mistermack

4 minutes ago, iNow said:

Because you asserted it as fact.

Rubbish. I asserted it. That's not the same thing at all. This is basic stuff. 

I can't have asserted it as a fact, when it never happened, it can only ever be an opinion. That's why it's just tiresome rhetoric, to ask for evidence that cannot possibly exist. 

5 hours ago, zapatos said:

5 hours ago, mistermack said:

If Zelensky had done a deal four weeks ago, none of this would be happening now.

Please provide some evidence.

This is the sort of silly stuff I posted about. How is it NOT obvious, that that is my opinion? And what sort of evidence do you imagine might exist that could establish the matter as a fact, one way or the other? Do you expect me or others to write "in my opinion" in front of every claim, just for the benefit of people who are pretending to be thick?

9 minutes ago, zapatos said:

I admit I cannot confirm you are paid by Russia. Can you please either admit you cannot support your assertions, or provide some sort of evidence if you can? 

I find your tedious mantra of "can you support your assertions" a bit pathetic. You do it all the time, not just to my posts, but to anyone and everyone. 

My posts are like most other people's, a mixture of fact and opinion. If you can't work out which is which, I'm not here to be your nursemaid. I try to make it obvious, I think I DO make it perfectly obvious, but some people, I guess, are determined to struggle even with the obvious.

18 minutes ago, zapatos said:

The reality is that you are paid by Russia to provide disinformation on social media sites.

😪  Please provided some support for this assertion. 😊

11 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Continuing this theater of the absurd interpretation, where a nation that had nukes gave them all up in 1994

You need to check your history. Ukraine had no nuclear weapons. The CIS had nuclear weapons, stationed in Ukraine. Ukraine agreed to destroy them, because keeping them was never on offer. 

On the subject of Ukraine in NATO, what would that give the world? Ukraine, with a running dispute with Russia, claiming Crimea, and at a shooting war with russians in places? That can only end well, can't it?

In reality, they were never going to get in. If NATO won't intervene now, how could it handle Ukraine membership with those ongoing feuds? They wouldn't dream of it. 

2 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

So that's a big NO on providing any kind of support for your reasoning? I ask because it seems important to you that I be specific, even though you hold yourself to a lower standard.

If you can quote the specific point, I can answer. But you don't. 

For instance : 

2 hours ago, Phi for All said:

I haven't seen you once support any of these attacks on his person, and you try to argue that he's an idiot for being a leader who won't back down.

Well, he didn't back down, do you REALLY want the evidence for that? Are you really that ignorant of what's happened? I consider that an idiotic decision, that's OBVIOUSLY my own opinion, and I have elaborated why in many posts. I'm not going to endlessly debate the bleedin obvious with you. 

6 minutes ago, TheVat said:

You need the rest of that first quote, which you seem to have dodged neatly by omitting it.  That part contained a more apt analogy which you don't seem to want to address.

You dodge my question, and then insist I shouldn't dodge your dodge.  That's far too dodgy for me.

8 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

The Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, over 60 years ago, was nothing on the scale of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and, sanctions aside, the US has done nothing substantial since.

Really? You haven't heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 ? Brink? Nuclear World War? Has that bit of history passed you by?

12 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Couple thoughts - one, if you did nothing to provoke the guy in the bar, why would he be pulling a gun on you for a bar stool?

If you have to dodge the question, it just shows that you haven't got an honest answer, that would support your rhetoric.

15 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Further, MacArthur refused to leave when ordered to, was utterly opposed to leaving his troops on Corregidor, and it took a special direct order from Pres. Roosevelt to get him to comply.

You really are a glutton for spin. That's the rubbish story given out for public consumption. It's done for your benefit, I'm amazed you just tamely swallow it. 

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

I don't mind you having dumb reasoning,

Calling it dumb doesn't make it a fact. A specific reply to a specific point might be worth my attention, but I'm afraid it's you that's doing the hand-waving. 

1 hour ago, Arete said:

Well, if it were giving up a stool in a bar, there is virtually no cost beyond minor inconvenience and perceived loss of status. Given the cost of engaging the bully over something that has little value to me, I wouldn't consider it. 

Exactly. A little bit of reality amongst the fantasies posted on here. 

If Zelensky had done a deal four weeks ago, none of this would be happening now. But surrounded by hawks, and egged on by NATO chiefs with their OWN agenda, that has nothing to do with the Ukrainian public, or their well being, he went the wrong way.

NATO has never had any interest in the people of Ukraine. They just want to keep squeezing Russia. How many countries does NATO need to fight Russia? Just the USA on it's own is more than enough. 

If Mexico was going to sign up to a military pact, with Russia and China, do you think the USA would just mind their own business and do nothing? 

Cuba has already proved that it would not. 

I'm not sure how a singularity in a black hole could define an objective frame of reference. After all, there are billions of black holes, all in different motion relative to each other. Will they all indicate just one unique frame of reference as real? 

10 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Bad analogy.  Ukraine did nothing to attack Russia or promote war.

It's a good analogy. I did nothing to disturb the guy in the bar. 

So I presume if YOU were the guy in the bar, you wouldn't move???

I don't believe that. 

When MacArthur saw the japs coming, he ran for it, shouting "I will return" over his shoulder. 

I'm not a fan, but at least he wasn't stupid. 

As far as Zelensky is concerned, I think the media adoration of him is pathetic. He's stupidly led his country into a disastrous war that they can't win. Bravery and stupidity have always overlapped, and he's right on the extreme edge of stupidity. 

If I'm in a bar, and a huge guy four times my size  at the next table tells me to move, while waving a huge gun in my face, I move. Even if he has no right to give me orders. Especially if I have all of my family with me. 

Zelensky is like the one idiot in a million, who would refuse, and end up getting his family killed. That's stupidity, not bravery. Bravery with other peoples' lives is not bravery at all in my book. When their lives depend on your decisions, it calls for intelligence and caring, not "bravery" and he has shown none.  

5 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Suggesting the revolution was quite popular.  And the landslide real.

Suggesting is too strong a word. I said before all this kicked off that Ukranian politics is rotten to the core. On both sides. No polls or election results are worth anything in that country. But the spinning of the western media means that one set are derided, and the other are accepted. 

Nobody knows what an honest election would produce, they've never tried it. And probably never will now. 

On 3/1/2022 at 8:51 PM, TheVat said:

in which a new president was elected in a landslide?

How do you know that? Elections before the coup were pretty evenly balanced. Election after the coup a landslide? That's Ukranian democracy for you. 

On 3/1/2022 at 8:51 PM, TheVat said:

As for the "she was asking for it" argument, I think Charon and Swanson addressed that pretty well.  

Really, I thought it was just silly spin. 

As far as the posts above are concerned, re the effect of sanctions, it appears that all of the companies are selling luxury goods into Russia. That's not going to hit Russia at all. They will manage fine without Harley Davidsons, or Adidas trainers, or Apple phones. They might struggle without the vital Disney products, but russians are tough enough to get through even that. 

Koti's list of war news is just plain silly, obviously pure invention out of someone's head. I don't thing tanks even have catalytic converters, it sounds like fantasy to me. 

In general, Russia exports basic necessities and imports luxury stuff that they can easily do without, or get elsewhere. I think Russian gas is still flowing to Germany, I don't think it ever stopped. It might stop though, if the Germans can't pay for it, so they will be still performing financial transactions, whatever the headlines say. 

25 minutes ago, CharonY said:

which is basically just blackmailing on a massive scale.

Except that Russia set up Ukraine as a country in the first place. With the agreement that Russia would continue to have unfettered access to Crimea for it's Black Sea Fleet, and that Ukraine would remain neutral. 

This was all abandoned after an illegal coup, that was planned, organised and started by the CIA. These things have a habit of coming back to bite you. 

47 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

!

Moderator Note

Our policy of not attacking people extends to all people. Focus on ideas and actions, please.

 

Fair enough, although I have the feeling that if I said the same about Putin or Donald Trump or Boris Johnson I wouldn't get the same reaction. But maybe I'm wrong. 

Why I think that Zelenskyy's decision-making has been ludicrous, is that the idea of joining NATO was presumably to protect Ukraine from aggression from Russia. And yet he took the course that he KNEW 100% would lead to an invasion. It's like jumping off a cliff, to prevent the possibility of falling. 

People might claim that Putin would have invaded anyway. I really don't believe that's true. If that was the case, he would have just invaded without warning, and not have given Ukraine the chance of taking a deal.  If he was determined to invade, what could he possibly gain by offering a deal that he knew he was going to ignore?

3 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

“My good friends, for the second time in our history,

If you check your history, you'll find that Hitler was raging after Chamberlain left, he felt he had been out-manoevered. Chamberlain bought precious time because Britain was woefully unprepared. 

You're just buying in to the simplistic history, there's real politics behind the headlines and spin. 

On 2/28/2022 at 1:52 AM, TheVat said:

Zelenskyy is a man of courage, leadership, and grace under pressure.   I don't say such things about politicians very often.  I predict people will be quoting "I need ammunition, I don't need a ride," for many years to come.

No he's not, he's a twat. Three or four weeks ago, if I'd been leader of Ukraine, I'd have done a deal not to join NATO. What would it have cost? NATO membership was not even on the cards, for decades. The Germans said that publicly, and everybody knew it. 

A deal that costs nothing, and he turned it down? He's a moron. Everyone knew this was coming, and he had a simple choice to make. On what parallel universe could this be described as the best choice? 

What would the world be like today, if he'd done the deal? Nobody would have been killed, nobody would have fled, streets and shops would be normal, planes would be flying in and out as normal, cash machines would be working, and fuel in this country would be it's usual price.

He's a mega twat.

Adam was made from dust, so we all have dust dna.

Eve was cloned from Adam's rib, so they were genetically identical. So Adam had sex with his own identical twin, who was also his son, and begat the rest of us.

So all humans are descended from a gay incestuous pedophile. 

Luckily, there have been some spontaneous mutational changes to the genome since then. 

9 minutes ago, swansont said:

Slaves were property and not people. Reprehensible, yes, but in a legal view it meant the problem of rights was a non-issue.

And the same people were packing out the churches on a Sunday. It's amazing what people can make themselves believe. 

What you have to remember is that the Russian people are not exposed to the constant spin of the western media. They are not going to view this in the way that people in the west will. 

The spin in Russia will be just as one sided as in our media, so I wouldn't expect much from the Russian people. ( I'm guessing ) But any Russian dissent will be shown over here, as if it's everywhere. You won't get to see the truth, any more than the Russians will. 

And the fall in the Rouble might be a problem for the Russian economy, but it's also a real oportunity for Russia to buy back it's own currency at a knockdown price. I'm not sure who wins in that situation. 

2 hours ago, Sensei said:

Crimea-Russia Bridge. Target for "yesterday" for Ukrainian (or friends) airplanes, drones or missiles..

He would just use that as a reason to keep a land bridge. It's likely to become just a tourist attraction. 

Just a comment on the constitution, since the thread was split. 

INow pointed out that "all men are created equal" is not binding, because it's in the declaration of independence, not the constitution. 

But looking at the wording, it says that this is a "self evident truth". So logically, if it's self evident, then there's no need to write it down. Any judge, at any time, should know that it's true, and rule accordingly. Which makes the support of slavery rights by the court an even bigger shame on it's reputation. 

Not that it's unique in that by any means. 

Apply that principle to abortion, and you come up against a problem. When is a "man" created? And when does it become "equal" ? It's not so self-evident as the independence declaration would have you believe. 

Tactically, I would use plastic milk bottles rather than tupperware. You get a better seal in the lid. And only fill them 7/8 full to allow for expansion when they freeze. Also, I would add a little salt to the water, and allow it to dissolve. That will bring the melting point down below 0 degrees, giving you a better chill effect. And fill every empty space in the freezer with these bottles, so that you have plenty available to replace the used ones as they melt in the fridge. 

6 hours ago, iNow said:

Agreed. In practice, most courts almost always are. Thanks for clarifying.

Yes, it was always a question of degree, like everything else. From the outside looking in, it's amazing to see the open acceptance of political bias being wielded in a court of law. Of course it happens everywhere to some extent, but it's so blatant, automatic and accepted in the US. It's the public assumption that the next appointed judge will be leftward leaning, and will NEED to be, to counter the existing bias of right leaning judges. 

Maybe it's more honest, accepting that humans are biased, and try to work with it? But I don't think so, I think humans, especially judges, should be able to rise above that. 

It can be otherwise. In the game of golf, for example, professional players are expected to call a foul on themselves, if they accidentally move a ball. It's against all of your instincts, when you are doing all you can to win. But most pros call it, even if nobody has seen it. It's the same in snooker, here in the UK. People can be honest, when the peer pressure is united enough. But in legal cases, I guess there's enough grey area to hide behind. A golf ball either moves, or it doesn't, so the decision is just, do I cheat or not? On a legal bench, it's more complicated, and you can easily conjure up a justification for what you voted. And especially so, when you know perfectly well that the judges on the other side of the argument are going to vote politically, just like you.