ABigGuy4U
2d ago
They pretty overtly made it a massive turd on purpose in order to spike further monetization attempts.
ABigGuy4U
2d ago
I don't think Vladimir Putin has been credibly accused of rape either.
Not that I’m aware of. In his youth he was probably something of a womanizing cad but in consensual way (hard to believe but as a young man he was something of a pretty-boy). Once he got into the higher rungs of power he quickly ended up married to the job, and he lost a wife and then two mistresses by being a workaholic.
ABigGuy4U
4d ago
Ok but what I wonder is why the content-industrial complex suddenly felt the need to dig up Woodstock ‘99 and hang it’s corpse Oliver Cromwell-style. It feels coordinated.
ABigGuy4U
7d ago
When your point of comparison is 2003 era Iraq, where the units on the front line weren’t even allowed to speak to each other by radio to avoid coup planning, the IRGC looks pretty damn elite.
ABigGuy4U
10d ago
Regarding your second point about escalation options: The United States has nuclear weapons. Like Russia in the Ukraine War, the Trump administration has been overtly laying the ground work for cassus beli in case the button is pressed.
The administration’s whole theory of the war is that Iran is very, very close to both an atomic bomb and missiles capable of hitting the US. Justifying nuclear strikes here would be trivial: “The IRGC has access to a few prototype ballistic missiles capable of reaching Europe and parts of the United States. We just got intelligence showing that a deep underground Iranian nuclear facility was able to crash enrich enough Uranium for three or four kiloton-yield warheads. We believe they have successfully assembled the warheads. The risks here are too great, we must start striking deep underground missile batteries and nuclear facilities with tactical nuclear warheads.”
ABigGuy4U
10d ago
I have heard rumors that the planned uprising was going to be concurrent with the strikes, but that it was discovered and had to go early.
ABigGuy4U
10d ago
We can wipe out Iranian missile launcher sites while keeping our carriers safe and sound
The way they did that was by just not using the carriers, and running the entire first week of the war by an elaborate relay of aerial tankers to run squadrons in from far away for sorties. Smart, but not an effective tactic in the pacific and not a good sign either.
ABigGuy4U
10d ago
Saddam and his government got pretty thoroughly destroyed too, that didn’t stop the war from becoming a giant black eye for the US.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
“Late Stage Capitalism” is a reference to Marx’s statement about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in capitalist economies. All the twenty-dollar bills get picked up and everyone starts scumming the margins for tiny increases in efficiency.
By the end it was a type 2 verging on type 1. You had direct French vs. England naval and land conflict within the 13 colonies, and were starting to see limited naval engagements popping up around the world (the last battle of the American Revolutionary War was off the coast of India, and didn’t involve any Americans). The escalation risk was part of why Britain threw in the towel.
ABigGuy4U
14d ago
Neither the US nor Israel would just bomb one specific girls' school for kicks, it makes no sense.
If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the moral quality and proclivities of our world leaders over the past few years “Heathen blood sacrifice to Ba’al to ensure success in the conflict” isn’t particularly loopy or out of the question.
I think it needs to be noted here that Iran has damaged or sunk multiple tankers in the last five days, several of which were in the Straight of Hormuz. This isn’t just Old Man Insurance Company being a fuddy duddy. Oil companies aren’t drug cartels, the business model isn’t designed around losing five to ten percent of the product each shipment.
ABigGuy4U
16d ago
Is this indicative that they are not onside and need to be bribed to keep the coalition together?
The gulf Arab kingdoms genuinely hate Iran, the bribes are to get them to have a spine.
ABigGuy4U
16d ago
Yeeting a $400 flying lawnmower into a tanker isn’t that hard. And it genuinely is important for Iran, closing the straight is one of their main bargaining chips. They’ll put effort into it.
ABigGuy4U
16d ago
that millennials and later generations grew up with video games being just a typical pastime
The three generations before millennials spent 90 years straight calling everything they didn’t like communism, so I don’t think it’s just the video games.
ABigGuy4U
19d ago
If Iran falls Russia and China are effectively kicked out of the Middle East.
ABigGuy4U
22d ago
And one of the men who killed Kennedy is rumored to have a been a French solider and OAS member.
ABigGuy4U
23d ago
I think he’s really revitalized the format of the SOTU on a pomp and spectacle level. I suspect future administrations will keep this format.
ABigGuy4U
23d ago
I suspect he was there for professional reasons, and the thirty second photo op of him smashing PBRs with the boys was the cover. I believe he has coached high school hockey teams.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
Anyone who’s been looking at the Epstein file dumps in detail, is it true all the records and emails for September of 2001 have been scrubbed?
The evidence here is a lot stronger (especially from a left-wing perspective) than MLK’s “totally real rumors in J. Edgar Hoover’s burn book”
More options
Context Copy link