TigerDoc

Thoughtful post and I agree with you on the importance of a real uncertainty about what a post-Putin Russia looks like. Nevertheless, they're not a blank slate, but are operating under some critical constraints on future possibilities - a weakened great power negotiating from dependency.

Their historical norm is centralized authority, militarization, repression, and buffer-seeking while examples of retreating from that (e.g under Gorbachev/Yeltsin) are unfortunately anomalies. The last time we had detente was under a condition of collapse and western democracy/capitalism looked like the only plausible alternative for them, which isn't the case anymore. Now China gives them a model and a patron.

So, for me, not helping Ukraine isn’t about certainty that Russia will expand next, but about bounding risk and not placing a bad bet on an unlikely transformation. Where the adminstration actually seems to be going though is to be adopting bit of Russia's "near-abroad" strategy ourselves and returning to multi-polar politics and letting them have their corner of the world (as they see it, Eastern Europe).

lol yes. Nobody’s denying abuse exists. The problem is that “trafficking” now covers everything from custody disputes to cartel shite, so everyone’s yelling about a different movie in their head.

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It seems there is almost universal agreement in this thread that Putin is really incapable of going any further. Or at least he will be by the time this war is over. I also agree with it..but strangely enough, I've seen many of you say Putin won't stop in Ukraine and that's why it's so imperative to help them..... Strange.

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Putin has ambitions beyond Ukraine. He lacks current capacity beyond Ukraine (aside from sabotage and frickery). Helping Ukraine deters Putin's taking further action on his ambitions. It's a containment strategy.

so dangerous! :lol:

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Candace is so crazy she makes AJ sound sane.

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There are incentives for this. Somewhere out there who isn't batshit is someone with their eyes on a massive platform they can build by performing more extreme batshittery than Candace.

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lying.

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I missed the frank lying. I see them doing what they often do - convert bureaucratic/nuanced info into suspicion-fuel that gets re-shared on the secondary info markets because it feels confirmatory of darker narratives without having to explicitly claim them.

thermostatic politics, expanded mail-in voting during the pandemic...

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This report from Jesse appears to be from July. Why do these retarded influencers take old news and repackage it as breaking?

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The criticism of the July Obama allegations was that they were meant to shift media narratives from foot-dragging on Epstein releases and obviously they're still not keen on the public focusing on this story with another Epstein release deadline coming up.

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Who?

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A Q-fluencer who's been baking crumbs from the drops from the early days of Q. Which is why you've got the anons like BoarEd in here trying to pump it up.

Ok. That's fair. I'll edit.

Could you get bass to own me, btw?

“Lives saved” is a counterfactual - it can’t be directly counted by definition. Statistical modeling isn’t a weakness here. It’s the only honest tool available.

Or do you have another method you'd propose for estimating lives saved that doesn’t rely on modeling a counterfactual?