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Frangas non Flectes |
Thanks for that, I’m talking long term, though. I made the same point some pages back. This thing is going to drag on for years and where it ends up may look very different from how it began. Most wars do. ______________________________________________ “There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.” | |||
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It is worth noting that when American equipment and weapons are sent to Ukraine, the equipment and weapons go to Ukraine. It's paid for by US taxpayers. However the equipment and weapons are manufactured almost entirely here in the US. So the salaries of the employees stay here along with the money paid to the US manufacturers. So not every cent goes to Ukraine. Some of it actually stays here. That's not an argument either for or against current US Ukraine policy. But accuracy matters. | |||
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money  |
Fair enough. Same with the $800 billion in equipment Biden left behind in Afghanistan. "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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Western Leaders Privately Admit Ukraine Can't Win The War https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...ukraine-cant-win-war Western leaders privately told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine can not win the war against Russia and that it should begin peace talks with Moscow this year in exchange for closer ties with NATO. The private communications are at odds with public statements from Western leaders who routinely say they will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes until it achieves victory on the battlefield. The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the private remarks to Zelenksy, said: “The public rhetoric masks deepening private doubts among politicians in the U.K., France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to expel the Russians from eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, and a belief that the West can only help sustain the war effort for so long, especially if the conflict settles into a stalemate, officials from the three countries say. ‘We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,’ a senior French official said. ‘And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.’ French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Zelensky at an Élysée Palace dinner earlier this month that he must consider peace talks with Moscow, the Journal reported. According to its source, the newspaper quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.” Macron told Zelensky “he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to shift into political statesmanship and make difficult decisions,” the newspaper reported. A Return to Realism At the Munich Security Conference last week, Gen. Petr Pavel, the Czech Republic’s president-elect and a former NATO commander, said: “We may end up in a situation where liberating some parts of Ukrainian territory may deliver more loss of lives than will be bearable by society. … There might be a point when Ukrainians can start thinking about another outcome.” Even when he was a NATO commander Pavel was a realist in regard to Russia. During controversial NATO war games with 31,000 troops on Russia’s borders in 2016 — the first time in 75 years that German troops had retraced the steps of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union — Pavel dismissed hype about a Russian threat to NATO. Pavel, who was chairman of NATO’s military committee at the time, told a Brussels press conference that, “It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing.” The German foreign minister at the time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also embraced realism towards Russia, saying: “What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering. Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken.” Instead of an aggressive NATO stance towards Russia that could backfire, Steinmeier called for dialogue with Moscow. “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” he said, saying it would be “fatal to search only for military solutions and a policy of deterrence.” Under U.S. leadership NATO clearly did not follow that advice, as it continued to deploy more troops to Eastern Europe and to arm and train Ukraine (under cover of pretending to back the Minsk Accords). Before its intervention in Ukraine, Russia cited NATO’s eastward expansion, the deployment of missiles in Romania and Poland, war games near its borders and the arming of Ukraine as red lines that the West had crossed. After a year of war, Western leaders appear now to be turning to a realist approach. Macron, for instance, at the Munich Security Conference dismissed any talk of regime change in Moscow. No US Reaction Washington has not commented on the Journal‘s story about the peace talks-for-arms proposal. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month discussed with The Washington Post arming Ukraine post-war but he did not say that Ukraine should seek peace talks. “We have to be thinking — and we are — about what the postwar future looks like to ensure that we have security and stability for Ukrainians and security and stability in Europe,” Blinken told the conference in Munich. The proposal to bring Ukraine even closer to NATO than it already is, with greater access to weapons after the war, should be on the agenda at NATO’s annual meeting in July, said Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, at the Munich conference. “The NATO summit must produce a clear offer to Ukraine, also to give Zelensky a political win that he can present at home as an incentive for negotiations,” a British official told the Journal. The deal with NATO would not include membership with its Article 5 protection, the newspaper reported. “We would like to have security guarantees on the path to NATO,” Zelensky told a press conference on Friday. In the meantime, Macron, according to the WSJ report, said that Ukraine should press forward with a military offensive to regain territory in order to push Moscow to the peace table. There has been no reaction from Moscow about the proposal. Political analyst Alexander Mercouris, in his video report on Saturday, said Russia would likely be incentivized to continue fighting rather than enter peace talks with the knowledge that Ukraine would be heavily armed by NATO after the war. “The Russians are never going to agree with something like this,” Mercouris said. “They must be saying to themselves that instead of agreeing to this plan, it actually makes more sense … to continue this war because one of [Russia’s] objectives is the total demilitarization of Ukraine.” What the Western powers are proposing is the opposite, he said. Given that Russia considers it is winning and “there seems to be a general acknowledgment amongst Western governments that Ukraine can’t win this war, …where is the incentive for … Russia to even consider this plan?” For Moscow, Mercouris said, Ukraine’s demilitarization is an “absolute, existential matter.” If Ukraine is going to get even more advanced weapons from NATO after the war as opposed to what it would get “whilst the war is still underway, then it makes even less sense” for Russia “to stop the war and agree to this plan.” Russia is facing a “weakening adversary now,” Mercouris said, and Moscow clearly prefers that to facing a “strengthened adversary later.” _________________________ "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." Mark Twain | |||
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We don't know how long this is going to drag on. Russia isn't America. They can't afford a prolonged war. They don't have the manpower or economy for it. You asked what our support bought us and I showed you. Even if Ukraine ends up succumbing to Russia several key things are indisputable: Russia is weaker today and the world now knows how ineffective their military is. Is that worth $100b dollars? That's for everyone to decide on their own. Personally in a time where trillion dollar bills are passed like it's no big deal, there's plenty of other things to trim to get the $100b back. A weaker Russia is good for America and and even better for the rest of the world. I would love to see another country attack/invade Russia on a different front. Really fuck with their military resources since they're throwing everything and the kitchen sink at Ukraine. A good assfucking is exactly what Russia needs. | |||
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Shall Not Be Infringed |
I've got news for you...WE can't 'afford' a prolonged war either!  ____________________________________________________________ If Some is Good, and More is Better.....then Too Much, is Just Enough !! Trump 2024....Make America Great Again! "May Almighty God bless the United States of America" - parabellum 7/26/20 Live Free or Die! | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent  |
Well I started writing a brief reply. Then I edited out a couple paragraphs to keep it brief. Then I wrote half of it back in and added some stuff for clarification ... so, just the executive summary: - I support Ukraine for a variety of reasons, but the main point is that if the Russian annexations go unchallenged, the entire European post-WW II order becomes negotiable. In particular, the inviolability of national borders codified in the UN Charter, the Helsinki Accords, the Two-plus-four Treaty on German reunification, the Budapest Memorandum on Ukrainian sovereignty, etc. This is not just about Ukraine, or even about Putin eying the Baltic NATO members in his bid to resurrect the USSR or Russian Empire. This about everyone accepting every historically contested European border frozen in 1945 - Ukraine/Poland, Belarus/Poland, Poland/Slovakia, Poland/Germany, Germany/France, Austria/Italy, Italy/Slovenia, Spain/Gibraltar, the list goes on. - It's unsurprising then that I also support US funding of Ukraine. Of course that I do doesn't matter; however, I also believe that it's actually in the American interest to do so, for reasons I could explain in just three paragraphs or so ... - A current British estimate is that this war will continue for at least another year; I suspect that's conservative. Like any war, it will end when one side runs out of either troops, weapons, and/or will. Both can probably keep rearming, including from friendly third nations, which will likely see Ukraine gain overall technological superiority with Western systems. However, the latter has less manpower to draw on. Then again, Putin must use his greater ressources carefully, lest he loses domestic support; because for considerable time ahead, the Ukrainian popular will to defend their nation will be greater than the Russian will to feed bodies into this colonial adventure. There are outside chances for decisive occurrences like Putin going nuclear or dying/being replaced. However, the point to really worry about the former was last October when the Russian fronts in the East and South collapsed; and the latter is probably a hopeful wish with no guarantee that Putin's successor won't be even worse. I think it's entirely possible that Ukraine will regain all territory they lost last year; the original rebel republics in the Donbas and Crimea in particular are a lot more difficult because there's probably little popular support for liberation on the ground at this point. If and when we get to where this becomes an issue is where I believe diplomacy will get a chance for a post-war settlement. Until then, neither side has an incentive. That's my take as a West German who grew up in the 70s and 80s, when everyone was screaming "the US is driving the world into nuclear extinction", too; as someone with a professional background in security politics, and as a political centrist and Atlanticist. Other Germans would disagree wildly. Like in the US, foreign policy discussions here are frequently really domestic partisan debates, though in comparison tempered by the multi-party system and resulting lesser polarization; and by the lesser German influence on world events, real or perceived. There are a lot of other factors, too, which I could explain in just four paragraphs or so ... | |||
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money |
On Friday — just two days before the WSJ dropped its exclusive article packed with quotes from anonymous intelligence officials who know about how all the super-secret, un-named agencies feel on the lab-leak issue — the Washington Post ran an indignant story headlined “China Considers Sending Russia Artillery Shells, U.S. Officials Say.” Apparently, the striped-pants, champagne-cocktail crowd at the State Department thinks it would be totally outrageous and unethical if some big country were to start meddling in the Proxy War by giving one of the participants more weapons. I mean, who DOES that? People should stay out of the Proxy War and let the Ukrainians and Russians duke it out. Keeping in mind the Department of Energy’s five-page lab-leak brief, and the fact that the Biden Administration used to think that accusing the Wuhan Institute of Virology of negligence was “racist,” consider how alarmed Team Biden was by Friday’s news China might toss some of its spare ordnance in Russia’s direction: … a prospect that has alarmed those in the Biden administration who believe Beijing has the ability to transform the war’s trajectory. Well. And just when Ukraine was on the brink of turning Russia into a third-world country. I’m sure you’ve seen, as I have, the countless articles tallying up Russian losses and salivating at the prospect the superpower would soon “run out of munitions” and start fighting with sharpened ski poles or something. Apparently all these geniuses never predicted that other non-NATO countries might eventually get pulled into the ESCALATING conflict. A week ago, the Washington Post ran an alarmed headline warning China to stay out of it, headlined, “Blinken warns China against giving ‘lethal support’ to Russia, as leaders meet in Munich.” Now it seems China has ignored Mr. Blinken’s bluster, and is talking about artillery shells, a core item extremely useful for destroying troops, tanks, and infrastructure targets from long distances. THIS is what “escalation” looks like. Which is a word we’ve been shouting into the Proxy War hurricane since day number one. And if Proxy War supporters start saying, “well, we’ll just have to beat China too!”, then I intend to mock them so hard they’ll never sit down again without an inflatable cushion ring. Just try it. But that’s just what the geniuses on Team Biden appear to be getting ready to say: [U.S. Secretary] Blinken warned [China’s senior diplomat] Wang Yi that there would be “consequences if China provides material support to Russia or assistance with systemic sanctions evasion,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price… National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday,.. “China should not want to become tangibly involved in that manner.” On Friday, China publicly called for a comprehensive cease-fire in conjunction with a 12-point peace plan. The United States immediately rejected the proposal — even before Ukraine could chime in — with U.S. officials stubbornly insisting that a cease-fire would only allow Russia to “rest” and “rearm.” Sorry Ukraine citizens! The U.S. says no breaks from war for you. You have more work to do as Proxy War game pieces. Anyway, it’s not just China. In the same article, the WSJ reported that Iran will be shipping more weapons to the Proxy War, too: “Today, we have additional information that Iranian support for Russia’s war is expanding,” Kirby told reporters Friday. In November, he said, “Iran shipped artillery and tank rounds to Russia for use in Ukraine.” Iranian support for Russia’s war is “expanding.” Isn’t “expanding” another word for “escalating?” So. The dots I am connecting are (1) the Biden Administration’s anger at China for dabbling in its Proxy War, and (2) the magical, unrequested production of a hastily-prepared Department of Energy report adding one more tiny piece of evidence suggesting that China could be held responsible for the pandemic. I could be wrong. I could be seeing political games and narrative control everywhere I look these days, when instead it might just be good, honest folk down at the DoE doing a crackerjack job. But it’s my current working hypothesis. https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...ack&utm_medium=email "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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When it comes to weakening one of our greatest rivals and worldwide threats with no loss of American lives, we can afford it. There are plenty of other things in our budget that can go. At least with this $100b we got measurable results vs. most of Government spending that disappears into the pockets of everyone but us. | |||
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| Lawyers, Guns and Money |
That is true.
I appreciate your perspective. You are closer, at least physically, to the situation in Ukraine than we are her in the US. We too are very divided on Ukraine, but not just in a partisan way. Republicans are pretty evenly divided and so are Democrats. "Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown "The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth." -rduckwor | |||
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My wife is from Rostov-na-Donu & is still in telephone contact with her Russian friends after 25 years in the USA. We still maintain her condo in Rostov and she spent summers in Rostov until Covid. She is not surprised at the support for Putin after over 20 years of slowly taking control of Russian politicians & Russian media. I met my wife in 1996 when she was at the University of IL in Champaign. She has hated Putin from the moment he took over & for years will not say his name, just says "the Villain". Years ago she said no KBG person can ever be good. Her architect brother had a 35 employee business until he ran afoul of Moscow developers extending into Rostov. Most of his Rostov subcontractors employed Ukrainians from Donetsk & Luhansk until 2014. When you say rebel republics in Donbas, that is the Russian propaganda. As you may know Rostov is the headquarters of the Russian Southern military command. In 2014 Rostov was full of Chechen & other mercenaries. So many my wife was afraid to go out for groceries & only stayed 2 weeks that summer. __________________________________________________ If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit! Sigs Owned - A Bunch | |||
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| Peace through superior firepower  |
Thank you, Banshee. I appreciate your perspective. I am tired of the responsibility to clean up the mess in other parts of the world always falling upon the United States and the American taxpayer. I feel that Europe needs to clean up its own mess. My country is falling apart- or I should say, my country is being taken apart and we must tend to our own. The United States, I believe, has far more to worry about from Communist China than from Russia. Clearly, you and I do not agree on US involvement in the Ukraine, but I am very glad to have you with us and providing us with a view from the European perspective. | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
Geographic proximity is one thing which shapes debate over here - only a little over 200 miles between the closest German and Russian territory, less than 400 to Ukraine, resulting in closer relations including trade, but also a greater sense of threat. Also sizable immigrant communities from both countries, including many ethnic Germans from the former USSR, the descendants of mostly 18th century emigrants to the Russian Empire which returned after the fall of the Iron Curtain; and about a million Ukrainian refugees right now. The elephant in the room, as always, is history, particularly WW II. Some say that due to the quasi-genocidal German war against the USSR, we shouldn't supply any weapons which would be used against Russian soldiers again; others remind that the USSR included Ukraine, too, which in fact suffered disproportionately, and history actually obliges us to help them against another aggressive dictatorship. Opinions additionally differ between East and West Germany, with the former tending to be more pro-Russian - even though Soviet troops were not regarded as friendly there during the Cold War as the Americans in particular were in the West. Still, anti-Americanism is a thing on both the left and right political fringes throughout the country, while the center acknowledges it was US influence in particular which transformed Germany into a true liberal Western democracy from its authoritarian past. As noted elsewhere earlier, American anti-government language (against the administration of the day, or general) typically translates into anti-Americanism abroad, which makes for a similar sound in hard partisan debates. Many of the points against involvement in Ukraine brought up in domestic US discussion because, Biden, are repeated here, but as because, America. There are variations, of course; where Americans will complain that they're paying for the security of their allies, the analogue here is complaints that the US is treating its allies as vassals to fight in its imperialist wars like Afghanistan and Iraq. A recurring conspiracy theory is that America is trying to eliminate Europe as an economic competitor, with "provoking" the war in Ukraine merely the latest pretext to destroy our economy through sanctions against Russia, disrupting trade with the latter, making us buy expensive American LNG instead of cheap Russian pipeline gas to render our industry incompetitive, etc. Conversely, to Europeans, American foreign policy debate can look like a toxic mix of an inflated sense of national importance, hyperpartisanship and ignorance on foreign affairs; something like 1. All events in the world are dependent upon action taken (or not) in DC; 2. Do I identify as a Democrat or Republican? 3. Make up shit consistent with 2. But then, rigorous contrary discussion of Ukraine on SigForum - an overwhelmingly Republican group, and more specifically trending heavily towards the Trump camp within the party base - clearly shows that while politics obviously influence the view of world affairs, nations or certain demographics within them are not hiveminds, but consist of individuals damn well capable of independent critical thought. | |||
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Let me first say that my wife & her Russian family are in support of Ukraine believing that helping Ukraine will also help Russians get rid of Putin. Of course her family have been to the US several times. In fact my Russian niece had a 3 year US visa & bicycled with a friend from New York City to Los Angeles. Many years ago my wife said that the US is the world's police & that is what helps keep the world together. She also believes that the US involvement in Viet Nam stymied Russia's expansion in other countries. My wife feels that while Putin's successor may be the same, the only end to Putin's wars are for him to be eliminated. Remember, he started by invading Georgia in 2008. My Russian brother-in-law is now in Yerevan, Armenia trying to restart his development business. Yerevan is in great need of new developments with so many Russians that have fled to Armenia. __________________________________________________ If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit! Sigs Owned - A Bunch | |||
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Irksome Whirling Dervish |
My view on US support for Ukraine is different than the majority however, since peace seems to be the buzzword of the day and both sides are being urged to come up with something, what will that look like? The Chinese peace proposal was a nonstarter when it called for a preliminary cease fire because it allowed Russia to stay in place. Short of Russia leaving, which they aren't inclined to do and admit failure, Ukraine won't stand for them to keep the two "freed" regions. They know what happened in Crimea and they don't want that in these new regions. But magically, let's say that Ukraine agrees to give up the two regions and that's peace. Ukraine will join NATO and become NATO and that brings the warring sides closer and perhaps directly. IMO, Russia will "find" more Nazi's who are oppressing the Russian people in a providence or region and move to liberate them. I'm not seeing a agreed upon peace that either side will be happy with in the present or in the long term but I'm interested to hear what others think. | |||
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Yellen In Ukraine Announces Another $1.25 Billion https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...-another-125-billion Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visted Kiev for about 12 hours on Monday, which was a highly symbolic trip which came a week after President Biden made his first visit there to meet with President Zelensky. What the 76-year old Yellen could have accomplished via a simple zoom call, or rather by a bank wire, was done in person. Yes another massive check at American taxpayers' expense was handed over. The New York Times reports that "The trip — during which Ms. Yellen announced the transfer of $1.25 billion in economic and budget assistance to Ukraine — is part of a concerted diplomatic push by the Biden administration to show support for Ukraine while maintaining pressure on Russia." This of course also means dissuading China from dealings with Moscow at a moment Beijing is bristling over accusations that it's preparing to send weapons to Kremlin forces. "The secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, will visit two former Soviet republics this week and is expected to urge them to maintain their distance from Russia as well as China," the Times continues. Yellen pledged that the US would "stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes" upon arriving for her unannounced trip, which came via an early morning train which crossed over from Poland. The NYT also notes that "The demonstration of American solidarity with Ukraine came as the United States is preparing to disburse another $10 billion in aid following the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion." In offering the new aid, she said: "We know that this war hasn’t just taken countless innocent Ukrainian lives." She added: "It has also served as a tremendous shock to the Ukrainian economy." "Your steady hand and prudent economic management in the face of tremendous economic challenges has made a meaningful impact in helping stabilize Ukraine’s economy." Meanwhile, what everyone knows but few are saying... except for of course - oops! _________________________ "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." Mark Twain | |||
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| Peace through superior firepower |
The only correction I would make to your observation is that it's almost certainly more accurate to say that the active, posting members of SIGforum are overwhelmingly conservatives. You'll find little love these days in SIGforum for the Republican party, which has demonstrated clearly that it's really not all that much different from the Democratic party. ____________________________________________________ "I am your retribution." - Donald Trump, speech at CPAC, March 4, 2023 | |||
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Zelensky Hints At Withdrawing From Russian-Encircled Bakhmut: 'Out Of Options' https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...-bakhmut-out-options It was only in late January that Ukraine's military General Staff emphasized that any potential forces withdrawal from the strategic city of Bakhmut in the east was "out of the question" as the situation was said to be under control. But a month later, the narrative has dramatically shifted amid reports that the Russians are shelling Ukrainian positions around the clock, and as complaints from Ukrainian front lines oersist of not enough ammo supplies to keep pace with the Russians. President Zelensky in fresh remarks on the situation has admitted that besieged Bakmhut is running out of options. Within the past days he also said for the first time that he won't seek to hold the city "at any cost" - strongly suggesting Ukraine has suffered a staggering loss in manpower. He said Tuesday: "The situation is getting more and more difficult"... "The enemy is gradually destroying everything which can be used to protect our positions," Zelenskiy said in his address, stopping short of announcing a pullout. There have been emerging repots of gun battles deep within the city itself, which is a new development, also as Russian forces have it nearly fully encircled, as the NY Times also confirms: The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, on Tuesday described the situation around the city as "extremely tense" in a post on the Telegram messaging app. And Reuters too for the first time presented a headline Tuesday which put the situation for the Ukrainian side in stark terms: "Russians tighten noose on Ukraine's Bakhhmut," the news service reported. On Monday Zelensky had described that "The enemy is constantly destroying everything that can be used to protect our positions for fortification and defense. Our soldiers defending the area around Bakhmut are true heroes." Some soldiers cited in local reports are vowing to fight till the end, as military reports get more and more desperate. Meanwhile the Biden administration is still resisting demands to give Kiev F-16 fighter jets... "for now" that is. John Kirby had described in a Monday interview that "At no time have the Russians ever achieved air superiority over Ukraine" - though by many military observer accounts, this is a highly dubious statement. _________________________ "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." Mark Twain | |||
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| Busier than a cat covering crap on a marble floor  |
 ________________________________________________________ The trouble with trouble is; it always starts out as fun. | |||
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| SIGforum's Berlin Correspondent |
Well I’m trying hard (and sometimes fail) not to be one of those Europeans who get more invested in American politics than some Americans - because compared to the local flavor, the Hollywood factor is so much higher that it gets pushed on us in obsessive detail by international media and the internet. Generally I find German politics sufficiently entertaining, and on partisan principles I'm definitely in the "if both the far Left and Right are against it, it must be a good thing" camp. Even though in this case, they're giving voice to considerable popular unease across party lines.
https://www.spiegel.de/interna...af-ac4c-b9a52220d167 | |||
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