MicroB

Nate Vance (ex-marine, JD Vance's cousin) shares his thoughts.

This is rewriting history isn't it? Don't like a hiring policy, so not only change the policy, but pretend it never happened. Burn the Books. I always thought it was ridiculous for a double amputee war veteran to get a leg up in life.

Someone on this forum suggested the US should buy aluminium from Russia as its better quality and cheaper than from Canada.

It was plagiarized. https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/03/09/trumps-supposedly-one-sided-support-for-russia-over-ukraine/ https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gilbert_Doctorow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Committee_for_East–West_Accord https://molfar.com/en/foreign-propagandists

Its a skit. "He's" a chicken salesman Farm bumpkin Janitor/toilet cleaner

The "West" whatever that is, didn't want a collapse of the Russian State, with 6500 weapons falling into the hands of fruitloops we know about like Kadyrov, and fruitloops we don't know about. But it was a natural reaction to the previous 2 decades, where the same Russophile mob would have been whinging about "Neocons". The alternative was to have done nothing. I don't think that could have been an option. The result would have been Russia closer to the Nato "border", an enormous West European refugee crisis, and, given the tenacity of the Ukrainians (borne of their Grandads in WW2), Russia being involved in an increasingly brutal counter-insurgency. Clearly, Ukraine is a different kettle of fish compared to Georgia in 2008, which seemed so far away. From 2008; captured USMC Humvee being carted off by Russia (never returned to the US) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/26/georgian-region-shows-perils-of-ceding-land-to-moscow/

But the West can make sure he can't profit from it, and that the ruined occupied areas become a drag on the Russian state. Mechanisms can be put in place to make it extemely unattractive for any company to invest in it The population of Luhansk-Donetsk has declined by about 5-10% since Putin's war. Reportedly, he's been bussing in Russians, and selling them cut price new housing, and barring the people of Luhansk and Donetsk from buying property. This is obviously a hugely expensive operation to change the demographic facts on the ground. https://cepa.org/article/behind-the-lines-ethnic-cleansing-by-home-loan/

I know he likes to cake on the spray tan, but was he a heavy user of tanning beds, and this is the result. But its probably a photo with the contrast etc turned right up. The Omega Man for some reason comes to mind. Good film, mind.

NATO is, to all intents of purposes, over, in terms of a functional body that can coordinate action. I can imagine the corridors at Allied Command Operations in Belgium are now unusually quiet. Allied Command Transformation is based in Virginia. The US has now pulled out of all planning for exercises. Inter-operability will quickly degrade if troops don't train together, learn together. Putin won't be attacking NATO or the EU. He'll pick Estonia first, a lightening grab because his generals tell him they have the kit, because they have the receipts. His reading will be that his forces can swiftly take Tallin before NATO can react. Probably smash the place up. The EU will be a disorganised mess about how to react, so he thinks. He thinks NATO, without US heavy lift into Latvia and Lithuania, cannot respond. He swftly takes Latvia and Lithuania without a shot being fired, because they don't want to end up like Estonia. Simultaneously, the Slovakian and Hungarian Prime Ministers invite Russian troops to set up bases, citing security concerns, following the withdrawal of US troops, and the need to support and expand the refugee camps springing up on their Eastern borders with Ukraine. This doesn't mean how it is. But what Putin thinks. Wars start because of misunderstandings and miscalculations. He's counting on European countries being picked off one by one, or governments falling to populist wingnuts, and becoming basically ungovernable , and therefore of no interest to Russia.

They didn't win, were mistreated by Tsarist officers, were starved, and then the Tsar asked to to fire on protestors. Petrograd saw soldiers mutiny and join factory workers on strike. Within a month, Tsar had lost all authority and the Romanov dynasty was no more. It started on the front, when soldiers refused to build more trenches, started selling off clothing supplies. Order No 1 of the Petrograd Soviet established Soldiers Committees in every unit. Opposition to Putin has been growing everyyear; whatever support for him is paperthin. The Russian Army in 2021 had a significant professional element. That element has literally all gone. There are no proverbial homes fit for heroes. Even the bonuses are not being paid. Afghanistan tipped the Soviet regime. The Falklands tipped Galtieri. And Hitler was a disgruntled Corporal.

A very Glaswegian looking face. Make it a pint of 80 shilling and a wee pie.

Why are American executives buying BMWs, Mercedes Benz, Bentleys, Rolls Royces and not American made Cadillacs and Lincolns? Its not because the Cadillacs and Lincolns are too expensive. What American cars are Europeans not buying because they are taxed too much. Cars like the Corvette and Mustang are cheaper in Europe than their peers. Why did the American President buy himself an Italian sportscar and not a Pontiac Fiero? American not good enough?

Whitehouse press release, Can someone explain the math(s)?

Musk finds time during his busy day of both running Tesla, and defending s careering share price and commenting on US politicians who are ex astronauts and combat veterans. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1899093526190698784

With a decapitation they might even wink at you.

I know he did. There are disturbing reasons why he opted for this. And I won't just because you say so. Freedom of speech and all that. In my opunin, those who support the death penalty should be prepared, if called upon, to attend a non-sanitized execution. I;'d rather lock them up and throw away the key. Reinstate the idea of the oubliette. 40 years of eternal darkness. Suicide by hangman is too easy a way out.

He can de facto uncouple from NATO by stopping US contributions to the NATO budget (at the moment, the US matches German contribution), making it delinquent. The US has already said it will not be participating in planning for upcoming exercises, so we can assume that the United States militry will no longer be participating in NATO exercises. This will mean that staff officers, irrespective of their views on the topic, will have to essentially say that US and NATO will lack interoperability capabilities fairly soon, resulting in a cessation of two-way working. It then becomes moot whether a US President is willing to respond to an Article 5 request. Ghe US will quickly lose the capability to respond in any meaningful way, and also the other way. If there is another mass casualty event in the US on the scale of 911, its unlikely that any NATO member would have the ability to respond and help. UK MOD started planning for this 18 months ago.

The Hillbilly VP has a Hillbilly cousin who has just come home to Texas, as 3 years fighting for Ukraine. He has a few things to say about cuz. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/03/09/vance-trump-putin-useful-idiots/

Soldiers returning home in WW1 was pivotal to the Russian Revolution.

It probably says more about the background needed for anyone to succeed in politics; all of them came from families who had the means to influence the conscription process, whether working the deferment process, providing fake medical reports, manipulating the draft process. I think most families would do that if they could. My great uncle was in the first world war. The story was he came back from the front, and was a quivering wreck. It seems he went AWOL, and the MPs came for him and sent him back. Nothing more was said, but he wasa miserable bugger for the rest of his life. Another Great Uncle, from another half of the family, was a Beven boy in WW2. I gather he didn't get on with being in a coal mine, and went back home to London. No one turned him in, and he may have played the system. He obviously brought himself enough time that by the time they came for him, the war was nearly over. He went to court, and was offered the choice, prison or National Service. He opted for the latter, got into the Royal Engineers, and then just as he finished Basic, the war was over. Had a stint in West Germany, which got him going on his import-export Delboy business. Nothing more said. ie The 47th President is not a coward, or rather was never given the chance to show if he was a coward or not. The decision for him to join the army was taken away from him by a father, who's own dad evaded military service, for reasons that have never been clear. And elections show that detail in a candidate's background is overstated. Ultimately, who cares what a 70 year pld did when they were 18.

The US President has weathered sexual scandal without much issue; though they are capable of making him think they have something on him. More likely, if there is anything, its financial leverage. He owes them money, and they can call in their markers, The American President's second son, Eric, boasted how much money they raised from Russian investors. In the 1980s, property developers had to essentially pay off the mafia to get anywhere, and the American President has talked about some of the deals he had to do to get things done. Reportedly, of the of the reasons his dad bailed out his casinos was he was worried his son would end up in hock to the mob. Maybe not even that, but knowledge of business dealings might be enough. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a33350476/fear-city-new-york-mafia-donald-trump-tower-mob-ties-explained/ https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/16/trump-mafia-connections-blocked-bid-to-open-sydney-casino-30-years-ago.html https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-fines-trump-taj-mahal-casino-resort-10-million-significant-and-long https://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/31/politics/trump-mob-mafia/index.html Of course there may be nothing, and he's just an impressionable old fool shouting at the TV every night. Plenty of those about.

Russia doesn't regard Ukraine as a country. Its not about seizing land. Its about a nonsense idea; Novorossiya. Its not even about recreating the Soviet Union, but emulating Tsar Nicholas I. Putin wants Ukraine to be eliminated as a state, and expects whats left to to become Hungarian (mostly) and Polish. He wants bits of Poland. Its all nonsense, because Kalingrad wasn't Russian, but German, and he overlooks that. Europe has had basically 80 years of settled borders, but Russia wants to turn the clock back 175 years. Its in no ones interest for Europe to revert to that time. There is no such thing as Ethnic Russians. Russians and Ukrainians are the same; one group wants to speak Ukrainian. Russians regard Ukrainians as "Little Slavs". Americans know full well about the power of language in forging national identity. In the young United States, it was Samuel Webster who can claim part of then credit for creating the American character. He was well known for his dictionary, which standardised American English at a time when English used customary spelling. Johnson on the other side of the Atlantic was doing the same with British English. But Webster went further, in introducing a standardised school education that wasn't just there to educate, but also to re-educate. To get all these English, Scottish, Irish, Italian, French, German, Swedish kids to stop thinking of the lands of their parents, but only the lands of America. The relationship between Russia and Ukraine might be analogous to that between England and Ireland. 7 out of 10 English have some Irish heritage, so naturally, some people think "we're all the same", and might even delegitimise the idea of an Irish State (these are the people calling for things like a Council of the British Isles, to bring Ireland into the Commonwealth). Many Irish, understandably, take affront at this. Most English people are fairly ignorant of Ireland, and sometimes can't understand why some Londoners, Scouse support Ireland in the football. The Russian Federation is built upon a lie. Its all but whats left of the Russian Empire, the final Empire that needs to go as a result of World War One. Its consists of Russian people ruling vassel minorities. You will never see a Chechen as Russian President for instance. Russia hasn't developed like Western societies; Tsar Nicholas II still ran a feudal state which went to communism, without any development of ideas of individual rights and liberties. In the West, such things didn't come easily; we had to fight for them, starting with Magna Carta. The American history is part of that history of people winning freedom. And along the way, there were ugly things as the system pushed back. Putin knows none of that; he grew up in post war St Petersburg, hanging out with the street gangs, seething at the West. Ultimately, he wants to see an end to the West; not to take over us, but destroy our societies, as some sort of revenge for the fall of the USSR. He;s an adherant of Alexander Dugin, who during Soviet times was a dissident. Dugin believes in the Eurasian idea; that for too long the world has been ruled by the "Atlanticists"; those trading nations with access to the seas, which includes the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Dugin believes a lot of the troubles of the world would go if the Anglo-Saxons were liquidated. Its complete nonsense of course, and just yet another global conspiracy fruitcake idea. If it wasn't the Anglo-Saxons, it would be the Jews. These days, Putin uses the term "Collective West"; he believes the European peoples can be disengaged from the Anglo Saxons, but for now, we are all the enemy. With such ideas, there can be no rapprochement, no peace, just new continuous tension. I don't think such ideas will survive the man; no one is going to be erecting statues to Putin the Great. Obviously there is much conjecture about his health, likely inaccurate. But even so, he's Russian, and based on just demographics, he's on borrowed time. Its important for Russia's venture with Ukraine to fail, to ensure all of this nonsense dies with Putin. That includes not recognising the legalities of Russia's claims to the Donbass oblasts, because that's not how we now settle territorial disputes. In an ideal situation, the territories would be placed under a UN-like mandate, funded by Russia and Ukraine and allowed the Right of Self Determination under a genuinely free and open process, not the fakery propagated by Russia's referenda. And as a last act of WW1, the Russian Federation needs to go, allowing a modern Russian Republic to emerge, much smaller, but I think with a more view of itself among nations and its neighbours. The failure of Putin's escapade will hasten that. Its minorities of the Federation who have disproportionally suffered in the war, due to how recruitment has been carried out. Who knows, with a reduced Slavic Russia, maybe there is scope for a Slavic Union similar to the Nordic Council. The Scandanavians seem fairly comfortable with each other, with relationships that the nations of the British Isles can only hope to emulate.

Irish American Month declared. Irish reacton is not great. 12 months of the year, someone is going to get left out. Mexican American Month is presumably May. German American month has to April for obvious reasons. June is Italian American month, because of, er, the Italian holiday. July is off limits. August in Indian American Month. September is Armenian American month, so Cher and the Kardashians get a holiday. October is Russian American month. November is Polish American Month. December is off limits. January is obviously Scottish American month. February for the Japanese Americans. The English miss out.

Sorry, I wasn't the one boasting about using prostitutes in a thread about a French politician's speech that you had no intention of listening to. I still think you are a Russophile, and that position influences all of your responses on the topic, ie. you will always be sympathetic to the Russian over and above everything else, mainly because you believe the Russian reasoning rather than the Ukrainian reasoning. As a Briton, my opinion of Putin is rather clouded by the killings his stooges have carried out on British soil using weapons of mass destruction (and it wasn't helpful when the American President immediately took the Russian side after the Salisbury attacks). Can't be made a fool if anonymous. Its really immaterial to me what your personal opinions are, and I suspect the feeling is reciprocated. You use prostitutes, and you pay $74 for sex, and you wanted the whole world to know that seedy fact about yourself. What was the urge to comment on something you didn't actually hear/watch/read, nor had any intention of doing so. If you read the transcript, a bit was about the American President, but most of it was about Europe, despite the headline from the Anglophone media. I think he was making a point about European collective defence, and in particular, the Entente Cordiale. There are implications for the NPT, which I think is now dead as a result of various statements in the last week. I think even Americans will find that worrying. They don't really want Wahabist Saudi Arabia to acquire the "bomb". They don't really want something that was considered to be unthinkable to be thinkable. What will happen if Russia uses a tactical nuclear wean again Anglo-French troops. Britain will respond, with Trident. Because the Trident system is partially American supplied. Putin will suspect American connivance and respond accordingly. And then its all over. The solution to this is not the capitulation of Kyiv, any more than the capitulation of Paris ended WW2, If Putin's trump card is Iskander with a special munition to get Europe to bend to his will, what make you think he will stop there. There are Russians who are talking about getting back Alaska. Of course, Americans will claim he would never dare, but it just takes one little misunderstanding by a man in a bunker surrounded by people telling the boss what he wants to hear. And he thinks he has the measure of the American president.

Ah, understood. Curiousity sated.