Free Republic

Hey Rod, did you hear about this Leftist damaging property in the lower Keys?

I started following music around 1965. I was only 7, but I had three older sisters, 9, 11 and 13 that played the radio all day and night. After school, especially when it was cold, I go up to my room and make model planes and cars. All while listening to tunes. I never watched much tv. Love the 60s and 70s. The 80s were great, too.

Not Popcorn Summer, Corn Pop Summer!

Say what?

If you for Trump, you ain't black?

It doesn’t matter what the government or media say about inflation numbers.

Real people see it with their own eyes. If prices go up in the grocery stores (they are) they note that. Buying food is fundamental and transcends politics. Same with gasoline prices.

Many? Most? people live paycheck to paycheck, and inflation hurts them more than those with more money. Telling them this pain is imaginary just insults them and doesn’t help.

The biggest thing wrong with your response here is the implication that NATO in any way wrongly “allowed”, forced or made other countries to join it. You know damn well that countries join NATO because they want to. There is no such thing as NATO expansion by NATO gobbling up territory.

Why they want to join is up to them. Some might think it gives them an economic leg up, but this treaty is about protection and alliance against aggression, not economies.

Countries join NATO, and even then, they must get ALL the other existing NATO countries to agree to let them join, and must also meet a bunch of economic, political and military conditions before doing so.

As far as our “decades long interventionist foreign policy” goes, there is nothing wrong with opposing tyranny. Was opposing the Soviet Union’s takeover of Eastern Europe wrong? What exactly would American foreign policy look like in your world? Isolationism?

I suppose I’ll always disagree with you on this. The world is a violent place with us or without us. The big oceans on both sides of our nation are not enough to keep us safe.

I do support less war and constant military action. The initial beatdown of Afghanistan was right, but not the nation building. The attack on Iraq over WMD proved to be wrong. Was it a lie, or a screwup? I don’t know. In the long run, S. Hussein kept the lid on worse things: ISIS, terror, murder—by using murder. It really is a dilemma for us but probably not our job to go in and destroy it.

Same applies to Russia and Putin via Ukraine.

I believe in popular sovereignty and suffrage. The “Spheres of Influence” are 19th Century colonialism just as the carving up of Africa. Russia has no right to dictate policy to their neighbors anymore than we do. Just as importantly, we need to be seen as against tyranny, even inside a nation. Our own nation is teetering on this brink right now.

My proxy war? Get a grip. I hate both sides, the Deep State and Biden.

Everyone here knows that.

You can find another thread to be rude on, please.

Weakness invites aggression. Thousands of years of history backs that up like it or not. Making weapons is part of that.

Also, if stationing forces outside the USA helps deter that aggression, I’m okay with that. In fact, I have been there and done that—9 years of my life.

Then you don’t have a slaughter of innocents or enriched bankers or whatever blood rituals you evoke. I vote for strength and deterrence. Not wishful thinking for “peace in our time” per Neville Chamberlain’s faux pas.

To be prepared for war is the most effectual means of preserving peace.
—George Washington, First Address to Congress

Here is a fairly neutral source that explains the Donbas situation.

https://www.crisisgroup.org/content/conflict-ukraines-donbas-visual-explainer

And this book, https://www.amazon.com/Armies-Russias-War-Ukraine-Elite/dp/1472833449

Who was Igor Girkin?

The war began 12 April 2014, when a fifty-man commando unit headed by Russian citizen Igor Girkin seized Sloviansk in Donetsk oblast. The Ukrainian military launched an operation against them.

So those they cannot control they ban.

First TikTok, then X. Then Truth Social. They'll eventually come for Free Republic. Better to stop the Tik Tok ban then face the slippery slope they intend to go down.

I'm pro-negotiation to end the war. I think no matter for how long or how hard the Ukrainians fight, they'll never get Donbas and Crimea back. That has to happen on the Russia side, perhaps a coup against Putin, or a real democratic state, but very unlikely.

Selling weapons to Europeans at war is an old and long US tradition. We sold weapons in WWI--the Lusitania where filled with them. Selling weapons is what we do. But selling to Ukraine is only part of it, not the raison d'etre. We do have to have an arms industry.

The Russian objective is a neutral Ukraine that is not part of NATO. It is not to "own" Ukraine. We had the Monroe Doctrine to control our sphere of influence. We intervened many times in Central America overtly and covertly to achieve our foreign policy objectives. The closest we have ever come to a nuclear war was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

So what? In the past 20 years ago, we have abandoned Venezuela and Nicaragua to communist tyrants. Brazil might be next. But whatever they declare themselves to be, whether communist, socialists, whatever, is just a fig leaf to rule the people as dictators. We should be opposed to such regimes, whether in our own so-called backyard or anywhere on the planet.

Russia shares a 1,400 mile border with Ukraine, which used to be part of the USSR and Russia for hundreds of years. They share historical, political, cultural, linguistic, and religious ties.

Again, so what? So does Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland--also Georgia. The countries not *yet* invaded by Russia have every right to be afraid when Russia proves its aggression by asserting itself militarily against any of them, as happened in Georgia and Ukraine.

If the Soviet Union had staged a coup of the duly elected government of Mexico and stated the intention that Mexico would be part of the Warsaw Pact, what do you think our reaction would have been?

They didn't. There is no equivalency between such a hypothetical and what happened in Ukraine in 2012. Russia started meddling in Ukraine long before this in 2004 when they poisoned the President of Ukraine because he wouldn't bend to them. It seems Yeltsin didn't have a problem with Soviet Republics being free. The idea to wrangle them up was Putin's.

Ukraine was one of the founding members of the UN. Russia has not announced any intention to conquer and occupy Ukraine and eliminate it as a sovereign nation.

Once again, I offer Putin's speech right before the attack in February, 2022:21 February, 2022, Vladimir Putin:

"Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, more precisely, Bolshevik, communist Russia. This process began immediately after the revolution of 1917..."

"As a result of Bolshevik policy, Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called 'Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's Ukraine'. He is its author and architect. This is fully confirmed by archive documents ... And now grateful descendants have demolished monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. This is what they call decommunisation. Do you want decommunisation? Well, that suits us just fine. But it is unnecessary, as they say, to stop halfway. We are ready to show you what real decommunisation means for Ukraine."

"Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood. (My note:neither did Finland, Czechia, Slovakia, Croatia, Bosnia, or North Macedonia, Estonia, and Latvia. Nevertheless, they are states now.)"

"From the very first steps they began to build their statehood on the denial of everything that unites us. They tried to distort the consciousness, the historical memory of millions of people, entire generations living in Ukraine."

China has taken over Tibet. It prevents Taiwan from becoming a separate nation. It has violated the terms of the agreement that transferred control of Hong Kong and trampled the civil liberties of the people of Hong Kong. And then there is the genocide of the Uyghurs. Contrast the reaction of the US and its allies to the sins of the CCP compared to the Russians.

That's still not a reason to abandon Eastern Europeans. We have far little resources to help against Chinese oppression. There was and is no Asian NATO for Tibet, Hong Kong or Taiwan to join. Their repression is similar to the Turkic, Siberian and Tatar people inside Russia.

Read the fine print:

Notes: The poll was conducted April 12-16 and surveyed 1,000 registered voters nationally. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Source: NBC News national poll

Registered, not likely. National poll, not battleground states.

Trump or Biden must win the Electoral College, not California and New York. It’s going to take voters from around the country, but we pretty much know what states will absolutely go to Trump and what states will go to Biden. The fight won’t be in those states.

So this poll is rubbish.

It is even more in the interests of Ukrainians not to be defeated and subjected by the Russians. It will not be just Zelesnsky who will get a bullet in the back of the head then, but thousands of innocent people, too.

There was no push from any Ukrainian to go to war with Russia, but that was solely up to Russia. The war in Donbas was part of Ukraine—note everyone even there— wanting to separate. Russia absolutely exploited this and sent thousands of troops into the Donbas.

Even Putin himself said there was no such thing as Ukrainians, they were all Russians. Yet Ukraine is an independent nation recognized by the UN and 193 separate countries. Putin cannot arbitrarily declare it Russia.

That’s why the Ukrainians fight. Not to “beat” Russia, but to NOT be devoured and made into Russian serfs. They remember how that used to be.

By focusing only on Zelesnsky you ignore what these people want... And that’s to be left alone, first and foremost by Russia, and then by Joe Biden.

I got schumpting for ya, Linda!

Oh John, it's beautiful! Just remember, I'll never get pregnant, so I can't have an abortion!

Then just give up, Dan.

Soon, if Biden gets his way, most Mexicans will be here in the USA, and then we can declare both countries one nation.

1918? What happened in 1939-45?

From Communist Wikipedia:

***On 11 December 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States declaration of war against the Japanese Empire, Nazi Germany declared war against the United States, in response to what was claimed to be a “series of provocations” by the United States government when the U.S. was still officially neutral during World War II. The decision to declare war was made by Adolf Hitler, apparently offhand, almost without consultation. It has been referred to as Hitler’s “most puzzling” decision of World War II.***

His generals knew he was nuts after this.

I think he’s referring to people who claim to be good ole American conservatives, but are actually Chinese, Ukrainians or Russians. That is wrong.