Watch Team Handball 🏐 on the Olympics. My fencing instructor turned me on to it. Her gift to me. My gift to you.
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Yeah, I'd agree that his service was mostly stellar & his major mistakes (Biden was disgraceful to Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas hearings; his Iraq war cheerleading) taught him lessons. But the more I read about how he & his aides thought he was the only candidate who could beat Trump? SMDH.
Modi was pissed at China since the 2020 border clashes where dozens of Indian (& Chinese) soldiers died. Trump pissed all over Modi, claiming over & over that he "made peace" between India & Pakistan. Which Modi look weak (since India is much stronger than Pakistan & had to climb down).
I'm no expert but I've read that under-40s watch sports on TV -- otherwise they're on they're on their phones. Plus they always skip commercials. I think Pod Save America said Dems usually neglected Insty/Tiktok/etc influencers in favor of TV spending. I'll try to find the podcast.
Yeah, Dems often overspend on TV ads nobody under 60 sees. Randos on the internet are where most of America gets its news.
Gorka has always been a fraud. He says he was a UK military intel analyst focused on N. Ireland. He wasn't. adrianweale.com/2017/03/05/s... He has a Hungarian PhD on Terrorism that's written like a 4chan post. forward.com/fast-forward...
No GOP politico is going to dare criticize RFK until there's a Kennedy-caused infectious disease outbreak that kills dozens & threatens to kill hundreds.
Mate avoids engaging Ukrainians (or people like Neil Abrams, a PhD in post-Soviet politics) who can call his misinfo out. x.com/neil_abrams/...
Ritter resigned from his job as a UN weapons inspector because the UN was letting Iraq block inspections... but a few years later, he called out the Bush admin for their Iraq WMD lies. Clearly he had principles. I guess after his pedo conviction he pulled a Taibbi.
Lots of us "sounded the alarm about authoritarianism" before the election. Voters said, "Didn't happen in his first term" & ignored it. So I was fine w/Dem leadership backing off. Trump's sending troops to occupy Blue cities & arresting his political opponents. It's alarm time.
"Move fast and break stuff" isn't the tech motto. "Killing people is fine as your bottom line's good" is.
The InfoWars-debunking podcast 'Knowledge Fight' has spent 7 episodes on Alex Jones spinning & trying to cover for Trump w/his audience. Trump telling MAGA to "stop asking questions" & "shut up" caused pretty intense conspiracist backlash. knowledgefight.libsyn.com/1061-july-7-...
America's tax dollars at work.
My friend, speaking as a former infantry officer, factors like tactics, comms, training, etc... matter. Russia had experience but their tactics, comms & training in 2022 were shit. China isn't a threat because it isn't "experienced"? Taiwan, the Philippines, etc aren't experienced either.
Trump's got big, big love for authoritarian 'strongmen' & especially for Putin. But Merz & the other EU leaders exploited Trump's other love -- ego-strokes & headlines. Plus, the subtext of the EU working together as one, helped. Gut gemacht, Herr Kanzler.
The Kremlin & Western analysts thought Russia's battlefield experience in Syria had "ironed out the kinks" in their military by 2022. You agree. I disagree. nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/fi...
Get back to me when somebody in the EU besides Poland & the Baltics is spending 3.5% of their GDP on defense.
Trump is a cowardly piece of shit who kisses up (to dictators) & kicks down (to our allies). He admires 'strongmen' & hopes they'll let him in their club. Plus, of course, they pay him off.
Yup, we're pretty ridiculous, w/our gaudy words we rarely follow thru on.
Half of America gets their news from social media, dominated by the right & ZERO editors. Half the rest get our news from the liars on Fox/talk radio. Controversial opinion: we need politicos like AOC, who can talk to folks where they're at. On social media. www.mediamatters.org/google/right...
Russia is in Europe's backyard. Russia is winning the war of attrition w/Ukraine. You should be spending a shit-ton more. Somebody needs to convince China not to invade Taiwan, etc... Will the EU do it? US spends 3.4% of GDP on defense. EU? data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS...
100% agree. The US has been arrogant & unilateral for far too long. We spend more on interest payments on our debt than we do on our military budget. Trump's 'go it alone' course is insane. We need to work w/NATO & the EU. www.cfr.org/blog/first-t...
I've said Obama should've sent arms to Ukraine. It's weird you can't admit that America has 1. finite resources 2. the far-right in power partly because of domestic backlash to our wars & 3. spends 2x the % of GDP on defense as the EU The EU are the experts on Putin. You ignored him til 2022.
I've said Obama misjudged Putin & NATO is valuable to the US. WTF else do you want me to say? The US has finite resources & the opportunity cost of Obama confronting Putin in 2014 would've been not being able to pivot to China. You say the EU "stepped up" between 2014-22? Really?
"had the final say" Obama misjudged Putin. Badly. But Obama had other equally important (to the US) commitments to manage. The war vs ISIS, confronting China, the Kurds vs Turkey, etc Confronting Putin would've had an opportunity cost. Putin is an existential threat to Europe, not the US.
The US was stupid... & currently has rightwing populists in charge who are even stupider & who don't get that having allies is vital. But Russia is in your backyard, not ours. So if it makes you feel good to blame Obama, go to it. Now what are you gonna do about Putin?
Trump got elected partly bc most Americans don't want to be the world's policeman. Obama recognized that the US was over-committed in Europe, the Mid East & SW Asia. He started to shift US resources to confronting China. The US can't do it all. The EU needs to step up.
That doesn't explain why EU leaders didn't even try. Americans don't know Russia's post-1992 history of aggression (Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, etc) & intimidation (Belarus, the Baltics, etc). Europeans do. Trump's a lying idiot but he's right that Europe needs to shoulder its own defense.
Obama misjudged Putin badly. We'll have to agree to disagree whether domestic politics affect US foreign policymaking, whether the US public in 2014 was angry about Afghanistan & Iraq, whether the US public saw Libya as a debacle, & whether Obama felt Cameron/Sarkozy let him down in Libya.
If Sliwa, the GOP nominee, drops out and throws his support to Cuomo, I'll start worrying. I still won't worry much, tho, because Mamdani has shown he can throw a mean attack ad and Cuomo has so, so much to attack.
lol I would never dare to opine on German domestic politics. A German telling me there was no significant domestic political component to a US prez's decision to not risk deep US involvement in what his EU allies were STILL dismissing as a minor problem best dealt w/diplomacy in 2022... 🤔
As an Ami who lived in the EU & who 100% agrees that early, firm action is what was needed to convince Putin that aggression doesn't pay... it's crazy you're not willing to have a nuanced discussion w/me. 90% of the EU was still arguing Putin wouldn't invade 8 years later, in 2022.
Claiming that Obama didn't follow the lead of Europeans is wild. www.theguardian.com/world/2011/m...
I'm glad to admit that Obama should've recognized Putin was an aggressive threat. EU leaders, the experts, were even stupider about Putin. Why are we surprised that Obama followed their lead? Obama already had his hands full winning US public support for the war vs ISIS & for confronting China.
"because his admin wasn't" You think Obama wasn't aware of the US public's anti-interventionism? Fox News headlined Benghazi for years & centrist media often followed Fox's lead. Read the internal Obama-Biden-Clinton debate b4 the US intervened in Libya. www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natoso...
It's 'what about'-ism that 95% of the EU's leaders, who should've been very aware of Russia's post-1992 invasions/occupations of Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia... were even less worried than Obama? It was a mistake not to confront Putin early but the US had other commitments. Putin's in your backyard.
After we intervened in Libya, the chaos & the death of Americans in Benghazi dominated US media til 2016. The US public was isolationist. I've lived in Germany. Average Germans know 10x as much about Russia's post-1992 history of aggression as Americans... so why are we slanging Obama, not Merkel?
China has gone to war the same way Russia mostly has gone to war. Massing troops on borders, paying off friendly political parties (e.g. Georgian Dream & Putin's loans to the French, Austrian, Italian, German far-right), trespassing, etc Russia fought lots of wars but their army still sucked.
I argued from 2014 on that Putin was an expansionist threat. But unlike most Americans, I've lived overseas & knew about Russia's invasions of Moldova, Chechnya, etc Most of us can't find Ukraine on a map. Obama should've sent heavy weapons but there was 0 US public support for it in 2014.
You're right. But America was already isolationist after wasting 1000s of lives & trillions of $ in Iraq/Afghanistan. Obama effed up. What's the EU's excuse? They live next to Russia. Unlike Americans, the EU public knew about Russia's post-1992 record of invading Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, etc
100% agree. I argued for that & for treating Putin as an expansionist threat from 2014 on. But unlike most of my fellow Americans I've lived overseas (1993-1997 in GER & POL), was a former infantry officer & knew Russia's post 1992 history of aggression vs Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, etc...
"US was not isolationist during Obamas term" Who won the US election in 2016? The insane serial-bankrupt grab-em-by-the-pussy-er who ran on 'no more forever wars' or the sane-but-boring interventionist?
Obama was right. China is a far greater threat than Russia. China's GDP is 9x Russia's. China has threatened war w/half a dozen neighbors. Russia was a threat but given how weary the US public was of wars in Iraq & A-stan & how much nearer the EU is to Russia, the EU should've taken the lead.
The US was isolationist after 1000s of US lives and trillions of $ wasted in Iraq & A-stan. There was 0 public support for sending troops or even weapons to Ukraine. Given that most of the EU was blind to Russia's threat, it's weird you're ripping Obama here.
From the story: "Who were the clients? Alan Dershowitz, an Epstein lawyer... said young women interviewed by the F.B.I. id-ed Epstein clients. Dershowitz wrote they “should be disclosed but the courts have ordered them sealed... I know who they are. They don’t include any current officeholders."
After ETSing the Army I continued doing crunches for 20 years. Never got visible abs even tho I'm low bodyfat. 3 months ago I started doing planks & planks-w/shoulder-taps. I'm up to 3x/week. And finally a hint of abs. And finally it's a habit that I don't have to expend mental energy on.
Thanks.
You know about as much about swimming as I know about HRT, so I'm surprised you're so sure why she got worse, comparatively, to different groups, at her best event. It seems valid to me that comparing her to other swimmers before she started HRT would be a better gauge, than 6-10 months in to HRT.
You've dumped a couple of large PDFs on me. It'd be helpful if you'd tell me what you want me to look at & what you feel it proves.
bsky.app/profile/kgka...
I'd appreciate a link if you know of one. Thanks.
HRT affected Thomas' aerobic capacity. Speaking as a former masters swimmer, there are a lot of reasons why you could go from being a very good long distance free swimmer compared to others... to better at shorter distances, vs a different group, as your aerobic capacity changed.
So your point is that her male ranking that season, after 6-10 months of HRT & some loss of lean muscle was a poor gauge. And that looking at her ranking in spring of 2018 would probably be a better gauge than the HRT-affected 2019 ranking? That seems valid. I'll look up her times/rankings.
Thanks.
We'll have to agree to disagree whether making the Olympic team, endorsements & scholarships should matter to people.
Ok, according to the New Yorker, Lia started hormone replacement therapy in May. Since the NCAA champs are in March, she was on HRT for 10 months at that point.
You asked why people would care. I answered. In good faith.
It's been a pleasure knowing you, Sir Tuber.
Some of the athletes who lost to Lia are angry. Some support her. Some are silent. As someone who used to run a 2:31:52 marathon, yeah, I guarantee you, a lot of athletes remember their big races. thehill.com/homenews/325... www.reddit.com/r/transgende...
Scholarships, endorsements, making the Olympic team are all things that are determined by how you do in races.
Here's what I'm going off of. www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/a-look-...
I could be wrong. I'll check. I thought I was taking her NCAA rankings -- best times compared to all other athletes of that gender that year in the NCAA.
I'm sorry that you're so easily offended.
No. But unlike all the folks here who've told me that even the athletes themselves don't remember or care how they placed in a race, it mattered a lot to me. Glad to acknowledge, tho, that winning or placing high isn't the big benefit of sports & that everybody should be allowed to play.
I don't know anybody who does, for sure, except for a couple hard-core MAGAs. I know a lot of low-info, don't-pay-much-attention people who are loud about feeling its unfair... but they were equally loud about inflation. So maybe it's doesn't strongly influence voters. Beats me.
Thanks. They do have it at a local library. That said, if people have strongly held beliefs going from 65th to 1st is unfair to the 64 athletes displaced, I doubt that telling them "Hey, you gotta read this chapter in this book" is going to be persuasive.
7 surly sea lions sunbathing on the strand say you're wrong.
You're right. But I think it's an easier lift to tell people that trans people know their own minds & want to live what they feel is right for them. IMO, it's harder to sell 'the 64 athletes who lost out need to just live with it' when Lia jumps from 65th to 1st.
You're right. Most Americans can name only 1 high-level trans athlete. Lia Thomas. Which is why it appears 66% of Americans think trans women shouldn't be allowed to compete in women's sports. Some of them are bigots. Some of them think jumping from 65th to 1st is unfair to the 64 other athletes.
Anybody who disagrees with you is a chud. Anybody who thinks that going from 554th to 5th is messed up for the 549 competitors who drop a place... is a loser. That's really gonna win hearts & minds, buttercup.
Of course. Refusing to show your source is kind of admitting your source is bad. www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/a-look-...
1st and 5th isn't dominating? It seems like dominating compared to 65th & 554th.
"the polls say nobody is deciding how to vote based on this issue" -- I'm no expert. Maybe you're right. Pew has a pretty good record, tho.
If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table. Gotta admit. I prefer jokes to pounding the table.
"During the last season Thomas competed as a member of the Penn men’s team, which was 2018-19, she ranked 554th in the 200 freestyle, 65th in the 500 freestyle and 32nd in the 1650 freestyle." Before she did hormone therapy. Not sure where you're getting your info. Link, please.
"A majority of ignorant people thinking trans girls are unchangeably male" You think 66% of America believes that? Most people don't know any transwomen & can be educated about gender. But nobody can be educated to believe going from 554th to 5th isn't messed up.
Saying 'Don't believe your lying eyes, transitioning doesn't give any advantage' isn't working. Either wait til more data comes in showing Thomas to be an outlier... or admit that in some sports, transitioning after going thru puberty male, appears to help transwomen.
15% of America agrees with you. 66% of America disagrees.
I gotta admit, I reflexively avoid reading about Hunter. But I do know he gave his dad bad advice. nypost.com/2024/06/30/u...
If you make Lia Thomas getting to finish 1st, 5th, & 8th in the country (instead of 65th, 554th & 32nd as a man) the big issue instead of trans kids being able to get transition care... ... you're gonna make a lot of GOP campaign managers happy.
1. His subscribership has ballooned w/right-wingers who love he's a leftist who criticizes liberals. 2. He cherishes his grudges. The families of the victims of a Nazi mass murderer sued a cult leader Glenn defended. Read the last graf (& the link if u have time) threadreaderapp.com/thread/11305...
Biden was against the troop surge in Afghanistan back in 2009. Biden opposed bombing Libya in 2011. Biden's backing Netanyahu's war crimes was disgraceful but it's just sad you can't admit that the guy learned a lesson from Iraq. www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/w... www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Taibbi's freeze-peach absolutist gig is sweet. Thanks to Musk & Sacks, Taibbi added millions of MAGA subscribers to his social media accounts. Unlike pals Mate & Greenwald, Matt doesn't have to pimp racists, sotto voce Gaza & pretend not to see fascists. Much. www.youtube.com/watch?si=WkX...
You can't admit that forcing the Pentagon to report the death toll matters? No points to Obama for doing the right thing? Especially since Trump immediately axed that rule. You're not here in good faith. I've got better things to do.
Biden got branded as ineffective. The same supposed lefties like Gabbard & Taibbi praising Trump as the 'no more wars' candidate criticized Biden for losing US lives getting us out of Afghanistan. The media piled on.
Americans punished Biden for taking casualties getting us out of Afghanistan. We would've punished Obama if he'd used troops instead of drones. We punished him for getting us out of Iraq... when ISIS filled the vacuum. Unlike Trump, Obama was honest about the killing. www.bbc.com/news/world-u...
You sound like a Gabbard stan. Tulsi's boss doubled the number of drone strikes in his first term over Obama's last term. And, no surprise, with Tulsi's help, he's doubled the number of drone strikes this time, too. It's all Obama's fault. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/...
This is 48 minutes long, and well worth that investment of time: a clear, detailed, easy to follow review that matches my understanding of the case (backed up with a lot of additional facts and expertise I don’t have).
Taibbi says Asst. SecState Victoria Nuland said in a (Russian recorded) convo in 2014 'Yats is OUR guy'. Everybody else hears 'the guy'. Weirder, he says this proves the 2014 revolution was US coup. Link to convo (at 'the guy') youtu.be/JoW75J5bnnE?... Link to Taibbi tweets x.com/search?q=%22...
Troll harder, Pajamas
You sleep thru the last few months of mass deportations?
Weird take.
*cough* In my eastern Oregon grade school, nobody engaged in homophobic shaming about YMCA. Not because we weren't bigoted but because we & our parents were all such rubes we never figured out the Village Peeps were gay.
Thanks. The court link is useful. I've already got links to Igor Girkin & the other Russians in the Donetsk People's Republic chain of command phoning each other in a panic after the MH17 shootdown Oddly, vatniks won't discuss former Minister of Defense Girkin. www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-...
*sigh* Glenn Greenwald's mentions
lol I agree with you. I know it's bullshit. I asked about the court decision link so I can use it next time I'm in somebody like Glenn Greenwood's mentions on X.
Is that the one where they quote Putin saying Ukrainians killed 14,000 civilians in Donbas 2014-2022? Without mentioning that the number was actually all war-related mil/civ deaths, killed by both sides. If it's convenient please post the ECHR link. I can use it.
Lease him to a coal mine to work night shifts if Plan A doesn't pan out.
nOT goiNG TO tell u WHAt 10 year old games I do this with.... if I did this... WHICH I'M NOT, I SWEAR!
The attitude towards nuclear weapons... was different then. Maybe due to ignorance about how long-lasting & dangerous radiation was? I read a couple books lately by a sci-fi writer from that era, H. Beam Piper. Nukes are just another bullet. "Ooops! I fired an H-bomb instead of HE!"
