Cult shit.

“Evil attacks”, like we’re killing puppies, or something.

Leave the puppy killing to the expert, Kristi Noem.

I have had plenty of painful moments, but a recent one is that my parents just don’t seem to understand that the first result on Google is an advertisement and that they shouldn’t be clicking on it. They literally can’t see the difference between a sponsored search result (which can often be a bad faith actor or a scammer paying to get their result to the top of the search results) and a genuine link to the real site they were trying to reach.

I have tried installing adblockers for them, but they end up disabling them for certain websites that require popups to be enabled and then they never re-enable it again and end up clicking on bullshit links.

Of course Ukraine has the right to defend itself, nobody is saying otherwise.

Article headline: “Ukraine Must Cede Territory in Any Peace Deal, Rubio Says”

Can’t exactly defend yourself when the people trying to broker peace on your behalf are forcing you to capitulate.

I dont know why you need a comparison in the first place.

Evidently, there are a LOT of people who don’t seem to understand just why the deal was so bad to begin with. Not you, of course, but some other comments in these Ukraine threads are either woefully uninformed or intentionally being obtuse about acknowledging facts.

And sorry about it being a series of Amerocentric examples, especially here in World News where it’s probably a bit taboo or tone deaf, but suffice to say it seems like the primary culprit behind much the willful ignorance are Americans with a narrow understanding of foreign affairs. I’m also just sticking to what I know so I don’t embarrass myself with my terrible geography.

You’re looking too far into the details. The value of the territory is irrelevant for this hypothetical scenario. But I’ve been catching a lot of flak in the comments for it, so you know what? I’ll humor you, let’s change the formula.

Let’s say tomorrow, Russia announces that because they feel that they were cheated in 1867, they are refusing to recognize the sale of the Alaska territory to the United States and are reestablishing their control over the land as it’s sole owner. They send an invasion force and they capture the land in a swift blitzkrieg-style assault, the United States is caught completely by surprise.

Now, the United States fights, but we can’t really conduct ground operations without the support of Canada. They are our not just our neighbors, but our staunchest allies in this fight. However, a new Prime Minister is sworn in and they suddenly decide to take a massive shift in foreign policy, and try to broker a “peace deal” between Russia and the USA in which we agree to sign over the rights to future drilling operations to Canada in exchange for a ceasefire from Russia, but Russia gets to keep Alaska since they occupy it now anyway. Refusal means Canada pulls their support, forbids US soldiers from operating in Canadian waters or on Canadian soil, and conducting operations in the occupied Alaskan territory becomes virtually impossible. And, let’s not forget, no security agreements even if we do sign the agreement. So, if Russia decides to attack Hawaii or California next, nobody will be compelled to aid us.

Is that a better comparison? Alaska has massive economic and strategic value, so there’s a good reason for Russia to want it. They’ve been regretting ever selling it to us in the first place.

It’s a hypothetical scenario. I could think of some better examples if you really wanted, but that’s the most salient one I could think of off of the top of my head, because you know if the United States was attacked, we would expect the international community to fall behind our right to defend ourselves from any and all threats to our sovereignty.

I don’t see why things should be any different when considering Ukraine’s position.

I’m sure if you go far enough back in time you could say that anyone in control of any particular swathe of land stole it from somebody else. Past wrongs committed are not a valid casus belli for modern wars of aggression or land grabs.

Regardless, your contrarianism doesn’t change the fact that Mexico surrendered that territory to us after the Mexican-American war. Legally, it belongs to the United States after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which redrew the border based on the path of the Rio Grande.

With Ukraine failing to take back their occupied territory, but striking at Russian soil and taking some for themselves to use as a bargaining chip. I’d say it’s a dead stalemate right now,

Because they’re losing and a part of losing in a war is making concessions to the winner.

I’ve been hearing the line that Ukraine is losing for three years now. Pretty sure if Russia could win this conflict, they would have done so already.

Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which Mexico invades the United States, takes complete control over the state of New Mexico, and right in the middle of the conflict Great Britain says “the war needs to end”, drafts a ceasefire proposal that allows them take control of half of the country’s natural resources, and offers no security guarantees in the event that Mexico decides to attack again. If you refuse, the British will stop sending military aid to help you continue fighting. Oh, and Mexico gets to keep New Mexico.

Who in their right fucking mind thinks that this is a good deal? Any sensible person would rather continue fighting than give up their advantage for some flimsy ceasefire that won’t stand up to an invader hellbent on conquest.

Those people are, sadly, too shortsighted to realize that they can’t have their cake and eat it too. They want domestic manufacturing back, but they turn around and buy cheap Chinese shit from Walmart for a fraction of what it would cost if all manufacturing were here instead. Those two things are pretty much mutually exclusive.

If it came between Trump getting his way or big business getting their way, I’m betting on the big box retailers lobbying to stop Trump from doing anything that might dig into their profits. Rich folk aren’t ideologues, they’re just greedy assholes.

If he were stupid he would not be the richest man in the world

No, stop.

You are conflating wealth with intelligence.

Do you know how easy it is to have money multiply itself in high enough quantities? It’s hard to overstate just how difficult it would be to have the wealth of Elon Musk and somehow not make money. You would have to make several multi-million dollar bad investments per day for decades, and even then, you’re still not likely to run out of cash any time soon. If Elon Musk did absolutely nothing for the rest of his life (and god, we could only hope) the interest and dividends his wealth passively generates for him would be enough for all of his children and grandchildren to live lavishly luxurious lives.

Elon is not a genius. He’s actually a complete fucking moron who got very, very lucky and has excellent timing. If it were not for the success of PayPal in the early dotcom days, we would never have heard from this guy again.

Friendly reminder that almost all news media outlets and social media platforms are owned by a handful of extremely wealthy individuals and they are in full control of the algorithm that feeds you content, so you’ll likely never see anything that is critical of them or advocates for them to have less power or influence than they do.

This is the 2025 version of “The revolution won’t be televised”.

If you’re rebadging your Tesla because you feel some second hand shame for owning one now that it’s clear to anyone with eyes that Elon Musk is a literal Nazi, just sell it and buy a different EV.

Sort of. The economy is not as robust as consumers like to believe it is.

Say you’re a manufacturer and you make Widgets, and an essential component for those is Greebels, you likely have a supply chain already set up to have those Greebels delivered to your factory. Well, if those Greebels are now subject to a 25% tariff, they become that much more expensive to import. In theory, this would cause you to look for alternative domestic suppliers of Greebels to avoid having to pay what is essentially a 25% tax just to get essential components for your otherwise domestic-made product, but there are a number of factors that might make that impossible. For example, you might be under exclusive contract for a number of years with the foreign supplier, or you might only use Greebels supplied from the foreign Gizmo Corporation in your Widgets because you based your design on using their proprietary components and you can’t switch to a competitor without redesigning your product entirely or violating intellectual property laws.

Even if none of those unusual edge cases apply, you might still opt to order your Greebels from the Gizmo Corporation - perhaps they are still cheaper than a domestic alternative after calculating the price difference, especially considering the labor laws here are more strict than it in in places such as China or Bangaladesh where minimum wage laws are almost nonexistent. If that is the case, there may not be any real domestic alternative because they can’t stay competitive in the global market by paying their workers a 1st world minimum wage. Finally, setting up your own factory for turning raw materials into Greebels to use in your Widgets is a prohibitively expensive venture that likely wouldn’t cause you to turn a profit for many years and would still require you to source the raw materials which may not be available domestically.

The most likely/realistic outcome is having the Gizmo Corporation agree to send their product to be manufactured/assembled/stored in a factory/warehouse in another country that is not subject to the tariffs and then import it, which bypasses the tariff altogether without compromising the specific product you are used to ordering (so long as the rerouting doesn’t end up costing more than the import tariff)

or

Your company will eat the cost of the import and raise the price of Widgets by 25% to compensate for the increased cost per unit.

There will probably be a tiny dip in the exporting company profits at a result of tariffs, but they’re not going to have a significant enough drop in revenue to cause any kind of panic.

Ok? Ukraine is obviously not targeting civilians in their drone strikes so your point is completely moot.

Are they wearing a Russian military uniform? Then they are an enemy combatant.

It’s really not that hard, dude.

It is for Congress to decide such matters. It says so right in our constitution, but our Legislative branch has been ceding their ability to check Executive overreach for decades. Now, with a complicit Congress as the majority, they will never challenge Trump on anything he does, no matter how unconstitutional or illegal it might be. Same goes for the Judiciary as well, chock full of partisan hacks who bend and twist their interpretation of the language of the constitution to cherry pick a favorable ruling for anything that Trump does.

Basically, our system of checks and balances that are meant to keep one aspect of the government from becoming too powerful has been completely subsumed by ideologues who prefer monarchy to democracy. The executive now essentially has unchecked authority and is in full control of the government apparatus.

Codename Krasnov sure giving a lot away to Russia for nothing in exchange. Is this the Art of the Deal?