ewsieg

Georgia and Chechnya falling under the rule of Putin, versus now where they are under the rule of their own president who is under the rule of Putin, should not be our worry. He could go after Azerbaijan, that's about the only one left. If Ukraine fell, I think Moldova was clearly the next target, that's off the table now. In the eyes of the world his army has been shown to be a mockery. He knows this. A continued war like we have now will put tens of millions in Africa alone at risk of starvation. Is a continued fight against Putin in the Donbass region to ensure he can't turn his attention elsewhere worth potentially millions of lives elsewhere? Possibly it is because Putin always surprises us again, but it just seems like most of you, none of whom i'd call warhawks, seem to think it's worth risking everything and the only way this war should end is with Ukraine driving Russia out of their land.

Who else is he going to invade? The western pushback for Ukraine was real. Ukraine is doing the fighting, but without amazing support from the west, Russia is likely controlling most of the country by now. You think he'd go into Finland? That's basically NATO-lite right now. Whereas, China? I just don't see how what was mentioned could be viewed as an enticement and reason to do more invasions.

I doubt Putin would do it either. But if he would, it seems like a dream scenario to me.

I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert in the field, but we could send in all of our might, annihilate every Russian in Ukraine, including Crimea, Russia completely backs down, but Putin would still spin it as a win internally. From a western standpoint, He would have invaded Ukraine, agreed to no Nukes in the eastern European countries in return to walking away with his tail between his legs. Additionally he would have added another NATO country on it's border in the North and it absolutely would put Ukraine in a direction of being a NATO member in the upcoming years as well. I just don't see any reward for Putin. I do see a reward for African's being able to get some wheat, as well as the global economy, which again, affects poor people more than anyone else. Don't get me wrong though, remember i'm still a conservative at heart, so screw poor people, they should lift themselves up by the bootstraps and maybe head to Ukraine and fight if they want to do something productive.

Serious question, why is this such a terrible idea? We refuse to use our Nukes as a deterrent already and can launch enough to participate in our 50% share of the end of the world without launching them from eastern Europe. In return, Ukraine gets it's land back, fighting stops, and maybe this world recession we're about to jump into isn't as bad as it could continue to be if we don't. Mind you, awfully easy for me to say 'F$%@ Putin' from my fairly steady job that likely won't get cut even if a major recession, my guess is most of you would be throwing out reports on how a major recession is worse on minorities if a republican was to blame for the recession. Odd no one seems to give a shit about them now.

There is a part of me that hopes not.....keep eating those Big Macs Trump!

From what i've read/listened on her, she falls into the DeSantis category. Not dumb at all, but blatantly chose party over country.

Exactly, and what you pointed out above with 'the wagon's circling' is the concern with that.

They are doing a good job to the people that are willing to listen to them, which happens to be the same people that didn't vote for him anyway. At this point, i'm not sure how well it's doing elsewhere. There is evidence that GOP voters are starting to look at a party past him, maybe this is playing a part of that. He's been able to put a spell on the entire GOP voter base though, so I don't give a crap about soiling him, he needs to be put in jail to ensure he doesn't run again.

I would gather there would be meta data at both the device and network end. I doubt you could get the full texts from the network side, unless, soon after 1/6, federal requests were put in to provide or at least safeguard the data. If it's secret service, I would hope/assume they don't have a BYOD policy and have secure government issued phones. With this, it's possible all communication is tracked/stored separately and even if not, at any time the government could take the phone and attempt to get the info directly off of them.

If you don't think it's fair for the GOP to take any credit on getting kids back to school, then I'm assuming you're laughing at the fact that Whitmer is taking credit for it.

Whitmer ads have started, she's touting that she didn't raise taxes (even though she pushed for it) and she got kids back into schools (even though it was the GOP that pushed to get kids back in schools). Oddly, nothing about how she fixed the roads or brought down car insurance rates while trying to kill Konstantinov. I guess the "good" news is my mom (still would vote for Trump today) watched the GOP governors debate and said that from what she saw, Whitmer might still be the better choice.

Absolutely, just pointing out WV isn't the problem. Earlier you'll see why I think Biden should be pushing the legislature to put it to a vote to put pressure on those purple states to try and keep some of those borderline Dem seats as well as possibly steal some of those borderline GOP seats.

Manchin has already said he would codify RvW, the party wants more than just that though.

Adding to this. A very large majority of the country thinks there should be Abortion for the case of rape, incest, and the health of the Mother. Even abortion without those exceptions has a majority approval. For someone like me, a conservative that favors GOP fiscal policies but wants to punish the GOP for abortion, if the Dems are just going to throw their hands up in the air, what's the point? If I have to put up with abortion with or without Democrats in charge, maybe I minds well vote GOP and get better fiscal policies (IMO). I'm not saying the above is my mindset as I still want to burn the GOP to the ground for allowing Trump, but in your purple states, giving independent/centrist voters the belief that their votes will make a difference for their state right away, that is a huge encouragement.

I'm iffy on the fillibuster and definitely don't want stacking of the court. Biden, more than anyone knows about slow incremental change though, which is why his presidency has been even more infuriating to me. Whip up the party to put a bill up that will codify limited abortion rights that will get Manchin on board (shows unity) and gets likely the minimum GOP votes, Murkowski and Collins. Even if it doesn't pass, you're showing folks what they will get if they continue to vote for you. This would be critical for your purple states.

I was gung ho that I was going to go to this until over the course of the last few months the Drew and Mike Podcast has been tracking Vince's path to this tour and it's just been abysmal. The scary thing is, he's much improved from a year ago.

I'm assuming my recollection is coming from Gary Graff, but IIRC, Henley was big on pushing for the tiniest edits if it was lyrics he was not involved with in order to get named as one of the songwriters.

You guys got me, I've been doing it wrong all along. From now on, should my kids get into an argument, I will do a full investigation to figure out who is 51% or greater wrong in that situation and punish the offender. Additionally, I will do nothing but praise the other. You hit your brother but he definitely started it and egged you on, not only is he punished, how about we go get ice cream!

I agree with Edman that i'm more worried about right wing extremists currently, but you just pointed out about a situation where even if 100% of the blame on that building was a boogaloo boi, we're talking what 1 million dollars in damage, rough estimates for the Floyd protests were around 2 billion nationally. Just as the GOP is wrong to try and deflect criticism about 1/6, probably not right to deflect criticism about the Floyd riots.

Certainly wasn't giving Carlson any benefit of the doubt. In fact I wasn't even talking about benefit of the doubt, just mentioning if one side is adamant X should be done, it seems the other side questions why is X being proposed, not the merits of X, not possible con's with alternate solutions, just that obviously the other side wants to do it in order to get to some "bad" Y outcome.

In my theme of "one man's tyrant is another man's savior", both sides believe the other side does this, when it suits their beliefs. Additionally the other side is doing it because of bad intentions. Oil prices are crazy high, the GOP says 'Drill baby drill!', the other side points out every other possible reason why drilling more oil won't solve everything. In reality, gun restrictions and drilling aren't going to solve everything for their issues, but they would help. It seems since one side touts it as the saving grace the other side just instinctively fights it, regardless of the merits.

Ironically, the people who always chant about "social conditions" when black people are involved are now the first people to bring up "personal responsibility" when white kids are doing it. To note, absolutely no excuse to do what predominantly well off white males are doing. That said, if guns were the ONLY issue, why aren't poor white males, well off black males, poor black males, well off white females, well off black females, poor black females, adjective <gender> <race>, doing it? I'm not saying Carlson is right with his reasonings, but it's certainly not one lone thing (guns) that is the sole reason otherwise we'd see this issue across all genders/races/communities. I will admit that it's not as simple as these large scale mass shootings, as there are definitely mass shootings (based on the exact definition) in minority communities as well, but the intention is not the same. Some gun reform may be a great tool against both, but the reason for them is absolutely quite different.

She obviously didn't properly apply the law that has been on the books for 46 years though. Government is a system of checks and balances. I had a canvasser for some MAGA crazy a month back who said if elected, the person she was touting would impeach Whitmer on day 1. I asked for what. She pointed the above out, which it should be obvious that I felt Whitmer overstepped. But as I told her, MI Supreme Court checked her and solidified the law and the legislature went back to repeal a law that future gov's might be able to exploit, democrats and republicans alike. The system worked. If Whitmer tried to bypass the court, than I'd be all for impeachment. That said, you, and i'm sure most on this board would fight tooth and nail to say Whitmer was perfect in everything related to Covid and the GOP killed everyone that died from it. OK, maybe you would only say she was amazingly awesome but not perfect. Guess my point is one persons tyrant is another persons savior. In terms of a true tyrant, I personally think Trump stands alone on a podium. That said, he's definitely brought some crazies up like Greene, Gaetz, Boebert. I really despise folks like McConnell, Graham, and DeSantis that went along with the lie, but behind the scenes, i'd bet my left nut that they feel he is a disgrace to the country and are plotting for a GOP without him, whereas I doubt that's the case for the first ones I mentioned.

You are correct, she only acted like a Tyrant with one of the laws. To go a bit further and make a case against me, after that happened, she simply did nothing, nada, zilch, throwing her hands in the air and blaming the other side. This is why, if she was running against Trump, I would vote for her, as I'd prefer someone that chooses not to lead at all, rather than one that tries to lead by any means necessary and continues to act like a Tyrant. This is also why I will reluctantly vote for Biden as well.