I’m Old Enough To Remember…

…when dissenting from forced civil rituals was considered the height of Patriotism.

Why, it was only Kaepernick years ago.

How things have changed:

There are so many reasons I’d go on strike if I were one of Kinzinger’s mirrors…
I’ll go with “Three people that weren’t sexual puppets of Chinese spies”. How’d I do?
Michael Beschloss is to historians what Taylor Swift is to guitarists. Only without the integrity.

Look – as someone who supported Ukrainian independence back when Democrats universally said the USSR was here to stay, I have one request: Show the share of the money that actually goes to weapons, logistics and training.

Because I’ve seen estimates that 2/3 of the money we “send to Ukraine” ends up in the pockets of consultants and special interests in the US that don’t include building weapons (or replacing them in US units and inventories), shipping them, or training Ukrainians to use them.

And what better way to avoid that accounting than to hold yet another ongoing witchhunt against “badthink?”

113 thoughts on “I’m Old Enough To Remember…

  1. Emery on December 27, 2022 at 10:12 am said:
    The biggest lesson/finding of Russia’s invasion is that without nuclear weapons Russia is a third rate army at best.

    No shit, Sherlock. But Ukraine’s army was 4th rate.
    Without NATO bux & weapons, the Russians would have crushed the Ukrainians, just ask Zelensky.

  2. Perhaps also worth reminding that both Third Reich and the USSR were Europe’s 20th century land empires. Many millions and nation states suffered from their conquests. They jointly invaded and erased Poland from the map in September 1941. Ukraine too was at the center of both colonial projects. Stalin’s terror and artificial famine killed at least 4 million Ukrainians in 1930s. It was followed by Hitler’s “Lebensraum” that killed another 3.5 million Ukrainian civilians (in addition, more than 3 million Ukrainian soldiers perished fighting in the ranks of the Red Army). This is why historian Timothy Snyder states that Ukraine was the deadliest place on earth when both Stalin and Hitler were in power.

  3. The Russian army is falling back on Stalin’s tactics — pioneer battalions at the front made up of convicts and mobiks with professional soldiers in the next line with orders to shoot anybody retreating.

    There are published phone numbers the Russians can use to arrange their surrender to the UA, along with reward money for equipment. This is one of the reasons why the UA has obtained so much extra equipment from Russia — some is abandoned, plenty is also surrendered.

  4. Since the Current Crisis in Ukraine is all the fault of the nasty Putin and his FSB, shouldn’t we be asking “who lost Russia?”
    Could the West have done more to avert the disaster of the last decade? Its financial leverage over Russia weakened in the early 2000s when rocketing gas and oil prices raised the Russian economy off its knees. Economic sanctions, at least those introduced before 2022, served mainly to foster Russia’s determination to become self-sufficient in every sector of production. Western political diplomatic levers were stronger, but the western powers missed many crucial chances. London should not have become the laundromat for Russian dirty money. The UK government was lamentably slow in retaliating against the murderous operations of Russian intelligence agencies on British soil. And Boris Johnson has yet to explain the case for elevating the son of a wealthy ex-KGB officer to the House of Lords.
    The United States’ leadership has been just as woeful. President Donald Trump liked to schmooze with Putin as if on a boys’ night out rather than pinning him down on points of disagreement. In his own way, President Joe Biden did just as badly in 2021 by encouraging Ukraine to seek membership of NATO without taking proper precautions — and helping Zelensky take them in time too — against the possible negative Russian reaction. The shambles of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan reinforced the Russian official perception that America had lost the will to defend its geopolitical interests.

    https://thespectator.com/topic/rift-between-russia-west-inevitable/

  5. If it is mostly the fault of the FSB, yes, we should be asking, and yes, that implicates leaders of both parties. At the same time, we ought to be asking ourselves what we can do to incapacitate the FSB/KGB (Belarus) and put it down for good. That is what the Germans did by opening up the files of the Stasi after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it did that nation a lot of good, really.

    Regarding the notion that the whole deal was because NATO was open to Ukrainian membership, horsefeathers. Russia’s had four NATO members on its borders for years, and isn’t gearing up for another Winter War as Finnland joins. They simply want control. It’s more or less the MO of the abusive ex-husband.

  6. I don’t know what to say, Bikebubba. You seem to think that Ukraine is another Poland. It is not.
    Another commenter wrote that Germany and Russia were both continental empires.
    Well, duh. Once you get into the Baltic plains, there are few natural defenses against invasion. Germany’s natural expansion direction was east. Russia’s is east, and south to the shores of the Black Sea.
    When you look at a map it seems like Russia could expand the the south east, into the Orient, but the climate and land are incredibly inhospitable in Russia’s far east.
    Back in 1868, after several failures of transatlantic telegraph cables, the US & Britain thought that it might be a good idea to have an alternate telegraph route, from the US & Alaska across Russia’s far north to Saint Petersburg and so to Europe. The US military formed an expedition to (literally) explore the possibility, and sent a company of American military officers & naturalists to explore the area. One of the American naturalists was George Kennan, who wrote a memoir of his experiences titled _Tent Life in Siberia_. It’s a good read, well written high adventure, and, without really intending to do so, it illustrates how Russia is not a Western nation that looks east, but an eastern nation that looks west.
    The text of _Tent Life in Siberia_ is in the public domain and can be read and downloaded from the Gutenberg site: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12328/pg12328.html

  7. Some idiots brought a Ukrainian flag into the Slovak Parliament and tried to wave it around. Didn’t go well.

    Some countries still have a sense of national pride, as you’ll see:
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qIiG0Rbt5SI

    Compare this with the picture of Pelosi and Kameltoe waving that stupid flag in our Congress…and feel the shame.

  8. UMMP, Ukraine certainly doesn’t have the huge advantage Poland does of having a super-distinct language and culture where Russians have a lot of trouble assimilating, but I think they’re getting to the point where Poland was in 1995. They’ve figured out the FSB to a degree, they’re going to open up the files, and it’s going to become very difficult for Russia to maintain control if we steady the course.

    Time for us to send first some long range HIMARS rounds, then those MIG-31s Poland wanted to get rid of, and when Russia’s ammo depots within 150 miles of the front lines are smoldering, I’d be very happy to see the “whistling death” come to rain H*** on Wagner. Benito Putina is on the ropes, and everybody who runs things in Russia knows it.

  9. “Time for us to send first some long range HIMARS rounds,…”

    Fuck you Mr. Bubble. It’s time for you and your kids, and all the rest of you stupid, brainwashed motherfuckers to hop a plane and put your ass where your big, ignorant mouth is.

    Go kill Ivan, asshole….put Putin down.

    I’m not fighting for any of these assholes. You love the Uke’s, go fight for them.

  10. Take Pelosi, Kameltoe, Graham, Romney, McConnell and the rest of your Neo-con flotsam with you.

    Good fucking luck.

  11. By all means, let’s attack the nation with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal — and the means to deliver nukes globally by land, sea, and air.
    Cuz it would be the right thing to do! Ooh, that Putin is so bad he makes my blood boil!

  12. Blade Dullee, your rhetoric would have kept Stingers and such out of the hands of the Mujahedeen as well. Yes, nothing is entirely “clean” in these things, as of course there were downsides somewhat later to arming them, but I’ll take Reagan’s way over yours any day of the week.

    Reality is here that Putin wants to be, as his latest U-boot’s name attests, like Tsar Alexander III, an autocrat with little accountability to anyone. What he doesn’t want is to rule over a sea of glass. Hence we can get away with providing Ukraine a way to prevent Russia from continuing war crimes like their salvo of cruise missiles at civilian targets last night.

    He’ll be asking for that dacha in San Francisco Bay soon enough. Already he’s trying to eliminate his former allies who are telling him he totally screwed the pooch, most recently two former generals involved in weapons production. Oh, yes, there’s “plausible deniability”, just like with former partners of the Clintons, but we’re not going to believe that, are we?

  13. Latest news, two ammunition depots in easy HIMARS range hit, one of which was next door to a barracks. What kind of fool puts a barracks right next to an ammunition depot in easy artillery range of the enemy?

    I guess the same kind of fool that finds out about an autoloader problem around 1982 and hasn’t fixed it yet, the same kind of fool that sends troops to winter combat in summer gear, the same kind of fool that doesn’t apply FIFO to their ammunition reserves, the same kind of fool that buys cheap tires for critical vehicles and fails to maintain them, the same kind of fool that is the #2 producer of petroleum in the world but cannot get fuel to vehicles, the same kind of fool that thinks the rest of the world won’t notice when most of their long range targets are civilian, and the same kind of fool that doesn’t maintain their air force well enough to be used for May Day celebrations, let alone actual combat.

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