How much?

[canpakes]

Sure. I understand how taxation works. And money doesn’t grow on trees. We have to turn the money printer on for that.

Which increases inflation, so it's not a real solution.

Of course it’s a real solution. That money isn’t going to print itself, so we have to turn the printer on. That’s why the printer has an ‘ON’ button. Press button; money printer go brrrrrrrrr.

I’m not gonna draw dollar bills by hand, am I? I tried that once, and things didn’t turn out well.

Absolutely. But the implication is that this money is going somewhere other than being reallocated into US hands, when in fact it’s largely the case that it’s feeding into the US economy.

Great! Then why not advocate for a doubling of your taxes, just so long as it feeds into the U.S. economy? Or why not advocate for ballooning the deficit by another order of magnitude, since the borrowed money will feed into the U.S. economy?

You’re thinking too small, Shades. I mean, half of our budget is eaten up by the DoD. But, why? Why do we need things like an Air Force, or Navy? Ukraine really doesn’t seem to have much of either and they’ve been taking out Russkie aircraft and pretty much sunk Putin’s whole Black Sea fleet using cheap drones layered in Pop Rocks and duct tape. Think of how much we’d save in this nation if Trump just decided to stop building $14-billion-dollar aircraft carriers and $110-billion-dollar F35 aircraft systems? Seriously, save a half-trillion bucks and just equip each US citizen household with a dozen AR-15s, some MANPATS, and several hundred canisters of ammo, then call it a day. Let Putin or Xi just TRY to invade. Joke’s on them, suckas.

We could redirect that money to Americans in other ways. I suppose that we could help pay down student loan debt, as example. But you and Ceeboo may need to distance yourselves from your current political ideologies a bit more if you’re starting to talk about doing that, or giving houses away to homeless people, because those sorts of things are icky socialism, and homeless losers certainly don’t deserve free houses for making bad financial decisions or being addicts. I didn’t find that proposal within the Project 2025 handbook, anyway.

Better to have icky socialism than to have nothing at all by flushing the money down the toilet, wouldn't you say?

NO, SHADES. NO. BAD SHADES. SOCIALISM ICKY BAD, SHADES. Put that thing down and go wash your hands right now.

The problem with ‘MAGA’ and ‘America First’ is that it only applies to the person making the list. It’s better described as, ‘Me First’. There are a lot of folks making their own list, and their priorities won’t be yours. How do you resolve that?

That's just the sad reality of politics. I'm very used to it. I won't complain too much as long as the deficit isn't increased and the money gets used in-house instead of flushed down the toilet.

What do you have against flushing money down the toilet? Plumbers have to eat, too, you know. MAGA!

Our incoming Administration’s priorities are all about launching a deportation program that some smart folks are calculating will cost around $88 billion dollars per 1 million people deported. What does America benefit from spending to remove working people who are arguably contributing to the economy, in order to toss them across the border?

It doesn't.

But, they broke the law!! We have to TEACH THEM A LESSON! Even if it ends up shooting the economy in the foot … and then the other foot. And the leg. MAGA!

Even if the program costs a third less than estimated, that’s $202.98 (rounded down to the nearest penny) for every man, woman, and child. If you have a family of four (for example) living in your home, that's $811.92 that your family could've NOT paid in taxes if the U.S.A. had adopted a non-deportation stance.

Then let's adopt a non-deportation stance.

Why do you INSIST on being creative? Stop trying to make people ‘think’. We need to simply react to our gut, and MAGA GUT says that IMMIGRANTS ARE BAD.

They’re eating the pets, you know.

Then repeat that 10 more times.

Okay.

** money printer go brrrrrrrrrrrr **

[yellowstone123]

Dr Exiled wrote:

We've been meddling in the Ukraine for years and years and it should stop. Jeffrey Sachs also supports Mearsheimer's views.

That's interesting. I didn't know who Jeffery Sachs was but saw this post recently on X when Elon Musk made a comment:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1856172877688570095

I then read on websites where James Backer III told Russia that NATO would not move eastward if they agreed to allow east and west Germany to reunify. But then things change and the West did move east by allowing countries who were formally soviet satellite states to join NATO. I understand that although you have good intentions and make plans sometimes situations happen where those plans change.

[Gadianton]

Regarding your question about helping Ukraine, stopping the war, stopping the slaughter is what will help Ukraine. We shouldn't be meddling in their affairs regardless of what Blackrock or JP Morgan Chase want. We should avoid pushing a nuclear power.

I didn't see anything from Sachs indicating this is a Blackrock conspiracy to his credit. He also unequivocally denounces Trump as the worst political leader ever, which buys him even more credibility. It really comes down to reading Putin's mind. There are three broad theories, to my knowledge: 1) He's scared of NATO expansion 2) He must close the 9 gaps, irrespective of NATO 3) Internal motives; glory of the empire, leave his mark, people expect it.

If the NATO threat was so dire leading up to 2022, you'd think Mearsheimer would have predicted the invasion, rather than totally blowing it off.

The third item is no joke, considering Alexei Navalny himself seemed to see Ukraine as rightfully part of Russia.

Whatever the case may be, it seems like a ceasefire and possibly a sham end to the war is on the horizon. I guess we'll see what happens from there.

[Dr Exiled]

Regarding your question about helping Ukraine, stopping the war, stopping the slaughter is what will help Ukraine. We shouldn't be meddling in their affairs regardless of what Blackrock or JP Morgan Chase want. We should avoid pushing a nuclear power.

I didn't see anything from Sachs indicating this is a Blackrock conspiracy to his credit. He also unequivocally denounces Trump as the worst political leader ever, which buys him even more credibility. It really comes down to reading Putin's mind. There are three broad theories, to my knowledge: 1) He's scared of NATO expansion 2) He must close the 9 gaps, irrespective of NATO 3) Internal motives; glory of the empire, leave his mark, people expect it.

If the NATO threat was so dire leading up to 2022, you'd think Mearsheimer would have predicted the invasion, rather than totally blowing it off.

The third item is no joke, considering Alexei Navalny himself seemed to see Ukraine as rightfully part of Russia.

Whatever the case may be, it seems like a ceasefire and possibly a sham end to the war is on the horizon. I guess we'll see what happens from there.

https://www.reuters.com/business/financ ... 024-01-16/

They are supposedly heavily involved with reconstruction contracts.

[honorentheos]

How does one say "I get my information from pro-Russian sources" without saying they get their information from pro-Russian sources?

Mearsheimer is the lone contrarian source that I've ran across of who blames NATO, but over time, I've become less impressed with his views. Some of his ideas strike me as outright kooky, such as, why we can take Putin's NATO fears (excuses?) at face value. John misreading Putin's intents:

https://youtu.be/0T2MYXljL5o?t=71

But even if it were NATO's fault, why would that be a reason NOT to help Ukraine? 1) wouldn't we owe them even more if it was our screw-up? 2) Suppose there was undeniable proof that it wasn't NATO's fault, and purely Putin's aggression. How would that change anything for isolationists? Shades is out $203 dollars either way.

You've relied a lot on Mearsheimer's old material. Has he ever said we should stop the war ASAP? I saw him last on Lex, I honestly can't remember, but I don't recall his position being that we've got to stop this. In fact, he recommended we rattle the Nuclear sabre back at Putin.


In what way was peace not being given a chance before the special operation? If NATO forced his hand before, why wouldn't it be all the worse now that two more countries have joined NATO?

We've been meddling in the Ukraine for years and years and it should stop. Jeffrey Sachs also supports Mearsheimer's views. https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-art ... in-ukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbNvagE7BcM

Here is a quote from his timeline that is important. We promised not to expand NATO and then did it anyway and are obviously trying to surround Russia, probably because our elites covet their resources.

February 9, 1990. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III agrees with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.”

Here are some more important timelines from the article:

January 28, 2014. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt plot regime change in Ukraine in a call that is intercepted and posted on YouTube on February 7, in which Nuland notes that “[Vice President] Biden’s willing” to help close the deal.

February 21, 2014. Governments of Ukraine, Poland, France, and Germany reach an Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine, calling for new elections later in the year. The far-right Right Sector and other armed groups instead demand Yanukovych’s immediate resignation, and take over government buildings. Yanukovych flees. The Parliament immediately strips the President of his powers without an impeachment process.

February 22, 2014. The US immediately endorses the regime change.

March 16, 2014. Russia holds a referendum in Crimea that according to the Russian Government results in a large majority vote for Russian rule. On March 21, the Russian Duma votes to admit Crimea to the Russian Federation. The Russian Government draws the analogy to the Kosovo referendum. The US rejects the Crimea referendum as illegitimate.

After Putin invaded there was a chance for peace that we and the British rejected:

March 16, 2022. Russia and Ukraine announce significant progress towards a peace agreement mediated by Turkey and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. As reported in the press, the basis of the agreement includes: “a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal if Kyiv declares neutrality and accepts limits on its armed forces.”

March 28, 2022. President Zelensky publicly declares that Ukraine is ready for neutrality combined with security guarantees as part of a peace agreement with Russia. “Security guarantees and neutrality, the non-nuclear status of our state — we’re ready to do that. That’s the most important point ... they started the war because of it.”

April 7, 2022. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov accuses the West of trying to derail the peace talks, claiming that Ukraine had gone back on previously agreed proposals. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett later states (on February 5, 2023) that the U.S. had blocked the pending Russia-Ukraine peace agreement. When asked if the Western powers blocked the agreement, Bennett answered: “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they were wrong.” At some point, says Bennett, the West decided “to crush Putin rather than to negotiate.”

Regarding your question about helping Ukraine, stopping the war, stopping the slaughter is what will help Ukraine. We shouldn't be meddling in their affairs regardless of what Blackrock or JP Morgan Chase want. We should avoid pushing a nuclear power.

As an aside, I am continually surprised by how experts are elevated to almost deity here and elsewhere, when convenient. Experts are to aid the jury in decision making, not to usurp the jury. So, whatever a given expert said here or there is merely part of the mix. Critical thinking should still be the main component of decision making.

You asked: In what way was peace not being given a chance before the special operation? Take a look at Mr. Sach's timeline. Also, we don't even talk to the Russians and we killed the peace deal brokered in Turkey. We haven't been for peace at all.

Ah. Got it.

[Dwight]

One thing I noticed and didn’t follow up, but the mere sign that Dr Exiled refers to “the Ukraine” instead of Ukraine makes me think he is listening to pro-Russian sources. A couple of slip ups from others after his posts, but his posts are full of “the Ukraine”. That was the province of the Soviet Union and how Russia views it, part of them, but gained independence in 1991 and it was no longer proper to say the Ukraine.

[Jersey Girl]

One thing I noticed and didn’t follow up, but the mere sign that Dr Exiled refers to “the Ukraine” instead of Ukraine makes me think he is listening to pro-Russian sources. A couple of slip ups from others after his posts, but his posts are full of “the Ukraine”. That was the province of the Soviet Union and how Russia views it, part of them, but gained independence in 1991 and it was no longer proper to say the Ukraine.

I hate to tell you this but I always referred to it as The Ukraine. I learned the term from Jersey Boy and his family who are Ukrainian. That's what he heard growing up, that's what they taught him, and it passed on to me. And I'm talking way past 1991.

[Jersey Girl]

NO, SHADES. NO. BAD SHADES. SOCIALISM ICKY BAD, SHADES. Put that thing down and go wash your hands right now.

[Dwight]

It was traditional to use, and it outlived 1991, but it has been dropped by news organizations. It is also the position and request of the government, even before 2014. My source is Ukrainians that live there now, or did until the mid-2000s, millennial age and younger. One said it wasn't a big deal until 2014 for him, I don't really know beyond that, except that they don't really think it is acceptable and shows a pro-Russian influence in the conflict.

[honorentheos]

For anyone interested in what Russia calls, "Political Technology":

https://www.deciphergrey.com/post/the-g ... technology

The Globalisation of Political Technology.

The ‘globalisation of political technology’ is the theme of a course I have been running at UCL SSEES for three years. Globalisation is easier to understand. In 2005 I wrote a book Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Former Soviet World looking at how ‘political technology’ worked in Russia and other post-Soviet states. Since then, many of its practices have spread. One 2020 report by the Oxford Internet Institute, for example, found ‘cyber troop activity’ in 81 countries; and that is just one type of ‘political technology’.

But what it is ‘political technology’? The term is common in Russia, but we don’t really use it in the West; although we are starting to use some associated terminology, like kompromat (‘compromising materials’). Political ‘technology’ is really political manipulation, normalised in Russia by the assumption that all politics is manipulation or realpolitik. My own definition would be ‘supply-side engineering of the political system’. And whether we use the term or not, this is now happening in the West. In Russia political parties are created by political technologists. In America parties are still independent, but are surrounded by a manipulative eco-system of Political Action Committees, dark money and astroturfing (the creation of fake grass roots campaigns or opinions).

So my take on Russia’s role in the 2016 American elections was that this was a globalisation moment. The Mueller Report didn’t look enough at the interaction between what the Russians were doing and what their American equivalents were already doing. Russian interference was effective precisely because it worked with the parts of America’s political eco-system that the Russians recognised, and where they could apply moves from the domestic Russian playbook – like artificial polarisation, particularly of racial politics, playing with the enemy, and playing with the enemy’s enemy, in particular efforts to get Hillary Clinton voters to defect to the Greens, or stay at home in the case of former Bernie Sanders voters.

American-style political technology already had a head-start. It didn’t metastasise from zero under Trump. But since 2016 Russia has been able to sit back. It doesn’t need to stir the pot. There is so much that is already toxic in American politics. Not that Russia is passive or absent: inflaming existing divisions is very much Russia’s modus operandi. Russia also played a part in Trump’s deflection strategy to shift blame on to Ukraine for election interference, and to collect kompromat on Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

But, just to take the most pertinent example, the campaign to create the myth of ‘voter fraud’ has been building up for years, propagated by think tanks and books, and disseminated online. It then morphed into #stopthesteal, which wasn’t just driven by Donald Trump’s former Twitter account, but, again, by a whole mediaverse of domestic American supporters, conspiracy entrepreneurs and online platforms.

‘Fake news’ or disinformation is not just about content; it is about the delivery systems for that content. Political manipulation is done by individuals, but is effective when it works through structures that have leverage. And these structures are proliferating globally. Not just the cyber troops mentioned at the start, although everyone seems to have a troll farm nowadays. One reason is new technology; though politics shapes technology as much as the other way around. Another reason is the increasing number of hybrid regimes, where political technology is most common. The definition of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ for example, is that the political ‘playing field is heavily skewed in favour of incumbents. Competition is thus real but unfair’. Political technology is what makes the competition unfair. But so-called ‘smart authoritarian’ regimes can use the same techniques too, albeit using a different palette. Many democracies have deteriorated on the supply-side; where so-called ‘disintermediation’, the decline of traditional institutions like political parties or the press, allows political technologists more freedom for political engineering. The purpose of the ‘Undermining Democracy’ course is for students to find global examples and develop comparative perspectives.