The problem with afganistan was one of two issues. We were not there long enough or were there to short a time. You need to be there for a generation to ensure those who's heart and minds won't change die off, ie the old guard. We were there 20 years. We needed to be there 30 or more. So, it was doomed to failure. No one told the public we're going to be there 30 years or more and got buy in. And we bailed and it all fell apart.
Even staying 30 years might not have been enough. It is the graveyard of empires.
Maybe going into this first term, but he's memory problems, well documented, render him a figure head. I doubt he even knows where he is half the time. Of course, the other possible candidate, at this point, is terrible too.
I found this review of Madam Web funny. It's probably true too, but, since I'm not going to see it, except MAYBE on TV in a few years, I don't really care. The review is funny as hell.
Somehow I doubt very much, were I, or the majority of any other citizens in the same situation, that the prosecutor would have a much less charitable view of things, but then again, most of the people I know who would need access to classified documents, have people who keep better track of them and aren't allowed to keep them "indefinity" without regular review of the NEED to have them, since they are "owned" by the gov't.
This is one of the nice things about having a cell phone. Unknown caller? If they leave a voice mail, you can check it. IF they didn't, was it really that important?
Caller: We have your XX. Give us $$ or they are dead.
Me: Yah, no, when they die, I inherit their estate. Can you send me the video as proof of death so I can get the estate faster? Thanks, I'll hold.
He's got a lot of money. Was this a smart business decision? Doubtful, but since when to really rich folk have to make smart decisions when they buy a vanity item? If twitter ends up in a ditch, will anyone really suffer? It's not like he's growing food and folks might starve.
"“Their ideology” can be “their artistic vision which is unsuitable and/or unrelated to what they’ve been hired to do” or it can be “we need to hire people who don’t have a history of success doing this because reasons”."
Yeah, but, the money people rule, or typically due. If you make 3 blockbusters and make a ton of cash, and want to do it again, and then turn out 2 bombs, you'd think that the leadership would say "bring back the guys who made us tons of $, and fire these idiots", but that hasn't/isn't happening. And, franchises have crumbled because of it. You can also argue that "we make a billion, let's make more of these movies" also leads to movie goer fatigue where everything has to be bigger and "more" than the last time...hard to top that consistently.
Jaybird, it's not the "formula" that's the main problem. It's some of it because if you milk a genre for a decade or more, you're going to get viewer fatigue. No, it's the the writing, direction, etc is poorer than prior movies. Again YMMV, but I'm thinking the box office numbers will speak for themselves.
"Madam Web is not a Marvel movie." Correct. Apologies if my comments mislead. My point was that, as in the Marvel movies, they began good and progressed to poor. From what I've seen of Madam Web, and it's not much, it didn't impress me. I was making a comment that the video I linked, it's that in general, super hero moves seem to have taken a drop in quality and I expected the same here.
The US has 11 Aircraft carriers. They are big and it's not likely that China wouldn't see a buildup of carriers from thousands of miles away, giving them plenty of time to prepare. Also, I'm sure they monitor the "local area" and would notice a buildup of carriers, and other support ships.
Carrier escort ships run 3-4 per carrier, and maybe a sub as well I think that’s light. There would likely be more ships just in case. The carriers have a fleet of helicopters that go out ahead of the task force to search for subs, mines, etc. Each carrier has @ 65 aircraft.
A single carrier runs 13 Billion, carries 5000 people. With support ships, subs, etc., let's round that to 6000 people and @ 14 billion dollars in equipment.
Forbes calculated the cost based on the estimates that one Russian Kh-101 cruise missile costs $13 million (Anti-ship). How many of those can be launched for 13B? These missiles have a range of 1500 miles. Taiwan is 100 miles from China, leaving @ 1400 miles of missile range PAST Taiwan to hit us targets. US planes have @ 400 nautical miles of range, making US carriers vulnerable to shore-based missiles, assuming the carriers can be located. Depending upon how the ships congregate or not, a few hundred missiles or a dozen tactical nukes could eliminate most of the carriers and escorts. If the planes were in the air, they might no place to land that's not hostile.
The potential cost for the missiles is far below the cost of the carriers, not to mention the impacts on morale, public opinion.
I pulled all this info off the web in less than 15 mins. What do you think the American public will do if they loose 15,000 sailors and a few carriers? Either demand we use nukes, or pull out. No one wins a full nuke exchange. I sure as hell REALLY don't think we should be testing the Chinese on this, but that's my opinion. YMMV
Europe: We carried them financially. They rarely lived up to the goals to fund their own defense. We should have walked away years ago, but no, we wanted vassal states beholden to us.
Asia: We'd not win a war with China, not over Taiwan. Hell, we can't secure the strait of hormuz with the assets on site. We don't have the infrastructure to manufacture ships at any volume, and we've offshored most microchip work, so parts would be a problem. The only thing left is nukes.
Back in the day, and by that I mean 1990, my then GF and much of her family worked at Hopkins hospital. There was only street parking. Staff kept a note of which employees got "jumped" (robbed) while walking to work. It was NOT in a good area. I've heard that now, it's been gentrified and is a nice area and safe....ofc very expensive. :)
"The most serious issues aren’t in the tourist areas but crazy stuff still happens" True, but often you have to GO THROUGH those areas to get to where you're going. Case in point, I had a friend many years ago, draw me a map of Charles street. It goes, generally North from the harbor to the beltway. She drew basically a 2 mile section, drawing hash lines across areas that were "no go". Bear in mind this was:
From the harbor to x street: it's fine.
The next 3 blocks: No go.
Next, up until the train station: fine
After train station: no go for 3 hundred yards.
And let's not forget the mentally unstable woman who torched half a dozen cars in the Mt. Vernon area (when I was often). This is charles street in the "safe" areas I mentioned above. Yeah, that REALLY makes me want to go there now.
Frankly, "maliciously retain and conceal sensitive documents" isn't the standard. The standard is "was he authorized to have the documents" after he was no longer VP and did he still have them. The investigation revealed he “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials to his ghost writer after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” The standard isn't what Trump did, the standard is "is he now authorized to have these documents"? The answer is no.
And as for Saul's comment: "The report also contained a nice swipe at Biden’s age" Biden's got memory problems. That's well documented. Hell, he recently said he met Mitterrand.
I think it's a fair argument that a guy with a documented history of memory problems probably isn't a guy the fed gov wants to let have unsupervised control of classified documents, but that's just a side note.
Regardless, I don't think it was snark by the investigator, it was "can we realistically get a conviction on a guy who has a well documented history of memory problems without looking like it's a witch hunt." YMMV on that.
On “Blame America First”
The problem with afganistan was one of two issues. We were not there long enough or were there to short a time. You need to be there for a generation to ensure those who's heart and minds won't change die off, ie the old guard. We were there 20 years. We needed to be there 30 or more. So, it was doomed to failure. No one told the public we're going to be there 30 years or more and got buy in. And we bailed and it all fell apart.
Even staying 30 years might not have been enough. It is the graveyard of empires.
On “Ponderings on Presidents’ Day”
Maybe going into this first term, but he's memory problems, well documented, render him a figure head. I doubt he even knows where he is half the time. Of course, the other possible candidate, at this point, is terrible too.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/19/2024”
First :)
I found this review of Madam Web funny. It's probably true too, but, since I'm not going to see it, except MAYBE on TV in a few years, I don't really care. The review is funny as hell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhA6M50xzmk&ab_channel=TheCriticalDrinker
On “About Biden’s Special Counsel Report”
Somehow I doubt very much, were I, or the majority of any other citizens in the same situation, that the prosecutor would have a much less charitable view of things, but then again, most of the people I know who would need access to classified documents, have people who keep better track of them and aren't allowed to keep them "indefinity" without regular review of the NEED to have them, since they are "owned" by the gov't.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/12/2024”
This is one of the nice things about having a cell phone. Unknown caller? If they leave a voice mail, you can check it. IF they didn't, was it really that important?
"
Caller: We have your XX. Give us $$ or they are dead.
Me: Yah, no, when they die, I inherit their estate. Can you send me the video as proof of death so I can get the estate faster? Thanks, I'll hold.
"
A partial great service. Facebook, tik tok, and all other social media should be dragged out into the street and roasted on a pyre.
I've seen what social media addiction looks like. I posted on here about it.
"
He's got a lot of money. Was this a smart business decision? Doubtful, but since when to really rich folk have to make smart decisions when they buy a vanity item? If twitter ends up in a ditch, will anyone really suffer? It's not like he's growing food and folks might starve.
"
"“Their ideology” can be “their artistic vision which is unsuitable and/or unrelated to what they’ve been hired to do” or it can be “we need to hire people who don’t have a history of success doing this because reasons”."
Yeah, but, the money people rule, or typically due. If you make 3 blockbusters and make a ton of cash, and want to do it again, and then turn out 2 bombs, you'd think that the leadership would say "bring back the guys who made us tons of $, and fire these idiots", but that hasn't/isn't happening. And, franchises have crumbled because of it. You can also argue that "we make a billion, let's make more of these movies" also leads to movie goer fatigue where everything has to be bigger and "more" than the last time...hard to top that consistently.
"
It takes someone to pay and it takes someone to ask/receive. If the moral fiber of politicians was better, we might not have this issue.
"
Then see Jeff and others renounce American citizenship and take all that wonderful tax money out of the country.
"
Jaybird, it's not the "formula" that's the main problem. It's some of it because if you milk a genre for a decade or more, you're going to get viewer fatigue. No, it's the the writing, direction, etc is poorer than prior movies. Again YMMV, but I'm thinking the box office numbers will speak for themselves.
"
"Madam Web is not a Marvel movie." Correct. Apologies if my comments mislead. My point was that, as in the Marvel movies, they began good and progressed to poor. From what I've seen of Madam Web, and it's not much, it didn't impress me. I was making a comment that the video I linked, it's that in general, super hero moves seem to have taken a drop in quality and I expected the same here.
"
Is it really incels or is it that the movie is crap?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCPCZ6qVHmE&ab_channel=CriticalDrinkerAfterHours
Based on what I've seen of the marvel movies, excepting the early ones, they not been that good. YMMV
"
Agreed. But for how much blood and treasure?
"
Giving munitions and equipment is not the same as troops. What western troops that are in Ukraine are "advisers" or are clandestine.
"
"he ideal for the US is that we aren’t going it alone."
Given the experience with Ukraine, I have strong doubts that Australia, NZ or Japan would join the fray.
"
The US has 11 Aircraft carriers. They are big and it's not likely that China wouldn't see a buildup of carriers from thousands of miles away, giving them plenty of time to prepare. Also, I'm sure they monitor the "local area" and would notice a buildup of carriers, and other support ships.
Carrier escort ships run 3-4 per carrier, and maybe a sub as well I think that’s light. There would likely be more ships just in case. The carriers have a fleet of helicopters that go out ahead of the task force to search for subs, mines, etc. Each carrier has @ 65 aircraft.
A single carrier runs 13 Billion, carries 5000 people. With support ships, subs, etc., let's round that to 6000 people and @ 14 billion dollars in equipment.
Forbes calculated the cost based on the estimates that one Russian Kh-101 cruise missile costs $13 million (Anti-ship). How many of those can be launched for 13B? These missiles have a range of 1500 miles. Taiwan is 100 miles from China, leaving @ 1400 miles of missile range PAST Taiwan to hit us targets. US planes have @ 400 nautical miles of range, making US carriers vulnerable to shore-based missiles, assuming the carriers can be located. Depending upon how the ships congregate or not, a few hundred missiles or a dozen tactical nukes could eliminate most of the carriers and escorts. If the planes were in the air, they might no place to land that's not hostile.
The potential cost for the missiles is far below the cost of the carriers, not to mention the impacts on morale, public opinion.
I pulled all this info off the web in less than 15 mins. What do you think the American public will do if they loose 15,000 sailors and a few carriers? Either demand we use nukes, or pull out. No one wins a full nuke exchange. I sure as hell REALLY don't think we should be testing the Chinese on this, but that's my opinion. YMMV
"
Europe: We carried them financially. They rarely lived up to the goals to fund their own defense. We should have walked away years ago, but no, we wanted vassal states beholden to us.
Asia: We'd not win a war with China, not over Taiwan. Hell, we can't secure the strait of hormuz with the assets on site. We don't have the infrastructure to manufacture ships at any volume, and we've offshored most microchip work, so parts would be a problem. The only thing left is nukes.
"
Back in the day, and by that I mean 1990, my then GF and much of her family worked at Hopkins hospital. There was only street parking. Staff kept a note of which employees got "jumped" (robbed) while walking to work. It was NOT in a good area. I've heard that now, it's been gentrified and is a nice area and safe....ofc very expensive. :)
"
"The most serious issues aren’t in the tourist areas but crazy stuff still happens" True, but often you have to GO THROUGH those areas to get to where you're going. Case in point, I had a friend many years ago, draw me a map of Charles street. It goes, generally North from the harbor to the beltway. She drew basically a 2 mile section, drawing hash lines across areas that were "no go". Bear in mind this was:
From the harbor to x street: it's fine.
The next 3 blocks: No go.
Next, up until the train station: fine
After train station: no go for 3 hundred yards.
And let's not forget the mentally unstable woman who torched half a dozen cars in the Mt. Vernon area (when I was often). This is charles street in the "safe" areas I mentioned above. Yeah, that REALLY makes me want to go there now.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Watching a Zoomer play Fallout New Vegas”
I was/is a good game. I also like how in Fallout 4 that incorporated some stuff from 3. Like Mccready.
I could go for a graphics update though :)
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/29/2024”
"What is the point of lower education? Well, it’s not to improve literacy and math scores, that’s for sure."
It makes the students FEEL GOOD.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/5/2024”
Frankly, "maliciously retain and conceal sensitive documents" isn't the standard. The standard is "was he authorized to have the documents" after he was no longer VP and did he still have them. The investigation revealed he “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials to his ghost writer after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” The standard isn't what Trump did, the standard is "is he now authorized to have these documents"? The answer is no.
And as for Saul's comment: "The report also contained a nice swipe at Biden’s age" Biden's got memory problems. That's well documented. Hell, he recently said he met Mitterrand.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-french-president/
I think it's a fair argument that a guy with a documented history of memory problems probably isn't a guy the fed gov wants to let have unsupervised control of classified documents, but that's just a side note.
Regardless, I don't think it was snark by the investigator, it was "can we realistically get a conviction on a guy who has a well documented history of memory problems without looking like it's a witch hunt." YMMV on that.
"
That's one minute of my life that was wasted. How much are these idiots being paid to create this "advert"? facepalm
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.