Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "Professor Gerdes Explains 🇺🇦 "
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Well, it wasn't that Bragg was a Civil War general, after all, were that only the case, renaming it Fort Grant should be acceptable.
It was that Bragg was a Confederate general, who had betrayed his oath to the US Army to join the Confederate forces and made war against the United States and that is the only crime described in the US Constitution - treason. That's kind of considered a big deal. Might as well, along with Fort Lee and some others, had named them all Fort Treason.
Indeed, why don't we have a Fort Benedict Arnold?
Now, it's at least face saving renamed to someone that actually did serve with honor.
Hegseth's take on the Russian fleet, well I still have trouble recognizing him without his usual lampshade on his head. He recently had conducted a European interview and was seen drinking from multiple tumblers of what certainly looked to be whiskey. Guess his word to Jesus before Congress had a short expiration date.
Still, Russian equipment isn't fully depleted, I'm sure that they still have some lend-lease equipment knocking about, to keep their jackasses company on the ground. Oh wait, if their fleet had rusting problems after the Soviet collapse, their WWII vessels are probably just rust held together loosely by paint. Obviously, our guns and missiles are no match for rust!
More interesting, the peace talks, the US, Russia and oh, Ukraine isn't invited to discuss divvying up the carcass of Ukraine. Trump wants those rare earths and even money, some farmland for corporate US farming firms. Russia wants the same for Russian usage, don't see those talks going far and I suspect Ukraine still has quite a bit to say.
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It does speak to desperation on the part of Putin, not so much the motorcycles, which have been used effectively in the past, being difficult to target in the past. The desperation part being first launching IRBM's with MIRV warheads, which are indistinguishable from nuclear versions by any means until the warhead reaches its target, posing a risk of misinterpretation of strategic nuclear weapons being launched and a response by every NATO associated nuclear deterrent force.
Now, attacking when a NATO head of state is visiting, with full knowledge in advance of said visit, risking letters of last resort authorizing the launch of SLBM's from effectively point blank range onto Russia. The letters directing countervalue or counterforce options and currently unknown to even allied NATO powers.
As for armor, the current delay is likely due to getting their old WWII stock running and operational again. Yeah, they still have those in stock. They've largely depleted all of their modern stock and most of their Cold War stock. Maybe horse regiments after that, in conjunction with nukes?
And if a nuke goes long and into a NATO nation, Article 5 and NATO replies in kind are inevitable.
And even money, given YT policies as observed, this will get deleted and I'll be in YT jail again. Because, anything anti-Russia gets poked by YT with a sharp stick.
Well, let's see next Monday, Vice President Trump did promise to stop the Russia-Ukrainian war on day one. Assuming that President Musk will allow that. Someone will have to tell me if it happens, as I'm scheduled to walk my unicorns, then go for a long flight on my pigasus, then resolve a fairy strike.
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@Mark-jy6xd pakka mat, chod.
Or if you prefer, bint haram bin Ibils.
Or putana su mama.
I've got a few other languages to discuss your lineage in detail.
Trakhni tvoyu mat'.
Just being polite, mind you.
And for the record and full disclosure, my medication list is a beta blocker, calcium channel blocker, thyroid blocker, a steroid, a proton pump inhibitor, magnesium oxide and oh, ran out of drugs that I'm on.
So, feel free to pull my finger.
That ain't my finger, strange man.
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First, a Tweet or Xhit does not an executive order make.
Second, if autopen were disqualifying, we're going to have to return the entirety of the Louisiana Purchase to France, which is literally both our most productive farmland and around 1/3 of the country, as Jefferson signed most documents by polygraph, an early version of autopen.
Finally, pardons have even been granted by telephone, which was contested in court and won - the telephoning president being Trump.
And just which president was given a Montreal cognitive assessment again? Oh yeah, Trump and physicians don't perform those in a vacuum, they perform them when they suspect disease is present.
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He actually walked around the POTUS insignia bearing podium and made that salute three times, not once.
And not an actual Nazi salute, but the original fascist Italian salute authorized by Mussolini.
First, why is he at a podium bearing the seal of the President of the United States of America? Oh yeah, the inauguration. The Capitol Rotunda.
So, more than anything, given the grunt, body language and facial expressions, basically an "up yours" to those sensitive and a suggestion of how the maladministration will proceed. Especially given that he paid for the election endgame.
And Trump just recently tweaked some noses, suggesting Musk being in Pennsylvania had something going on with the vote tallying computers, which is obviously nonsensical, but now will bear investigation due to the repeated claim, in 67 counties. Because state budgets aren't important to the wannabe emperor.
Additionally, the "Roman salute" is mythical, there's absolutely no historical mention of that salute, it's basically from an artist's work in the 1800's and Hollywood ran with that ball. Not atypical for Hollywood to run with the ball and turning out to be running with a ping pong ball in a football game.
Honestly, out of all Hollywoodified military salutes, I prefer the Spaceballs salute.
And yeah, the Victoria Cross was created in 1856, so Queen Victoria was a Nazi 64 years before the Nazi Party existed, must've used the Obama time machine.
I did have a toothbrush mustache once. An accident with a Zippo lighter and high winds rather pruned one side, evened it up, yeah, that thing came off that night and I grew it back in a less absurd looking way.
Given Musk is the Liberace of the business world, great showman, minimal to moderate skill as a developer of software and utterly incapable of mechanical engineering, but excellent at hiring quality managers, my read of it is, an intention to "trigger the libs" and distract from other things going on behind the scenes. Much the same as Trump's BS about Musk and computers and I've some familiarity with computers, doing IT and IT security for a living and some knowledge of Pennsylvania polling and vote counting practices, being born and raised in the state and again a PA resident.
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Frankly, with Vance's first tirade, well, Zelensky's a far better man than me. I'd have fractured Vance's hyloid bone and explained that a Marine just fell to an old Army retiree.
Trust me, the psychological impact of that is tremendous. And like Marines, we also got paid to take martial arts classes and use them downrange.
And I'm not typically one inclined to strike first.
That said, he's antagonistic because he questioned the words of the god-king. That's black heresy and should've been rewarded by burning at the stake or something. The god was challenged and the challenger must be punished by the faithful, the worst the punishment, the more faithful the follower is.
And I counter with, those rare earth metals won't ever go to the United States of America, I'll have them reacted with other elements to be unrefinable first. And chemically, it wouldn't take much to render even rare earths commercially nonviable with common elements. I also freely admit to a character flaw, I am a very, very, very, very vindictive man.
Still, there is one upside for this imbroglio. The UK has had a mutually warm reception between their PM and President Zelensky. I just checked my magical 8 ball, the odds look good for a rare earth mineral deal for the occasionally United Kingdom.*
*Kind of an in joke between some friends in the UK and myself, I make a similar quip about the rarely United States of America. I'm also known to poke fun at everyone, especially myself, because well, the lowest hanging fruit is the easiest available.
But then, if I somehow royally, immeasurably ever screwed up and ended up as POTUS, I'd refer to my office as the Oaf Filled Office and when SNL lampooned me, at the earliest opportunity, I'd be on SNL lampooning myself properly and likely outscoring them in belly laughs.
After all, my skin is nearly as thick as my skull, which literally stunned a goat once. Yeah, that's a true story of both epic poor judgement around goats, species miscommunication and well, a goat literally butting me in the forehead and it ended up stunned, while I rubbed a sore spot and said, "Ow!", much to my wife's mirth. She literally swore unto her dying day that that goat's eyes crossed, not that I could tell, it was only sitting on its rump, rear legs crossed, front legs splayed and wobbling.
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As you've mentioned, we've had bases on Greenland, hell, we still have Thule AFB, now under the Space Command and hence, still USAF as the Space Force is only a combatant command under the USAF.
With radar that looks to space and sea. With the SOSUS net, which runs across the GIUK gap, so that no evil, nasty Ruskie submarine can sneaky through.
So, given our ability to have Denmark (well, until now) rubber stamp anything we wanted to install there, it's a simpler question.
Why buy the cow when you already get the milk for free?
Greenland talks about independence, albeit very weakly, as most of their GNP comes from Denmark.
The mineral wealth is dubious in some ways, as much of it is under the glacier and nobody has ever considered mining through a kilometer of ice. Or even doing more than drilling ice cores.
Well, other than us, we did try to build an ICBM base inside of the glacier, due to differential movements within the glacier, the hallways literally stopped lining up quickly, the nuclear reactor they installed to power the base leaked like the proverbial sieve from the hot loop, we eventually abandoned the base and the drums of radioactive ice there - right until Denmark found out about it and made us come back and clean that shit up.
Leaving only areas that are glacier free for exploitation and there's no promise from nature that Greenland won't do to our mines what it did to the Viking settlements - bury them in ice later on.
No, rather than buying the cow, he wants to buy the cow and pasture of ice, then pay someone to travel 1900 miles to get the milk that was formerly delivered.
And rather than use diplomatic channels and methods, he went bull in the china shop looking for the tea service. Well, that service is now shards on the floor, good job, what next, fire?
As for Russian threats, they're no greater now than they were before. Russia doesn't have Star Trek transporters, ships travel around the same speeds now as during WWII. Airplanes have been traveling at the same speeds for two generations. Missiles have been around since the 1960's, albeit at much lower numbers of 1550 deliverable warheads for the US, around 1650 or so for Russia.
And Arctic ice clearing opens up areas far, far, far closer to Russia and just as wealthy in rare earths as on Greenland, especially near the Siberian Traps, where massive magmatic provinces brought such elements to the surface and water did its thing separating them into veins that are now becoming accessible.
Or maybe it'll become, Greenland today, Iceland tomorrow and next week, Airstrip One. I guess Obama could get the part of Manny Goldstein...
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The missile attack wasn't much of anything, the Russians literally took an off the shelf intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) and duck taped a MIRV bus from an ICBM in place, the results being more off target than close to target and basically, missing their intended target by as much as our atomic bomb missed its target in Nagasaki (literally nearly two miles off target).
Assuming the rocket factory was the intended target. That's early 1960's accuracy.
Current single warhead accuracy, which should be on par with MIRV accuracy, expected to be at most 90 feet from target. The equivalent of showing up to a modern sniper duel with a smooth bore Brown Bess infantry musket from the Revolutionary War. Suffice it to say, not quite even an annoyance - especially given the dummy rounds the warhead bus was loaded with.
Was it hypersonic, yeah, anything suborbital would be hypersonic, about half the velocity of what an ICBM would come in at, but still actually well, half the speed of an ICBM and easily enough intercepted. Just another hand wave to suggest he'd use nukes to get his way, while not doing so and ratcheting up the nuclear tensions as much.
The economic side, well, that's just comedy gold. It's right up there with Trump's interpretation of tariffs and who pays for said tariffs.
Japan and HIMARS, yeah, goes with Russia "producing" missiles and China's ambitions toward Taiwan and well, overall telling the US to stay on our own continent, trade and interests be damned or else we'll nuke you, nukety, nukety, nuke, nuke, nuke, boo.
To which I reply, well, all of our carriers are nuclear capable and oh, none need to be accompanied by the incessantly used oceangoing tug that keeps your single carrier mobile. Also, nobody has yet to sink one of our cruisers with missiles, despite a few attempts, how's your newest submarine Moskva doing again?
Trump's selection for envoy to Ukraine, odd interpretations out there on that. Envoys don't set foreign policy, the POTUS and Congress work together to do so, typically with POTUS leading, Congress consenting or removing assent and POTUS must then adjust or lose funding for those efforts. Despite Trump's desire for acquiring the right of imperial decree.
I won't go into economics, I know my areas of competence and my understanding is elementary at best. I do know psychological operations, nuclear operations, general military operations, information operations and nuclear doctrine and operations with IRBM's quite well, as that last was what I began my military career in. An ICBM can reach anywhere on the planet, hell, our space programs were basically a dick showing match on ICBM accuracy, reliability and quality, because if you can reach the moon and return, you can reach anywhere on the planet with accuracy. IRBM, those are around a thousand miles or so and less with accuracy within 90 feet or so for both ICBM and IRBM classes, a bit closer today, hence the smaller warheads compared to the 1960's.
The increased accuracy is why we moved operations from the old Cheyenne Mountain bunker to a regular office building, as the accuracy rendered that bunker moot - it'd be destroyed with an accurate precise hit, when when the bunker was built, it was anticipated that a close strike would be around 20 miles from the mountain with megatons. Ten kilotons right on target is equal to getting hit with a .44 magnum in the kisser, compared to that megaton missing by 20 miles being a shotgun going off and missing by 10 feet. Loud, but only made one angry.
Russian sources playing up some 50000 warheads that are sitting in tiny pieces on shelves all over the country in both nations, with 1700 deployable warheads for Russia and around 1550 deployable by the US. For comparison, Russia doesn't have quite as many cities as we have warheads, we have a bit over ten times more cities and towns than Russia has warheads and that's mooted, as one would want to disrupt the ability for the other guys to rain warheads on one's cities by taking out theirs and that typically takes a half dozen per military base. Still would wreck both nations entirely though. No, no nuclear winter, that got falsified in the 1990's with improved modeling and oh yeah, the old models proved false as well by that whole failed predictions of Gulf War I winter that lasted a month or two and was regional only, the dissipating.
So, extinction, nope, save for the two countries that would be so wrecked as to no longer be capable of annoying the world again. Which likely would have some major economic impacts and wreak their own kinds of havoc in the ensuing vacuum. Still, starvation because one's food won't grow or starvation because the economy collapsed in the vacuum of US dollars, dead remains dead, death by starvation doesn't care the proximate cause, just the end result.
And people thought I was crazy when I suggested that after the Soviet Union fell that offering NATO membership to Russia as an new entry member might be a good idea... Which then could've been leveraged into a trade union membership as well. Naw, that was crazy talk, they're done, the Cold War is over forever, the war to end all wars was won.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Fucking idiots.
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