. Trump just said that he is much richer than what he told the IRS... so in other words... he didn't pay all of his taxes. Let's start there, mate. ;-)
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  239. Russia doesn't have a cultural heritage. That's the real problem. It's a land of drunks.
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  240. Jeff Bezos' parents are said to have invested $250,000 in his garage startup. Their son is now worth $150 billion. ;-)
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  241. Elon Musk does not have the legal right to support a foreign government this way without approval of the US government. You really believe that Washington gave a green light here? Why would they have done that?
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  242. Russian communism was, at the end of the day, just a variation on Russian nationalism. Nothing has really changed since the days of the Tsars. Russians think of themselves as a superior race and their leadership will always exploit that.
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  243. I don't see him acting erratically with regards to Starlink. You really need to read up on US laws with regards to space assets and foreign governments. That's not child's play. I used to work on a science project once that used a satellite as one of its components. They had to request special clearance for me just so that I could read half a dozen pages of documentation about an American rocket (which I didn't even need for my work). There wasn't anything in there that I couldn't have guessed from open sources like engineering textbooks, by the way... but this stuff is classified, anyway.
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  244. The Russians are playing "Morituri te salutant!" and Emperor Putin loves it. ;-)
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  245. It's already happening. The EU doesn't want 30 million Ukrainian refugees in case that the front crumbles. I think you will see French and Polish and eventually German airwings over Ukraine before that happens. In that case, of course, the US is automatically involved.
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  246. Why are you telling us that you can't afford a Tesla? ;-)
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  247.  @geoffball4431  Why are you telling us that you can't afford a Tesla? ;-)
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  248. Look, Ma! The Russian troll is triggered. ;-)
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  249. This didn't age well yesterday, either... and it keeps aging worse. ;-)
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  250. Nobody should have been on Twitter to begin with. It was always set up as a tool for public self-immolation in 140 characters. Musk is a very smart man, but even he couldn't suppress his worst self-destructive impulses. At this point he seems utterly addicted to destroying himself at all cost... very few people in the history of the world would have paid $40 billion to buy the tools for their own destruction.
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  251. They want to "own the dems". :-)
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  252. US supremacy is pretty independent of who holds the power. There was a reason why Russia didn't make a move on Ukraine while Trump was president. The big stick was in the hands of a crazy person. But then, of course, Putin misjudged Biden completely. Biden is not the nice guy that he like to play in public. ;-)
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  253. Yes, MTG is disrespectful of anything that is deemed human. Please tell her to stop being herself. It makes all of us look really bad. ;-)
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  254. The problem lies with US intelligence. The US has space based assets that the Europeans can't match. Having said that, Ukraine knows this and has probably prepared itself for a war without the daily American satellite maps.
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  255. South Korea is not NATO and most likely never will be, but the Chinese can thank Putin that it soon will be the full equivalent of a NATO country. ;-)
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  256.  @DeeDee21498  Well, they are surely enriching it right now...
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  257. Palestinians also like to "forget" just how poorly they were treated by the Turkish before the British removed them from that land.
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  258. His personal opinion in this matter is irrelevant. He couldn't give support to Ukraine without the permission of the federal government even if he wanted to. I am kind of sure at this point that he probably can't withhold it, either. They probably told him that non-cooperation with the federal government will have serious consequences for his companies and probably even his person. That there is no love lost between Elon Musk and the Biden administration should be pretty obvious. Biden didn't even acknowledge Musk's critical role in kicking the global EV movement off, which was very petty, to say the least. Musk is who he is, but his accomplishments should be judged fairly, especially by democrats who claim to be truth-loving people. Unlike Trump Musk seems to be paying his taxes, as well, so he is not even a bad citizen. He rightfully complained about purely emotional attacks by key democrats on his person. On some level I can even feel his pain. I am not saying that I want to be associated with him in any form (and I am not), but he will probably become one of the most tragic public figures in the 21st century if he keeps going down this line.
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  259. People have been discussing that for approx. 2500 years. Nothing ever came of it.
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  260. Putin can hold out even with a failing Russian economy as long as he has enough henchmen. Works just fine in North Korea. Worked for many decades in the USSR.
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  261. Awh... look at you, kid! You are so triggered. ;-)
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  262. The hotel lobby of the "Hotel del Luna" soap set is actually bigger and grander than the hotel lobby of North Korea's only hotel for foreigners. OMG. That's funny. ;-)
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  263. Not sure how you imagine a couple soldiers "revolting" will end? Are you kidding me? Now, let's say the military leadership of a country starts a coup... is the result of that better in any meaningful sense? I have yet to see an example for that.
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  264.  @angrydoggy9170  These aren't military coups. Not that the French revolution made anything better in France... it just imposed a different kind of terror on the population... an intellectual kind that saw fear as the absolutely necessary cleansing tool. That's basically a sadist's fantasy. It is true that it ended in a military coup by Napoleon, a future Emperor who dreamt of world domination who couldn't be defeated except by a military (but not so much political) coalition of the remainder of Europe. The US revolution was essentially a white land owner's anti-tax movement that didn't mind writing slavery into the constitution, which it couldn't get rid off in any other way than by a bloody civil war that is still reverberating in at least half the hearts and minds in this nation. The idea of the common citizen as a soldier brought us the second amendment, which has made the US one of the most violent nations in the world. Please, let's stick to the facts here.
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  265.  @angrydoggy9170  True, some French think they are revolutionaries if they are holding up commuter traffic by protesting in yellow vests or something. ;-) Should Russians accept their fate under Putin? No. Do they have a choice? Not really. The best an intelligent Russian could have done was to leave Russia thirty years ago. And they did. What's left are very stupid people who deserve their Darwin Awards. ;-)
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  266. Putin is putting on a great reenactment of the end of the Third Reich. Hitler also ran out of men and then he sent in the kids to die for him.
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  267. Let me translate this for Russian soldiers: if the F-16s are coming in summer of 2024, then they will have to spend another bitter winter in WW I era trenches with ever fewer supplies. ;-)
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  268.  @madvestjan3718  Yes, you will go and hide underneath the next best rock. ;-)
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  269.  @madvestjan3718  You already are. ;-)
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  270.  @madvestjan3718  That's why I have to give you more attention. ;-)
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  271. Republics are bad. They turn into banana republics quite easily. ;-)
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  272. Guess what? Nobody gives a shit. Certainly not the Russians who don't know any of that. :-)
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  273. Russians hate themselves all the time. It's a nation without love. Nothing we can do about that.
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  274. A psychopath is not a crazy person. They simply don't feel empathy for others, but that does not mean that they aren't acting rationally. Putin grew up during the Cold War, so he knows exactly what nuclear weapons can do... and what they can't. Putin may also know, or at least strongly suspect, that Ukraine is a nation that has nuclear weapons. It was, after all, holding a large part of the stockpile of the USSR. Anybody who believes that all of the weapons that Ukraine had after the USSR broke up were completely accounted for probably lives on Mars. It is highly likely that there are at least a few working low yield and dirty bombs in the possession of Ukraine. The scrambling actions of the Russian military in Chernobyl and other nuclear facilities are indicative that they suspect that Ukraine has a secret nuclear program going that has yielded some "useful" results. Russia can't risk going all in. I believe it's really that simple.
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  275. Russia also needs to order a North Korean submarine. I heard theirs are cheap and almost as reliable as the Russian ones. ;-)
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  276. The difference is that Israel has a GDP of over $500 billion, while Ukraine hovers around $160 billion. Israel has three times the economy of Ukraine. It's over ten times per capita.
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  277. None of what you are saying here is based on rational analysis. It sounds more like hate for the man. Seriously, why don't you do a deep dive into American laws about the support of foreign governments and the special rules for space technology? Just for fun... if you can still use the left side of your brain without offending the right side that just wants to hate for no reason.
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  278. Yes, that was bullshit. ;-)
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  279. Well, if they know that then the all need to up their defense games very quickly... because so far they all have been relying on the US completely. ;-)
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  280.  @Prufrock888  Are you threating to cut off your nose to spite my face now? Dude, grow up. ;-)
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  281. Drones? Drones are a billion dollar industry. Once this is over Ukraine will manufacture them in large numbers and export them all over the world. The US military will have to rethink all of its strategies because the era of the drone wars is actually here.
    1
  282. Since SpaceX followed American laws to the dot here... at no point. ;-)
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  283.  @СерхиоБускетс-ф7я  Awh, the little Russian bot is feeling sorry for himself. ;-)
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  284. I am not worried. The US will be fighting Russia one way or another. If it happens through an expanded war between Russia and NATO, then it will even be fighting with boots on the ground.
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  285.  @marioceva7163  Why does NATO have to fight Russia? Russia didn't make it anywhere close to a NATO border. ;-)
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  286.  @marioceva7163  NATO was never asking for a fight with anybody. It's Russia that started this war of choice. NATO has also not fired a single shot in anger. I don't think Russia wants to find out what happens if it does. ;-)
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  287. If your children don't listen to you, then that's your problem. Not ours. Unless, of course, you want us to take your children away from you? Is that what you want? ;-)
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  288.  @Zer-o-ne  We tried prohibition... remember? Guys like you began to make moonshine and thousands died of methanol poisoning. :-)
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  289.  @Zer-o-ne  We tried to keep it safe from you... it obviously didn't work. Look at you... you are talking like a drunk. ;-)
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  290. The government can not prevent Twitter from allowing free speech, even if that irks you. That's the difference between Russia and us... we don't lock people up for 20 years for speaking their minds. Should that ever happen, then I personally would be out of here in a split second. I used to live under Russian rule where one had to weigh every word... or else.
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  291. This probably won't end before we reach about a million Russian soldiers KIA and another two million wounded.
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  292.  @grievetan  The USSR didn't win. The Americans ended the war by using nuclear weapons against the Japanese. Russia never recovered economically and demographically from the double genocides of Hitler and Stalin. While the US has seen a steady influx of highly skilled people for over a century, Russia is experiencing a steady brain drain since the fall of the iron curtain. There is no metric on which Russia wins... maybe with exception of alcoholism and political stupidity.
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  293. Did you have a stroke just now? ;-)
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  294. What's up with the anger? Are you getting help with that? ;-)
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  295. He is probably like Hitler at this point... living on a diet of amphetamines and barbiturates. ;-)
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  296. It's just a flesh wound. ;-)
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  297. You sound jealous of the man. ;-)
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  298. @@avamarina6380 So you are a moth? Sounds about right. :-)
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  299. @@avamarina6380 Are you a bird, too? How about a squirrel or a mousse? ;-)
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  300. @@avamarina6380 You are clearly paranoid. I can not do anything to your replies. That's all done automatically by YouTube's server algorithms and I have no influence over those. Please get help with those fears of yours. Take care!
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  301. If you give California away, who will pay for Alaska? ;-)
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  302.  @rev.donkbonkers3244  In other words, you are just a bullshitter who wants attention. Works for me, kid. ;-)
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  303. The new military commander is sacrificing significantly more Russian troops and equipment than the old one. Absolutely no learning has taken place in Russia, yet.
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  304. Why would a person who can't even speak proper English vote for a person who can? That would be outright silly. You can only vote for people who have the vocabulary and emotional maturity of a kindergartener. ;-)
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  305. Nice theory about all out war, but that would mean all out war against NATO. Ukraine has some 50 fighter aircraft. NATO has over 3000... and they can attack Russia from the West, the North and the East. Russian air defense would be very busy... for a day. Then there would be no more Russian air defense. After that there would be no more Russian fleet and then NATO would dismantle all of Russian logistics and transportation hubs. The entire country would run out of gasoline and diesel within a week, tops. How do you think Russians would think about the war if the stores were empty? ;-)
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  306. Cry some more. :-)
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  307. Biden may be a lot of things, but he does not look like a fearful old man. I would suggest you take a really good look at the level of destruction that this war has been unleashing on Russia. They now have over 600,000 killed and wounded, lost a sizable portion of their cold war weapons arsenal and the bleeding won't stop. By mid next year Russia will be well into a million casualties and it will have lost most of its weapons. That is the strategy behind the US and NATO actions. Drag this out and make Russia pay an impossible price. We the people are not guilty by anything. Neither is Biden. The only guilty parties here are Vladimir Putin and his henchmen.
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  308.  @terjeoseberg990  I would not bet on that. Especially not in case of those that have been maintained by Ukraine. ;-)
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  309. In Russia it's mostly alcoholism and a large fraction of Trump voters are hard working, opioid addicted white Americans. ;-)
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  310. That's a really strong threat, given that you don't even have money to pay next month's rent. ;-)
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  311. Because that's another turn of the screw.
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  312. The US didn't spend that money in those countries. It spent most of it right here in the US. We are spending close to a trillion a year to keep the world a safer place. There has also been no reluctance to help Ukraine. The US has been giving Ukraine vital intelligence long before the war even began. Without that intelligence Ukraine would have been overrun for sure. Moreover, it is highly likely that the US has been sabotaging the military space resources of Russia for a very long time. That Russia is virtually blind on the battlefield is the result of decades of active US defense posture.
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  313. The Russian intelligence services made sure of that. He may not have been alive at that point, though. ;-)
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  314. Close contact with uranium metal will give you a "uranium tan" due to the beta radiation (electrons) from the U238 decays. The heavy metal toxicity will degrade your intelligence... just like lead exposure. ;-)
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  315. Less drinking, Comrade. ;-)
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  316.  @claudenewton8932  No, thank you. The world does not need another alcoholic, so I will not try for myself just how quickly alcohol degrades the brain. You are example enough. ;-)
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  317. We are. ;-)
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  318. Russia is hell. ;-)
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  319. The no-fly zone will be implemented, eventually, either in form of Ukrainian air superiority or by NATO as part of a wide scale escalation. You have to keep in mind that there are only two or three steps between a NATO enforced no-fly-zone and nuclear war. One should not escalate to that level easily. Ukraine is doing just fine eliminating the Russian army right now, by the way. It comes at a very high human cost, but it is happening nevertheless.
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  320. Wagner are mercenaries. They don't care about anything other than money and now that the source of that money is gone, Wagner is gone.
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  321. Why are you taking the opinion of clowns seriously? ;-)
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  322.  @daniellarson3068  Anger tends to cloud the mind as well. Why don't you read up on the legal framework in the US. A US citizen/company CAN NOT support a foreign country with these kinds of activities without the explicit OK of the US administration. That would automatically trigger a visit by the FBI and it wouldn't end there but in jail. I used to work for a company that made fairly trivial dual use technology. They were joking about what they would do if they ever got an order for e.g. 500 pieces of that product from Lagos... and the answer was to inform the FBI and to tear up the purchase order. Yes, it really is that simple. If SpaceX didn't support Ukraine, then the order for that came from Washington and nowhere else. ;-)
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  323. You can make the same argument for the political right in the US.
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  324. Because it forces the GOP into a really, really bad situation. The culture wars are deep inside the GOP now. You basically have an entire faction that is willing to defund social security to remove a book from the high school library that talks about gay culture. ;-)
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  325. Putin is doing a lot of things, like kissing up to North Korea... but he is surely not laughing. This isn't going as it was planned. The problem is that he can't back down without being killed himself.
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  326. Look, Ma! The Russian troll is projecting. ;-)
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  327. There is almost no economy in Crimea. Why would the bridge be worth anything?
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  328. A billion dollar's a day... that's roughly Apple's revenue. That's not even the world's budget on lattes. ;-)
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  329. The CIA never pays for something it can get for free. ;-)
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  330. I don't see any difference between the propaganda of the Third Reich and that of Putin's henchmen. Both are appealing to a special status for their own people that dehumanizes the rest of the world. And if you don't applaud, then it dehumanizes you, psychologically (you are not a patriot) and physically (by torture, intimidation and by locking you up). It's the exact same cheap dictatorship horror show as always.
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  331. They are using "officers" with machine guns and artillery now. ;-)
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  332. Does looking at dead people stimulate you emotionally? If not, why would you want to????? What's wrong with you?
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  333. Good luck to China with that. They will need it. But then... they already have a small fleet and afterwards they will have no fleet. So that would be an upside. ;-)
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  334. Look, nobody can tell you not to do sh*t. Well, we can, but people rarely listen. This is just the Darwin Awards drawing some more winners. :-)
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  335. The background is a little different. Russia tries to get Ukraine to reshuffle their air defense systems, which are defending the military assets near perfectly but are not sufficient to protect all of the civilian population. That "problem" didn't exist in WW II. Ukraine will, of course, not fall for that.
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  336. Even that is not certain. Ukraine has a nuclear option that involves people. Should Russia break through, then 30 million Ukrainian refugees will pour into Europe, which would automatically trigger a military response from at least Poland and then NATO would be involved, anyway, whether the US president wanted it or not. Treaties can trigger global wars. See WW I.
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  337. That's not vengeful. That's just reality.
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  338. I talked to a Trump voter a long time ago who wanted "creative destruction". You have to wonder what is going on in those minds... it all sounds like serious mental disease to me.
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  339. Cry some more. ;-)
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  340. We don't know what Ukraine has. For a country that is running out of ammunition it sure has destroyed a lot of Russian equipment and soldiers yesterday... It is also unlikely that the Russians are only gunning for a few civilians with all those drones, cruise missiles and rockets.
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  341. We have a lot of old folks who are senile. That's the people who are voting for these clowns. ;-)
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  342.  @GCarty80  A sane republican is called a democrat. ;-)
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  343. If you can't service credit card debt, then don't use credit cards. What's the problem here? 4-6% is on the low end of historic interest rates. Almost all human economic activity is more risky than that. The last decade of low interest rates is an indicator that US monetary policy was not keeping up with the world economy. Now, you can argue that the US should not be providing the dollar as an exchange quantity for the entire world economy because that causes a really strong correlation between domestic US policies and the world economy in total. I will agree with that, OTOH, it is a major financial income source for the US. The only possible replacement for the US dollar would be at least two to three million legal immigrants a year and even then we would be increasing the total dollar money flow like crazy because of the job creation for these immigrants.
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  344. And China. Both need to be removed.
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  345. If Poland were to go through with that plan (which they might), then they would be spending around $35 billion on defense a year. That puts them in 13th place in the world, roughly on par with Australia. It's far below Germany and the UK. Not sure how they would be "pushing" the UK around with a land army. Are they also investing heavily in the longest pontoon bridge in the world? ;-)
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  346. And what would be wrong about non-ethnic Russians not having to live under Russian rule? What you are saying is that the US should invade Canada and Mexico for their own sakes and then maybe should keep going all the way to Patagonia since there are no strong countries in South America, either. That's just idiotic.
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  347.  @stevematthews4489  That's how it sounded like to me when you said that only an Imperial Russia can be stable. That is completely false. Russia would do far better if it had oriented itself toward Europe. The culture and style of Moscow and St. Petersburg are, after all, directly borrowed from France. At this point, of course, Europeans see Russians as the new Mongolian hordes and Stalinism was not an exception but the rule. It will take Russians at least a hundred years to shake that, even with best efforts, which will not be forthcoming, of course. Russia is, at this time, begging to be restrained and, worst case, destroyed.
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  348. We don't like murderers. That's my best guess. ;-)
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  349. Joe Biden started this war? Dude, are you OK? :-)
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  350. The only way for Ukraine to assure piece is to destroy Russia. The only way to that is by taking Crimea back. That's the entire calculus.
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  351. I will take you seriously as soon as you are betting your house on it. ;-)
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  352. You got that right, but I doubt the loss of a few ships would lead to WW3, either. To Russia its sailors are completely expendable and always have been.
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  353. The reason why Russia was holding back might be Ukrainian nukes. ;-)
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  354. Wasteful spending like... social security? :-)
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  355.  @terrycarter1137  Awhhh... look at you, you have a desperate need to make a total fool out of yourself by hitting on all the culture wars bullshit. Would you like a bridge to nowhere with that? Republicans love to build those. ;-)
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  356. It wasn't a matter of strength back then. It was a matter of not starting a nuclear war. Please also note that no amount of military support would have been sufficient for the people of Czechoslovakia and Hungary to defend themselves. Ukraine is a different matter entirely as you can see. Ukraine is strong enough to keep Russia at bay.
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  357. At least that was funny. ;-)
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  358. Let's see... NATO GDP will increase by approx. $200 billion during those 7 years, so that's a boost to the economies of the US and Europe by $1.4 trillion. Thank you, Russia! We need full employment really badly. :-)
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  359. Exactly. The US won't lose this time, either. ;-)
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  360. The laws in the US are fairly clear. The president can not spend money that Congress has not allocated. What he can do, and you might see Biden doing just that if Congress does not allocate money, is to send in the US air force to ensure a no-fly zone over Ukrainian territory, which would be enormously helpful to Ukrainian ground troops. It is perfectly possible that the GOP is hoping for that. It's not obvious to me that such a move would be politically disadvantageous to Biden, either. Americans have a tendency to support a strong acting president even if they politically disagree with him.
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  361. China won't attack Russia. The only possible response that Russia could muster would be nuclear and China is extremely vulnerable to nuclear attacks because it has such densely populated urban areas. The only time that China would interfere in the border areas would be if Russia were to break apart and they could claim that they are "defending" the Chinese population in those areas. Which would be a complete lie, of course.
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  362. SpaceX is not even allowed by US law to support a foreign government without the permission of the US government. Do you guys know American law, at all? ;-)
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  363. Like the can openers in the canteen? ;-)
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  364. Yes, all three of them will vote against it. ;-)
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  365. So what made you become a fascist? Was it the brown shirts? ;-)
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  366. MAGA exists because of an aging population of people who think they didn't get "their share" of the US economy. I spoke to some of them. There isn't much more behind it than childish "revenge for perceived wrongs". If they can't be happy, then they don't want anybody else to be happy, either. Old people have a limited lifetime. The phenomenon will go away, eventually. The question is how much more damage it will cause.
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  367.  @Meethra_Padapolis  Why would you put a limit to suffering if you start a war? The more of its own citizens Russia kills in this war of choice, the better for the world. ;-)
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  368. Yes, Putin will continue until he has nothing left in the tank.
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  369. I doubt that that's how most Europeans see it. Neither have I ever heard the two sided argument from a Muslim. So, who are you kidding, child? ;-)
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  370. There are monthly and annual tests of this kind. Somebody else might know which laws and regulations require them.
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  371. Neither would require an actual annexation of the territory. A simple contract between the two countries would suffice. Having said that, Trump is just trolling. Nothing of this sort will happen.
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  372. Russian wet dreams are getting ever wetter, aren't they, Comrade? :-)
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  373. Sort of, but that is not what autism looks like. One should really invent a new name for this kind of condition. I used to know autistic kids and they are nothing like Elon Musk. They can hardly tie their shoes. It's not a "spectrum" thing as parents of autistic children are being told, probably mostly out of mercy.
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  374. Most Russians who live "out there" don't have money for Starlink. Just because there is a need does not mean there is money to be made. You also need to understand that there are many places in the world where small local companies are already providing low cost high speed internet with WIFI and directional antennas. The situation is not nearly as "dire" as most people seem to think. It's also not clear that Starlink is just a harmless private enterprise. There might very well be a government interest in the R&D that went into the system.
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  375. Putin has been very careful not to escalate to the point where a direct military involvement of the US becomes inevitable. The Russians talk a lot but on average they are acting conservatively. Ukraine also hasn't played its biggest hands, yet. They have clearly demonstrated that they can take out most of Russia's refining capacity, if necessary. That was probably as much a shot to the bow of the US than it was one to Russia. Destroying Russia's critical infrastructure right now is not the best of ideas, but if there has been no change in the US support by winter then Ukraine will try to bring Russia's transportation infrastructure to a grinding halt during the winter months. It's unlikely that Russia has the air defense capacity left to prevent that. If the Ukrainians are preparing thousands of long range autonomous drones for such an attack (and why would they not?), then it will shut down the country for good. It doesn't take a nuclear attack. A conventional attack with toy planes will be enough. I think the US needs to be very aware of the consequences of that and help Ukraine to win this conflict without such an escalation.
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  376. I would pretty much ignore at this point what Putin is saying. He has threatened to nuke us all three dozen times... and there was no follow-up. ;-)
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  377. Russia is only pro-Putin. Well... Putin is really pro-Putin. He doesn't care what Russia wants. ;-)
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  378. That's because states can not control the money supply and they operate under different economic rules than the federal government. They also have very different responsibilities that exclude major line items like social security, defense and R&D. States do not pay for most of the technical innovation that happens in this country, even though they greatly profit from it. That line item alone represents the entire GDP of a small country like Hungary. Not everything is like home economics and the federal government can simply not go broke.
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  379. I do understand your sentiment on some level, but let me remind you what happened the last time Germany was a "leading" nation. That didn't go so well for Europe and Germany TWICE. As a consequence the German government has been preaching "Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen" (peace, joy, egg cake) to multiple generations of German students in public schools. That educational campaign actually worked really well. So, yes, now you have a VERY peace loving nation in the center of Europe that will be extremely hard to convince that it should be sending its soldiers into another war with Russia. You may also have noticed that the immigration question has been driving German right wing nationalists (aka Nazis) to the polls lately. The problem with right wing German nationalists is that they don't see right wing Swedish nationalists like yourself as equals. They may see you as a means to an end, just like they saw right win Italian nationalist in WW II as canon fodder, but that's as much as you can hope for. To these people you are still an Untermensch, no matter how much you may think otherwise. So, yeah, I would not advise Europe to wake den Deutschen Drachen. Nothing good will come from it.
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  380. Elon will be very sad to hear that. Your respect was very valuable to him. ;-)
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  381.  @tarkov_6  A lot of people seem to think that being the voice of an idiot on the internet makes them important. ;-)
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  382. The news value of Israel is higher, right now. That doesn't mean that European leaders are taking their eyes off Ukraine. That's their own back yard burning.
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  383. What did Western countries lie about? ;-)
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  384. Yes, they tried that last time, too... didn't work. Won't work this time, either. In a sense it has probably begun, already. Russia is desperately trying to seize territory in the North to block Ukraine from going all in towards Crimea. It's not working.
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  385. Why would you give Russia free information about NATO air defense systems... to protect trees? Dude. ;-)
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  386.  @HangPutin00  We have an AWACS and a few other high altitude systems flying that have full visibility from tree level to the stratosphere. Not to mention that NATO is getting all the data from Ukraine's systems all the time... plenty of coverage. No need to waste NATO equipment. ;-)
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  387. What is the risk of taking down a mad dog? You may get bitten but the dog is gone and that will be the end of it. :-)
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  388.  @bakersmileyface  It's all good, as long as the dog is gone. ;-)
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  389. They were joking about going all the way to the shores of Portugal before the war began. Maybe somebody should have shown them a map of Europe. :-)
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  390. Huh? Russia hasn't developed any new civilian rocket technology in ages. There is nothing there to "want". Elon Musk is suffering from a number of mental problems, some developmental, some personality disorders. He used to be a very high functioning business man (that's in the past since his Twitter acquisition) and we will see how well he still functions as a technologist after SpaceX launches Starship, again, and after the release of the Cybertruck by Tesla. Tesla's lack of innovation in recent years makes me wonder of anybody is still controlling that "vehicle". It seems to be on Autopilot these days (pun!) and might very well run into a standing object these days. Organizations are like that... they function just fine even years after they literally lose their heads... and then they just collapse.
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  391. These people aren't listening to the voice of reason.
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  392. Because these things are part of "diplomacy". One can use words to hurt others, you know, even in matters of war.
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  393. Yes, and just like us they won't use any of them. Nukes work as a deterrent. They are absolutely crappy as a military option.
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  394. Ukraine has roughly the same economy in terms of GDP per capita as Russia. In areas controlled by Russia right now there is virtually no economy left.
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  395. Is that why you folks were voting for Trump? :-)
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  396. Iraq has at least a theoretical chance to become a country, again, in which life is worth living. Russia, right now, is not.
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  397. Because he is an old man with all the wrong principles.
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  398.  @soho2409  Yes, that's a good example for old and wrong principles. ;-)
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  399.  @soho2409  I haven't been pro-Palestinian since 1972. These people can't be helped. They have removed themselves from the realistic plane of existence.
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  400. How does that stupid line work out for you? Did it advance the lives of the Palestinian people for the last 75 years? No, it didn't. So why do you keep proving the definition of insanity? :-)
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  401. You can't buy weapons that nobody will sell to you for any money in the world. The sale of modern weapons systems is completely controlled by the governments of Western countries.
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  402. Trump just appealed and may have a chance to get back on the ballot if the courts agree with him. The lady does not get that chance. :-)
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  403. What would it take? A miracle that produces all those long range weapons and pilots and infrastructure for those planes. ;-)
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  404. You are looking at a confused old man on drugs.
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  405. The price for Ukraine's protection is the complete demilitarization of Russia. It is in progress, right now. :-)
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  406.  @Anglo-Brit  That "handful" of nations includes most of the democratic world in one way or another. I think we can do without Tonga sending a war canoe and a few stone clubs. ;-)
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  407.  @Anglo-Brit  Sending more wouldn't necessarily lead to a better outcome. The current strategy of exhausting Russia's military is probably the only workable one and it will take at least another couple of years. As much as I feel for the Ukrainian people, if they want this resolved for more than just a couple of years, they will have to shoulder the hard task of destroying the entire Russian military slowly and systematically.
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  408. Are you getting mental health services for that? ;-)
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  409. Why would that allow him to break US national security laws, exactly? :-)
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  410. At this point every Russian has to understand that in the eyes of the civilized world right now the only good Russian is a dead Russian... and they have to act accordingly. Yes, redemption comes at a cost. In this case it would probably cost thousands of Russian lives in Moscow... which is still better than a million Russian lives in Ukraine, isn't it? ;-)
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  411. I doubt Putin actually wants Trump as president. He didn't attack Ukraine while Trump was president, which indicates that the Russians know that he can't be controlled. He may do something really, really stupid involving nuclear weapons. ;-)
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  412. There are some mighty strong places on those platforms. :-)
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  413. Dude, nobody took you seriously when you were threatening not to buy that giant house that you can't afford, either. Stop being childish. :-)
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  414.  @Jack-ed7jb  Let me give you some attention. It's pretty obvious that the ladies aren't. ;-)
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  415. Now you are thinking like a lawyer! Very good. Two thumbs up!
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  416. Yes, that includes themselves. That is what NATO is counting on. :-)
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  417. I wouldn't be so sure about that. Old men have a real talent to send young men to die for their demented ideas about the past. ;-)
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  418.  @shock_n_Aweful  Young men and women don't have power. It doesn't matter what they think. The culture wars in the US don't come from young people, either. They are designed by and mostly targeting the demented generation of voters.
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  419. Most of the "information" you are hearing is either open source or misinformation. If you were paying attention to US strategy in particular, its a carefully crafted crescendo. First there were not going to be heavy weapons. Then there were heavy weapons. Then no tanks... until there were tanks. Then there were no planes, until there were planes. Now there are no long range missiles... until next Tuesday, when there will be long range missiles. If I were Putin I would not put this to the ultimate test... whether the US is willing to lend Ukraine a few nukes. ;-)
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  420. They have been talking it up for forty years, but they simply didn't have the political crowbar to move anything. Now a few crazies figure they can use Ukraine for that purposed.
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  421. SpaceX is controlled by a very stringent set of national security laws and it is strongly tied into federal funding. There is only so much Elon Musk can do without running up against the powers of the federal government. I wouldn't worry too much about that. As others have remarked... what is happening here is more a matter of psychology. Musk seems to be have become addicted to positive feedback from his followers. I am not completely certain but he may also be on (legally prescribed) drugs. A psychologist would probably not call his personality disorders "well controlled", though. He is becoming more eccentric as he ages, which is not unheard of for billionaires in his field. He actually seems to parallel the life of Howard Hughes on some level. Let's hope for him that the ending will be better.
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  422. Russia had nothing to offer in 1945, either. The living conditions in Germany improved exponentially after the end of the war and by the mid 1950s it was more prosperous than before the war. Economic development behind the iron curtain was far slower. In West Germany you could easily buy a dozen cars a day if you had the money, in the German Democratic Republic you could buy one model... if you were willing to wait for 20 years. ;-)
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  423. Little Jack who can't even speak proper English is begging for attention. ;-)
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