What is your position on what US strategy should be? Something other than indefinite support is understandable and hey I'd agree with that. But are you saying we just concede it as Russia's sphere of influence? Something similar?

Nah I wasn't accusing you personally of that, sorry it came off that way. Big picture I agree with you about the deterioration of the NATO deterrent due to untenable expansion.

Read my previous comment as frustration about the state of the debate. I don't think NATO membership was ever a plausible solution to Ukraine but I'm also pretty convinced that neither Vance nor Hegseth appreciate the perils of getting Ukraine wrong (ironically based on a kind of Greenwaldian/Gabbardian inability to understand that different situations call for different strategies) and I think there's a decent chance that's about to happen.

I think there's a good possibility that if European security wasn't 'NATO or bust' then maybe this doesn't happen. However now that it has I agree that the path to resolution needs to be something short of NATO that still creates a serious deterrent to future Russian incursions.

This is where I will be kind of mean to what IMHO is a serious deterioration in the realism of the Realist community. Just like it was always 1938 for the Neocons I think the Realists have entered a similarly current events agnostic cul-de-sac where it's perpetually 2002.

All I can think of is the baseline to the Megadeth song.

But bigger picture and beyond whatever happens with Ukraine, the US and the West generally may need to re-arm. We got a 30 year break which was nice even if we kind of squandered it. I'm not sure anyone is taking the situation seriously from a fiscal or strategic perspective. We've got all this bitching and moaning about giving away a bunch of old, obsolete kit gathering dust when the real problem is that projections suggest we'd run out of ammo for basic weapons systems in days or weeks in the event of a conflict with a real adversary.

I think the chances of people complaining about selling weapons is low, especially if a lot of them are made here. At the end of the day that's what this proposal would come down to.

But sure there are a lot of really naive people in America who think we can have all of the upside of Pax Americana and none of the costs. At best they're penny wise pound foolish.

I think the time between when they wanted to join to when they felt they actually could (or maybe had no choice but to make it official) was around 70 years.

The truth is that there is no baby, only bath water. It all must be banished. The only thing that's sad is that it took election of a totally unfit for office asshat to do it.

This has a distinctly nottheonion vibe.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-wants-un-fire-nuclear-safety-workers-cant-figure-rcna192345

This is a nice thought but it will almost certainly never happen, or if it does, the timeline will be similar to Finland's entry into NATO.

I don't know about indefinitely, but you have to create a plausible long-term deterrent. I don't know if it was due to age or just lack of vision but the best time to push for something was probably just before Ukraine's failed counter offensive.

Anyway at this point it doesn't mean that it's wrong to negotiate. It does mean though that the deal can't be something like 'Ukraine gives up its east and everyone promises to play nice from now on.' It might be something like there's a demilitarized zone and Rheinmetal builds a bunch of arms factories on Ukrainian soil, all of Europe and in particular Poland is allowed to export indefinite weapons (Ukraine can of course build its own too) so long as those arms don't cross whatever line, and the US is permitted to install a modern air defense system and provide ammunition and logistical support for it.

I think you're being too reductive, which may well be downstream of the politics created by the Biden admin's apparent lack of strategic thinking.

The question facing the US is whether any settlement with Russia at this moment can result not just in a temporary halt to hostilities but in sustainable peace. If we cut off support to Ukraine and Russia rebuilds and comes back in a few years, like what's happened previously, then it wasn't really peace to begin with. And if that happens, it opens the possibility that the conflict expands to NATO countries which in turn forces us to decide whether mutual defense is real or a bluff. That position is a no win whichever direction we go because we're either in a hot war with a nuclear armed adversary or we've removed ourselves from relevance as a major world power.

So while we need to be cautious about escalations the idea that we can just walk away from this isn't born out by the strategic realities.

Yea a buddy of mine was working for one of the public high schools and he mentioned to me at the end of the 2022-2023 school year that they were all nervous because no one but the about to graduate seniors had ever experienced a normal, in person exam week. Something about that specific example struck me as really eye opening. As grown ups it's easy to forget just how short a time period these big milestone parts of childhood/growing up are.

Seems reasonable to me.

Sterilizing oneself for political reasons has always struck me as kind of a self own.

I remember that urban legend. Hadn't thought about it in a million years. It occurs to me that one of the kind of sad things about the internet is the loss of little myths like that. Some might celebrate that but I think it's part of what makes us human.

Anyway as for us my wife and I had a little valentines date on the couch. We watched Babygirl which was another meh on a long string of movies from which I'd had higher expectations. Is it just me or have movies become too intentional in their ambiguity, especially in the endings? You get the sense that even the writers and directors don't have their own theory of what happened, they just ran out of run time.

Today the older son has a basketball game then going to log some volunteer hours at the school. Tomorrow more children's sports and a birthday party but they're spending the night at my mother in law's after and having their Monday off at her house. No holidays for me in techno-capitalist America but my wife has promised to make some old fashions while we get ANOTHER adult date night. I think we will probably get started on White Lotus season 3.

Heh then I suppose they have nothing to worry about and I'm sure nothing remotely damaging will come out of discovery.

They can. But it is illegal to discriminate in hiring based on race or sex.

I strongly doubt they said that. If they did they should probably settle the case.

That was a hell of a read.

Yea I don't know how anyone who isnt independently wealthy has bought a house since 2022 or so.

If there's a deal on the table my guess is that it's something like Russia keeps most of what it's taken, with some swaps for the areas of Russia it's occupying, Ukraine gets guaranteed massive arms imports, training, and logistical support from the West, sufficient to create it's own credible deterrent against future Russian incursions. NATO is almost certainly out of the equation if it ever was to begin with.

I wasn't really convinced. I think Smith is right in the sense that the government data isn't wrong or misleading. It just isn't measuring what is actually impacting peoples' assessment of the economy.

In my estimation It's all in the cost of living. You can have a job and still feel poorer. People lost a significant chunk of their actual income from inflation and the cost of money made it harder to make big purchases like a home or car. People feel those changes in a way that they don't feel a low unemployment rate or good stock market.

It doesn't matter. He has no credibility on any topic.

If they'd listen to me they'd win so much they'd be getting sick of it. Same goes for the Republicans.