All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[JackDaw]

Russia gave Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol a time to surrender, otherwise they will all be killed. That time has now passed, no clear result yet, but I doubt that many have taken the offer. They promised that those who surrender be treated in line with the Geneva convention on prisoners of war. Sure.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/li...ie-passes-live

I think so far the Western response has been about right.

But I guess if a less powerful country than Russia had done this we would already be talking about sending in troops to fight alongside the Ukrainian people.

As one of my friends asked yesterday: at what point (if any) should NATO (or a US led coalition) take part directly? If completely conclusive evidence of the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons emerged what would be right response?

[CaptainEurope]

This is kind of like asking me about the kids on a tee ball team that don't hit as hard as the kid that can regularly hit a triple.

We're still talking "Tee Ball..." level hitting.

There's easily a more "Friendly..." position that can be taken.

North America's Building Trades Unions Chief of Staff Mike Monroe reveals how Trump completely broke his promises and undermined American workers, while President Biden delivered for labor in his first year in office.

[Catlady in training]

I think so far the Western response has been about right.

But I guess if a less powerful country than Russia had done this we would already be talking about sending in troops to fight alongside the Ukrainian people.

As one of my friends asked yesterday: at what point (if any) should NATO (or a US led coalition) take part directly? If completely conclusive evidence of the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons emerged what would be right response?

I'm pretty sure that if russia didn't threaten the entire world with nuclear weapons, NATO troops would be there from day 1. Even from a cynical perspective, russia has oil, so they are an adept for spreading of western democracy (I know, that's in line with the whataboutism that I dislke, but I can't say there's no truth to it).

My wish for NATO to get directly involved despite the thread is increasing every day, but I doubt it will happen, even if there is a nuclear strike on Ukraine. Worse, I am getting sceptical they will get directly involved even if one of the eastern NATO counties is attacked. Once nukes get involved, it might get a chain reaction for other conflicts around the world as well, so no one sane wants that. It's a terrible situation all around and the most frustrating thing is that it could have been avoided if not for one sociopath that has been enabled by everyone for years. I never wished more for timetravel technology to exist.

[Kirby101]

I would like to see a comparison of News coverage for Hunter Biden's Laptop and the $2 billion dollars Jared Kushner got from the Saudis.
It must be remembered that Hunter has zero involvement with the Biden Administration and Kushner was the Mideast Envoy.

[Johnathan]

I think so far the Western response has been about right.

But I guess if a less powerful country than Russia had done this we would already be talking about sending in troops to fight alongside the Ukrainian people.

As one of my friends asked yesterday: at what point (if any) should NATO (or a US led coalition) take part directly? If completely conclusive evidence of the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons emerged what would be right response?

It would be insane to have US troops fighting in Ukraine. It's already bad enough Ukrainians and Russians are dying for this pointless war, why add a fresh new group to get mowed down and only make the situation worse. Then do they stay there 20 years only to have the whole thing explode again?

This is the point where people need to start talking about how to achieve peace. Not how to get more people killed, more cities bombed and economies cratered.

[Catlady in training]

It would be insane to have US troops fighting in Ukraine. It's already bad enough Ukrainians and Russians are dying for this pointless war, why add a fresh new group to get mowed down and only make the situation worse. Then do they stay there 20 years only to have the whole thing explode again?

This is the point where people need to start talking about how to achieve peace. Not how to get more people killed, more cities bombed and economies cratered.

Start to talk about achieving peace? People have been trying to achieve peace since the beginning. Ukraine officials have been trying to get a meeting between presidents since the beginning (not to mention for years before), many countries have been racing each other to offer help with peace talks, not to mention several influential individuals like Abramovic and as I have read many others that wish not to be named publicly.
The only tiny problem is that russia does not care about peace talks. They have attended them, but they are not serious about them. And they will not be until they suffer a significant defeat, either on battlefield or as a result of sactions. Sanctions are working, but too slowly and it will take time before they significantly hit those in power. The russian leadership does not give a single fuck about their own people dying or starving at home. That's the problem when people who are not psyschopaths have to negotiate with those who are.
So the only thing we can do to help is keep supplying Ukraine with weapons, preferably at much faster pace and keep tightening the sanctions (I just hope the energies embargo will come before half of Ukraine is dead).

[Zelena]

I think so far the Western response has been about right.

But I guess if a less powerful country than Russia had done this we would already be talking about sending in troops to fight alongside the Ukrainian people.

As one of my friends asked yesterday: at what point (if any) should NATO (or a US led coalition) take part directly? If completely conclusive evidence of the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons emerged what would be right response?

To my knowledge, the only reason for NATO to get involved is if Putin attacks a NATO country. This organization has been created for this purpose.

NATO allies have been in Afghanistan but there was an UN mandate.

[Zelena]

It would be insane to have US troops fighting in Ukraine. It's already bad enough Ukrainians and Russians are dying for this pointless war, why add a fresh new group to get mowed down and only make the situation worse. Then do they stay there 20 years only to have the whole thing explode again?

This is the point where people need to start talking about how to achieve peace. Not how to get more people killed, more cities bombed and economies cratered.

People didn’t succeed to prevent the war… and it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Now, after all these horrors and pain, it is certainly harder than before to achieve peace.

Until we know what would satisfy Putin… And now the Ukrainians’ point of view about what it would be acceptable has to be considered.

[Tendrin]

In early April, a month after a trip to Poland and in between making dozens of calls to senators to push the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Vice President Kamala Harris took a day trip to, of all places, Greenville, Mississippi.

A rural town of 30,000 along the Mississippi River is not your stereotypical stop for a national Democrat, let alone one serving as the second most powerful politician in the country. But Harris had, nevertheless, traveled there that day as part of an effort to talk about small businesses and community lending programs.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...laces-00025695

[JB]

I find that those who have criticisms of the Administration and the Party also have criticisms of the opposition, but fellow posters with a left leaning don't notice those because they agree with them. Hard to have a discussion, let alone an argument, with people on subjects that you agree on. It's why 90% of my posts on these boards are about politics or football rather than comic books. Other than pointing out particular storylines or artists/writers I like to recommend to others I don't see much to talk about with them, and most of it is hardly worth repeating.

When rightwing posters enter the politics discussion board it's usually a dogpile as it's a very left-leaning board, and I'll admit I engage in that though I do try to keep my arguments factual and try not to insult or dismiss people or their arguments and try to address them point by point if I feel like I have a valid criticism. There was a poster whose name began with an "X" who was recently banned, and I'd often engage despite the warning of not feeding the trolls because I think not speaking when someone's either deliberately spreading misinformation or simply have a point that I believe is wrong and should be addressed is giving a legitimacy to them that they may not deserve.

The difference is, I feel the same way about the Party I support and the country I live in. It's why I won't "love it or leave it" (to either one), and make arguments because I think there's a lot of room for improvement in both and want to help shape that discussion. It's also why I speak up when I see people trying to silence others or label them in ways that look to undermine them so as to dismiss their arguments. Silence and suppression of thought never works in the end, and often enables the more radical thoughts and belief systems to grow and gain power because when people aren't allowed or are actively encouraged not to examine their own bulls##t they keep themselves in their bubbles and become more confident in their beliefs, no matter how wrong they might be or what the facts/reality say. That applies as much to Democratic bubbles as Republican ones, even if you (and I) find their bubbles to lead to worse outcomes.

It won't stop me from voting for Biden in 2024 or whoever the Democratic nominee is, it won't stop me from voting in the midterms, and I don't think pointing out legitimate criticisms people have with the Party or specific members of it will hamstring them to the point of making them unelectable. In fact, trying to bury our heads in the sand when it comes to our vulnerabilities is more likely to get another Trump Administration than pointing out the obvious. When you make promises and don't live up to them, whatever the circumstances, you will find the voter base is less enthusiastic in supporting you the next time around. Whether that's labor, black voters, immigrants, or anyone else you can reliably count on.

That should be pointed out and pressure should be applied, in the hopes that it will move them to action. Politicians are risk-averse as a rule, and it often takes outside pressure to get them to do the right thing rather than the politically expedient thing (which is often nothing). The sad fact is most of the centrist Party supporters on here criticizing any bad word said against Biden now were saying exactly the same thing on outside political pressure during the BLM riots and police reform movement (which is still ongoing). They recognize that outside pressure and criticism of the system is justified when they agree with it, they just seem to forget it when they don't.

I suppose you could make a "Biden Administration Appreciation Thread", like with the comic threads you could ban criticism of the Administration. But in a political discussion thread you should probably expect some, well, discussion. That probably means having to occasionally encounter differing views. The neat part is, if you disagree with an argument or point, you can make a better one.

Agreed, especially the part in bold.
Early last week new approval numbers came out for Biden. CNN averaged them out and said, "this is a really, really, really bad number." Their average was one point lower than Trump's at this time of his presidency, which is insane. Quinnipiac has Biden's approval at 33%.
One can run a search of "Biden approval rating" and you'll get mainstream media headlines such as "Biden and Democrats Should Be Absolutely Terrified by New Poll Numbers" from the Daily Beast.

To your point, one can safely assume that Biden resuming oil and gas leases on federal lands was in direct response to the new numbers. I don't envy him having to make this decision as it's in direct opposition of a campaign promise. But he didn't really have a choice and even though it won't have an immediate impact, it gives a bit of a morale boost showing that we can be better positioned in the near future if, God forbid, we have another Ukraine invasion-type crisis. I commend him for making such a hard choice, the kind of hard choice that might move the needle back in his favor. A choice he may not have made if not for the approval rating announcements.

I would like to see a comparison of News coverage for Hunter Biden's Laptop and the $2 billion dollars Jared Kushner got from the Saudis.
It must be remembered that Hunter has zero involvement with the Biden Administration and Kushner was the Mideast Envoy.

The media doesn't really have a choice right now after they were adamant in 2020 that the laptop was Russian disinformation. They screwed up big time and have to try to make it right as the whole "fake news!" screeching starts up again. And now we have some GOP Congress members pushing for an investigation into a "cover up" and "election interference", something we really don't need right now.

Washington Post calls for media ‘reckoning’ on ‘accurate and relevant’ Hunter Biden stories
https://thehill.com/news/3259532-was...biden-stories/

The editorial board of The Washington Post is arguing the press and major social media platforms can learn a lesson from how allegations of corruption against President Biden’s son Hunter Biden were treated when they first surfaced weeks before the 2020 election.

“For now, what’s more compelling than the assorted accusations about the Bidens’ behavior is this question: Why is confirmation of a story that first surfaced in the fall of 2020 emerging only now?” the Post said in an editorial published on Sunday. “When the New York Post published its blockbuster exclusive on the contents of a laptop said to have been abandoned at a Delaware repair shop by Hunter Biden, mainstream media organizations balked at running with the same narrative.”

“Twitter blocked the story altogether, pointing to a policy against hacked materials, and suspended the New York Post’s account for sharing it; Facebook downranked the story in the algorithms that govern users’ news feeds for fear that it was based on misinformation,” the editorial continued. “This series of events has prompted allegations of a coverup, or at best a double standard in the treatment of conservative and liberal politicians by mainstream media and social media sites.”

[Kirby101]

The media doesn't really have a choice right now after they were adamant in 2020 that the laptop was Russian disinformation. They screwed up big time and have to try to make it right as the whole "fake news!" screeching starts up again. And now we have some GOP Congress members pushing for an investigation into a "cover up" and "election interference", something we really don't need right now.

Washington Post calls for media ‘reckoning’ on ‘accurate and relevant’ Hunter Biden stories
https://thehill.com/news/3259532-was...biden-stories/

Which doesn’t explain the near media silence on a $2 billion bribe to the official envoy to a foreign country.

[JB]

Which doesn’t explain the near media silence on a $2 billion bribe to the official envoy to a foreign country.

There's decent coverage on it but yes, CNN, ABC and other big companies are falling behind as I don't see anything from them.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%242...&bih=635&dpr=1

[Mister Mets]

I would like to see a comparison of News coverage for Hunter Biden's Laptop and the $2 billion dollars Jared Kushner got from the Saudis.
It must be remembered that Hunter has zero involvement with the Biden Administration and Kushner was the Mideast Envoy.

As far as I can tell there aren't penalties for discussing the Kushner Saudi story the way Twitter had suspended the New York Post's account for its reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop. That kind of bias adds a new dimension to the Hunter Biden laptop story, which itself is worth discussing.

The timing was a bit different. The Hunter Biden laptop story came out during a presidential election. The laptop was confirmed to be Hunter Biden's quite recently, at a time when Ukraine was very much in the news.

I'll note the Kushner story hasn't gotten zero coverage. The New York Times had an article about it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/u...sultPosition=1

The Washington Post has a few pieces about it.

It's not getting the same level of coverage because we're not in an election, Trump isn't President, there's a war in Europe, Americans are dealing with inflation and it doesn't seem likely to change anyone's mind. The Trump family and the Saudi royal family are corrupt. Was there anyone who wasn't aware of this already? Viewers are paying attention to other things right now.

[seismic-2]

But I guess if a less powerful country than Russia had done this we would already be talking about sending in troops to fight alongside the Ukrainian people.

This is likely true. Remember that in 1995 NATO dispatched a 60,000-strong "peacekeeping" force (i.e., war fighters) into Bosnia, to try to protect Bosnians against a campaign of genocide that was being conducted by Serbia during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Then in 1999 NATO conducted a 3-months-long aerial bombardment of Serbia when the Kosovo region was being subjected to ethnic cleansing. The humanitarian situation was sufficient for NATO to decide to get involved and try to enforce existing peace agreements (that didn't involve NATO). That might again be the case in Ukraine, if Russia were a weak power comparable to Serbia.

[seismic-2]

This is the point where people need to start talking about how to achieve peace.

Vladimir Putin believes that the way to achieve peace is through a Russian victory in Ukraine.