Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Pariah]

I heard once that the problem with Soviet communism is that although it was the brainchild of Karl Marx, the execution looked more like Groucho Marx. It appears that Vladimir Putin wants to be an old school Soviet communist in every way possible.

[unclevlad]

17 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Some of those alliances are rather shaky, though. Take Kazakhstan, which only a few months ago received Russian military help to quell demonstrations in that country. A few weeks ago Russia requested Kazakh troops to bolster their Ukraine invasion, but their government declined.

 

Kazakhstan appears to be trying to find a middle of the road between alienating Russia and being punished by Western economic sanctions. https://eurasianet.org/kazakhstan-seeks-to-thread-diplomatic-needle-over-russias-ukraine-war

 

 

So for them, it's a warning shot to bend towards Russia...or else.  Or at least, don't even THINK about getting buddy-buddy with the West, or you're next.

 

[Lord Liaden]

Then again, "You're next!" from Russia doesn't carry nearly the same weight it did a couple of months ago.

[assault]

19 hours ago, Pariah said:

I heard once that the problem with Soviet communism is that although it was the brainchild of Karl Marx, the execution looked more like Groucho Marx. It appears that Vladimir Putin wants to be an old school Soviet communist in every way possible.

 

The expectation was that the revolution would either succeed in Germany or be defeated in Russia. When neither of those things happened, they were forced to make things up as they went along.

Unfortunately, Stalinism was the result. There were other possibilities, but that was probably the most likely.

Putin, while he uses tools from the Stalinist playbook, seems to want a system more like the Tsarist Russian Empire. In other words, he wants to complete the counter-revolution and restore a reactionary Russian empire as a major power. It's not going well, obviously.

[IndianaJoe3]

17 hours ago, DShomshak said:

Addendum to above: Could this be malicious compliance? IE, somebody in the FSB does not approve of the invasion of Ukraine (whether morally or just from recognizing that it's a fiasco and the longer it goes on, the worse the damage to Russia). They are sabotaging the hoax while pretending to follow orders... to the letter.

 

Gross incompetence or malicious compliance? Neither is good for Putin.

[Ternaugh]

Maybe DeSantis and the Florida legislature should have read the fine print.

 

Quote

Disney’s self-governing special district, the Reedy Creek Improvement District, says that Florida’s move to dissolve the district next year is not legal unless the state pays off Reedy Creek’s extensive debts.

 

Reedy Creek is a special purpose district created by state law in May 1967 that gives The Walt Disney Company extensive governmental control over the land in and around its central Florida theme parks. With that power, Reedy Creek currently has about $1 billion in outstanding bond debt, according to the credit rating agency Fitch Ratings.

 

In a statement issued to its bondholders last Thursday, Reedy Creek pointed out that the 1967 law also includes a pledge from Florida to its bondholders. The law states that Florida “will not in any way impair the rights or remedies of the holders … until all such bonds together with interest thereon, and all costs and expenses in connection with any act or proceeding by or on behalf of such holders, are fully met and discharged.”

 

Due to that pledge, Reedy Creek said it expects to continue business as usual.

 

 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/us/reedy-creek-disney-florida/index.html

[csyphrett]

Somebody already said De Santis has to sign the biggest property tax increase in Florida history for this. i don't know if that is actual, or hyperbolic, but I am leaning toward actual.

CES

[Old Man]

Finally, a bill we can all get behind

[csyphrett]

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

Finally, a bill we can all get behind

yo ho yo ho it's the pirate's life for me.

CES

[Sociotard]

On 4/26/2022 at 10:24 PM, Lord Liaden said:

Then again, "You're next!" from Russia doesn't carry nearly the same weight it did a couple of months ago.

 

I disagree. Russia won't conquer Ukraine, but Ukraine can't win. Their best case scenario is spending the next 50 years rebuilding, while the refugee diaspora decides when and if to come home.

 

Russia might have a recession, maybe even a bad one, but they haven't lost that. By any honest metric, they have lost less than Ukraine. Yes, they lost more tanks, but that's meaningless because they had way more tanks to lose. The only thing they really lost was international respect, and they don't care.

 

And that's the best case scenario. The worst case is Ukraine loses the Donbas and the land bridge, and they watch Mariupol get renamed Putingrad.

[Lord Liaden]

Russia has lost a great deal, by Putin's metric. He started this invasion to restore the old Russian Empire, to reestablish Russia as a great international power, and to fragment NATO. He's utterly failed on all counts. The weakness of Russia's military has been exposed, the country has become an international pariah, NATO is more united than it's been in decades, and Russia stands to be bogged down in a war as long and costly as Afghanistan.

 

Whether or not Ukraine can win has yet to be decided. A lot will depend on whether Russia has fixed its incompetent logistics, and it's too soon to tell. Ukraine just got a huge boost in materiel supply from the United States, including more advanced weapons than most of what they or Russia have been using. If that pipeline continues through the rest of the Biden administration, it will be a significant advantage for Ukraine.

[Pattern Ghost]

3 hours ago, Sociotard said:

I disagree. Russia won't conquer Ukraine, but Ukraine can't win.

 

However, the great Russian bear has been shown to have rotting teeth. If it tries to sink its gums into a NATO country, it will get put down.

 

As LL has said, their deep corruption and incompetence has been exposed. They may have more people to throw into the grinder than Ukraine, and that might result in some level of "victory" for them, but they've lost so much more than a war in this invasion.

[Pariah]

15 hours ago, Old Man said:

Finally, a bill we can all get behind

 

 

[Sociotard]

20 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

However, the great Russian bear has been shown to have rotting teeth. If it tries to sink its gums into a NATO country, it will get put down.

 

NATO could confidently repel any Russian invasion. That seems a bit different from "put down". You aren't envisioning NATO troops crossing the border?

[Ragitsu]

If you were the DM, would you award Russia XP for defeating Ukraine?

[Sociotard]

a half-remembered quote: In war, first each side tries to win. Eventually, they settle for trying to lose less than the other side.

 

Russia has lost less than Ukraine, at least in terms of what it can afford to lose, at least in relative terms. War isn't about getting something, it is about losing. You start hoping you win, and you end just hoping not to lose too much.

 

XP is an interesting question. Russia only gets XP if they take the lessons of this war and wind up doing something different. A lot of countries are trying to learn something from this war.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Sociotard said:

 

NATO could confidently repel any Russian invasion. That seems a bit different from "put down". You aren't envisioning NATO troops crossing the border?

There is a growing realization that Russia may not actually have a nuclear arsenal. Rockets and nuclear warheads require expensive maintenance that hasn’t been performed for decades, and that doesn’t even count the possibility that much of the arsenal has been stripped of parts to be sold on the black market. 
 

If this is the case then Putin can’t risk using a single nuke for fear of revealing that none of them work. If that happened the Chinese would roll over the border and NATO would almost have to follow suit to keep China from taking the whole thing. 

[assault]

Only a moron would act on that assumption though.

[DShomshak]

I suspect the nuclear bluster from Putin and Lavrov hints that *they* fear losing, and how *badly* they might lose. That maybe they *can't* just write off Russia's losses, keep slogging away, and win something through sheer persistence and numbers.

 

Yes, I find that hint of desperation terrifying. But reducing the aid to Ukraine could be just as dangerous as maintaining and increasing it.

 

Dean Shomshak

[assault]

Without the nuclear threat, No Fly Zones and similar things could become a reality.

 

If Russia's nuclear arsenal is that degraded, there is nothing to stop NATO (the USA) from pulling an Iraq on Russia. Not going to happen.

[Old Man]

The safest course of action is the one that’s currently being implemented—a proxy war that bleeds Russia until Putin dies or is otherwise replaced. Ukraine can’t lose that war, at least not on the battlefield. On the other hand, every day that the Russians are not thrown back with overwhelming force is another day of unimaginable horror for the people of Ukraine. So if it were possible to escalate to a no fly zone, or NATO airstrikes, I would not be opposed to that. 

[Lord Liaden]

6 hours ago, Sociotard said:

Russia has lost less than Ukraine, at least in terms of what it can afford to lose, at least in relative terms. War isn't about getting something, it is about losing. You start hoping you win, and you end just hoping not to lose too much.

 

In the short term, you're absolutely right, and as Old Man underlines, what Ukrainians are going through now is a horror that should be stopped as soon as possible (not unlike a lot of the rest of the world TBH). In the long term, though, Ukraine stands to gain much more than Russia. The country's profile and strategic value have been greatly raised, its military will probably emerge as the strongest in Eastern Europe, and it will almost certainly be the recipient of major international investment in rebuilding that could galvanize its economy if handled smartly. OTOH Russia's global prestige has been shattered. Its economy has been crippled not just from the effect of sanctions now, but the probably permanent loss of markets for its natural resources. Putin will never again be trusted to honor his agreements with other countries, so cooperation with them will be greatly hindered going forward.

[Sociotard]

There is one other long-term support the West needs to offer: denazification.

 

Ukraine doesn't have much more of an antisemitism problem than Russia. At the same time, I am worried about the Azov Battalion. They're the far-right ultranationalist neo nazi group holed up in that Mariupol steel plant. Their heroic last stand has been winning them a lot of good press and admiration.

 

I am worried about a future where the neo nazis replace Zelensky in the next peacetime election. Or a future where Zelensky feels compelled to plunge Ukraine back towards the autocratic end of the spectrum to prevent them coming to power. Or a future where good nazi press gets them better recruitment and blind eyes to any loose Javelins they pocket, and then they turn into nazi-flavor ISIS.

 

So maybe we need to think of some ways to oppose Azov ahead of time.

[Pattern Ghost]

11 hours ago, Sociotard said:

NATO could confidently repel any Russian invasion. That seems a bit different from "put down". You aren't envisioning NATO troops crossing the border?

 

"Put down" means to remove their ability to wage war. The bear in the analogy is the Russian war machine, not the country or its people per se. They've nearly done it to themselves already. If they roll on a NATO country, they'll face even tighter sanctions (and they're already behind the curve financially on maintaining their equipment and other necessities for warfare,  including quality troops), and even greater loss of equipment as no fly zones and direct engagement by NATO forces on the ground become things. They're not going to be dumb enough to roll on a NATO country. (I'm not sure how that possibility came up in the first place, because they can barely handle what they've gotten themselves into in Ukraine.)

 

As for nukes: Only mildly concerned. There are reports of Putin's failing health. He could potentially spite nuke if he's dying anyway, but his own people would probably ignore the orders after the damage he's done to his own rep, if not actively try to take him out. Barring that, our nuclear deterrence capabilities are probably a couple of decades ahead of what anyone thinks they are.

[DShomshak]

Heard on The Daily yesterday: Ukrainian soldiers are already being flown out of the country to be trained on NATO weaponry, so they can train the rest of the Ukrainian military. NATO's running out of old Soviet/Russian castoffs, but that's only been a stopgap. The plan is to make Ukraine's military "fully inter-operable" with NATO.