aeqno
14d ago
Where does El-Sayed fall on other core Democrat principles such as trans rights?
aeqno
17d ago
trans issues are entirely theoretical
Yeah, I bet the Noem family would've said the same thing at the beginning of the year.
In the Evangelical circles you run in, this stuff is entirely theoretical right up until it isn't.
aeqno
21d ago
Thanks to AI, we now have the movie:
aeqno
22d ago
People always say things like this, but where I am, I always see plenty of white women with Indian men.
I don't think women are as put off by South Asian males as the Internet likes to believe.
aeqno
2mo ago
basically an Onion headline about some guy remembering how great and trouble-free the world used to be
https://theonion.com/area-man-always-nostalgic-for-four-years-ago-1819566584/
aeqno
2mo ago
Very kind of the US public to guarantee Asia's oil supply with their tax money. Really great people.
aeqno
2mo ago
The IRGC leaders know they're dead anyway. What would they care if it's via precision missile or nuclear airburst?
Might as well have some fun on the way out.
aeqno
3mo ago
They, had they irrationally chosen to, could war economy their way into building a massive invasion force and roll over Vietnam
That's called the Korean War. Americans like to pretend it never happened.
aeqno
3mo ago
I don't know about Vietnam, but the Soviets went all-out scorched Earth in Afghanistan and still lost, despite their military having no concept of "war crime", and not having to worry one iota about how the optics would play back home.
This whole "we wulda won if we actually tried" rationalization comes dangerously close to cope.
You're also forgetting the context of the Cold War. North Vietnam was supported by two nuclear-armed superpowers. Nuking Hanoi wasn't some free action that would be totally devoid of consequences. The US wouldn't have done it even if they wanted to.
aeqno
4mo ago
Why, after everything the Right has pulled over the past year, would any elected Democrat step down for being too anti-Republican?
aeqno
4mo ago
Humans are very unpredictable animals, especially in extreme situations. All it takes is one general saying "nah, fuck that." That's not a gamble anyone wants to take.
Or maybe that doesn't happen. US forces are tallying up the nukes they've recovered. "So intel said they had 48 nukes. We've got 43. Wait...uh oh..."
aeqno
4mo ago
Lol, Mr. and Mrs. Maduro additionally charged with possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Apparently even foreign heads of state need a US firearms permit.
Once again reminding everyone that nothing like this would ever happen to a nuclear-armed regime.
My previous comment:
The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.
A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.
Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.
Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.
My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
Just a quiet conspiracy between everybody who had access to footage in what is, as OP put it, the most surveilled place in America.
aeqno
6mo ago
Given that police are the profession with just about the highest concentration of MAGA true believers, I'm going to call BS on the idea that operation Bring Down Trump could proceed without a single person breaking ranks.
aeqno
6mo ago
And there wasn't a single Trump-friendly DC police officer to blow the lid on this operation?
Everyone's favorite looksmaxxer Clavicular was in the news last week due to his appearance in a Miami courtroom for some minor crime or other. What made this event go viral was the general agreement that he was brutally mogged by the surprisingly physically attractive judge.
Now, the odds that Clav just happened to get the best looking judge in the United States on his case are vanishingly small, which means that judge was specifically assigned to him. This follows a pattern I haven't seen anyone really discuss: All the institutions Clavicular has interacted with have sent their most physically attractive representative to deal with him. But doesn't that just validate his worldview? It's like the arguments against his position don't have enough merit to stand on their own. They have to be delivered by an absolute gigachad.
Think of the ABC interview. Like, no shit that guy says he's happy with how he looks. Does he think ABC would have let him anywhere near their precious cameras if he didn't look the way he does? Is it some coincidence that he and his fellow TV presenters tend to be seriously good-looking? Do ugly people just have poor interviewing skills?
What I want to see is the message of character uber alles delivered to Clav by a guy whose appearance makes women want to cross the street. I think he's hit upon something fundamental, but he's putting people off because he's going about it in the most autistic way possible.
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