Unit2Sucks said:

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DiabloWags said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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Why do you keep bringing up Flint's city council? Do you think they are responsible for the water crisis? From everything I've seen, the crisis was a result of the city being taken under state control. Do you think the current day city council (2/3 of whom joined in the last few months) could have prevented this from occurring a decade ago?

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The way you talk about Flint is very similar to how a lot of people talk about Chicago whenever anyone complains about a school shooting or a mass murder. I assume you aren't intending to misdirect like that, but that's how it reads.

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Quite simply, it goes to LEADERSHIP.

The FLINT CITY COUNCIL voted 7 - 1 to switch water suppliers from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Karegnondi Water Authority. Inadequate treatment and testing of the water from the Flint River resulted in a series of major water quality and health issues for Flint residents, which were chronically ignored, overlooked, and discounted by local government officials over an 18 month period.

Bottomline: The water from the Flint River was highly corrosive and local Flint officials failed to treat it.

You get who you vote for.

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Nice story but is it true?

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Here's the problem with that: City officials did not drive the decision to take water from the Flint River. There was never such a vote by the city council, which really didn't have the power to make such a decision anyway, because the city was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager.


The council's vote in March 2013 was to switch water supply from Detroit to a new pipeline through the Karegnondi Water Authority - but the pipeline wasn't scheduled to be completed for at least three years. (And even that decision was given final approval not by the council, but by then-state Treasurer Andy Dillon, according to Snyder emails released Wednesday.)


Snyder said that Detroit, after being informed of the Flint council vote, sent a "letter of termination" of water service. Detroit sent a letter giving Flint one year on its existing contract, but that didn't mean Flint couldn't get water from Detroit after that date. In fact, there was a flurry of negotiations between Detroit and Flint to sign a new contract that would carry Flint through until it could connect to the under-construction pipeline. That new contract was going to cost Flint more money.


This distinction is important to note because merely stating that Flint received a "letter of termination" makes it sound as if a thirsty Flint had no choice but to stick a straw in the Flint River. Flint could have elected to sign a new contract with the the Detroit water system (in fact, Flint reconnected to Detroit water after the situation in the city became a full-fledged, hair-on-fire crisis). Flint disconnected from Detroit because it was cheaper to take water from the Flint River until the new pipeline was completed. Here's a letter from then-emergency manager Darnell Earley saying Flint was choosing to use Flint water instead of Detroit water.


Which brings us to the state's timeline statement: "June 2013: City of Flint decides to use the Flint River as a water source."


Flint officials didn't make that decision while under state emergency management. State-appointed emergency manager Ed Kurtz made that decision, which would have had to be approved by the state. Here's the document from June 2013 signed by Kurtz authorizing an engineering contract to figure out how to draw water from the river

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Hmmm... Sound like you squashed a RWNJ talking point about Flint.

Does anyone remember when conservatives used to pretend like progressives were the ones attacking America and needed to love our country more? Remember how they pretended to brand themselves as patriots? Remember when they used to attack anyone who didn't support our countries efforts in Iraq back in the day? Ancient history now as right wing media are being used on state run TV in Russia to support their corrupt war efforts.

Here's another perfect example of the new conservative:

White nationalist Nick Fuentes encourages prayers for the brave Russian soldiers who are fighting to "liberate Ukraine from the Great Satan and from the evil empire in the world, which is the United States." pic.twitter.com/RdVrXHCapn

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 16, 2022

DiabloWags said:

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This is the best analysis yet that I have read about Russia and Putin.

It's from Stephen Kotkin, one of the most profound scholars of Russian history.

Thanks again to Unit2sucks for posting this earlier!

A Scholar of Stalin Discusses Putin, Russia, Ukraine, and the West | The New Yorker

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Yeah, he makes one strong rebuttal of Mearsheimer that I happen to agree with: this crisis actually shows that everyone should have been in NATO, because Russia won't attack countries that are in NATO.

DiabloWags said:

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The next narrative that I'll hear from the typical Trumpanzee is how Biden cancelled the Keystone Pipeline.

Welcome to Dumberica!

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Here's a great article rebutting the idiocy around Keystone impacting gas prices or energy independence. Of course it won't stop the maroons for continuing to disingenuously pretend that Keystone would have been our savior or that every price increase is driven by Biden himself.

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Americans seem especially gullible to misinformation when they're bleeding at the gas station.

With the Russia-Ukraine war pushing gas prices well above $4 per gallon, motorists are looking for somebody to blameand President Biden's critics sense an opportunity.

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Fox News tells viewers gas prices would fall if Biden would only reverse the Keystone XL decision. Here at Yahoo, people write in frequently to echo these claims.

It's all nonsense. The Keystone XL pipeline would have been a new way for one Canadian energy firm to ship oil to the United States. But the nation still gets all the oil it needs from Canada, its own producers and many other countries.

"People have this idea that because Keystone XL was not completed, the oil just disappeared. It didn't," says Samantha Gross, director of the energy security and climate initiative at the Brookings Institution. "That oil got produced anyway and is still getting to market through trains and other pipelines."

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The United States consumes about 20 million barrels of crude oil products per day. So the quantity that would have moved through XL would have represented about 4% of U.S. consumption. If you removed that much oil from the U.S. market all at once, it would be enough to bump prices upward, at least until new supply replaced the lost oil. But that's not what happened. The XL pipeline was never built, and it never brought any oil to the United States. So there's never been any lost supply.

This leads to the iffy logic about future supply, which is where the argument about XL's impact on gas prices breaks down. Canadian oil imports to the United States have risen consistently for the last 20 years, with the only decline coming in 2020, when the COVID pandemic caused a short recession and slashed oil demand worldwide. From 20008, when TransCanada first proposed the XL pipeline, through 2019, Canadian oil imports rose 77%. In 2020, the last year of the Trump administration, Canadian oil imports fell 6.7%. But in Biden's first year, 2021, they rose 4.5%. The post-COVID recovery means Canadian oil imports could hit a new high this yearwithout Keystone XL.

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How is all that oil getting here? Mostly by other pipelines. While TransCanada didn't get the capacity expansion it wanted, energy firm Enbridge is doubling the capacity of its Line 3 pipeline, which runs from Alberta to refineries in the U.S. Midwest. That will eventually transport 760,000 barrels of oil per day. An expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline that moves oil from Alberta to ports near Vancouver will boost capacity from 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000. That oil can move by ship to the U.S. Gulf Coast or foreign ports. There's also been a sharp increase in Canadian oil deliveries by rail, though that represents a small portion of Canadian imports, and it dropped off after COVID.

Fixating on oil from Canada, or from any single source, overlooks the dynamism of energy markets and refiners' ability to purchase raw crude from many sources, both domestic and foreign. If one source of oil dries up, other producers typically step in, as long as the demand is there. If missing oil from XL had dented the U.S. supply of gasoline, pushing prices up, then that would show up as excess capacity at U.S. refiners. But there's been no increase in excess capacity, except for when COVID hit.

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I wonder where Putin got the idea for the rally….and for the guys sitting in the front row holding signs and wearing t shirts stating, "Ukrainians for Putin"?

bearister said:

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I wonder where Putin got the idea for the rally….and for the guys sitting in the front row holding signs and wearing t shirts stating, "Ukrainians for Putin"?

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Definitely not from a Joe Biden rally...

Unit2Sucks said:

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It's all nonsense. The Keystone XL pipeline would have been a new way for one Canadian energy firm to ship oil to the United States. But the nation still gets all the oil it needs from Canada, its own producers and many other countries.

"People have this idea that because Keystone XL was not completed, the oil just disappeared. It didn't," says Samantha Gross, director of the energy security and climate initiative at the Brookings Institution. "That oil got produced anyway and is still getting to market through trains and other pipelines."

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Bingo.

The Trumpanzees that watch Faux News and never made it past high school arent aware that the first 3 phases of the Keystone pipeline are OPEN and in SERVICE.

Keystone XL was the 4th phase and it got cancelled by Biden because of environmental concerns in Nebraska. Never mind that tar sand oil needs to be heated in order to get through a pipeline, which makes it 2.5x to 3x more prone to causing pipeline leaks compared to conventional oil. Dont even get me started on what its like to refine this crap.

Trumpers know nothing about the Keystone Pipeline, OPEC+, or the energy markets. Theyre the DUMBEST people that Ive ever met, in person, or online.

Zero brain cells.

"Under the banner of ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing, the West's capital is being deployed to create an artificial shortage of oil and gas produced by its companies and reward non-Western oil and gas producers such as Russia and Iran with higher prices. In doing so, the West is undermining its own security interests."


From RealClearFoundation

Wonder how long before generals stop reporting for duty.

Well, this is another kick in the RU command structure & an indicator of UKR success in the fight for Kherson. https://t.co/daihPEcLpX

— Mark Hertling (@MarkHertling) March 19, 2022

My uneducated guess is that Putin is posting generals to The Ukrainian Front that he fears might lead a coup against him. He is probably leaking their coordinates to Ukrainian sniper, missile and mortar teams.

The pictures of that general and of Putin make me think someone just opened a collagen franchise in Moscow.

"The war in Ukraine has reached a stalemate after more than three weeks of fighting, with Russia making only marginal gains and increasingly targeting civilians," the N.Y. Times writes (subscription).

That was the assessment yesterday from the Institute for the Study of War, a widely respected D.C. research group:

"Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war," the note says. "That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine." That failed.
"Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some parts of the theater but are very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way."

Reality check: "Stalemate will likely be very violent and bloody," the institute adds.

"Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire. ... If the war in Ukraine settles into a stalemate condition Russian forces will continue to bomb and bombard Ukrainian cities, devastating them and killing civilians."

"The World War I battles of the Somme, Verdun, and Passchendaele were all fought in conditions of stalemate and did not break the stalemate."

What happened: Yaroslav Hrytsak, a Ukrainian historian and professor at Ukrainian Catholic University, writes in a N.Y. Times op-ed (subscription) that Putin made two huge miscalculations:

"First, he was hoping that, as had been the case with his war against Georgia, the West would tacitly swallow his aggression against Ukraine. A unified response from the West was not something he expected."

"Second, since in his mind Russians and Ukrainians were one nation, Mr. Putin believed Russian troops needed barely to enter Ukraine to be welcomed with flowers. This never materialized." Axios

One of my subs sent me this yesterday. It’s hilarious when these people liken war to something they see on tv or in a movie or their personal favorite, Call Of Duty game. But have the nerve to claim being so patriotic https://t.co/swuFKtBCow

— DConner89 (@TaureanReign) March 20, 2022

Ukrainian media report that the wife of former MP Kotvytskyy tried to take $28 million and 1.3 million euros out of #Ukraine via #Zakarpattya.

The money was found by the #Hungarian border guards and forced to declare it. pic.twitter.com/ZCjDlIxdwB

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) March 20, 2022

Who is MP Kotvytskyy and why does his wife have so much money?

Looks like Zelensky is banning 11 political parties for "Russian Collusion". Look I want Ukraine to win and us to send them weapons to defend them because Russia shouldn't be attacking sovereign countries. But we should probably stop saying Ukraine is a democracy. He also just signed a decree making all national TV channels onto one platform for unified information under martial law.

Zelensky bans 11 political parties

#Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a decree that combines all national TV channels into one platform, citing the importance of a “unified information policy” under martial law.https://t.co/DQvGRTc0GB

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) March 20, 2022

This is strange because most of eastern ukraine is russian speaking, unless he's planning on offering up the east to Russia.

MinotStateBeav said:

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Looks like Zelensky is banning 11 political parties for "Russian Collusion". Look I want Ukraine to win and us to send them weapons to defend them because Russia shouldn't be attacking sovereign countries. But we should probably stop saying Ukraine is a democracy. He also just signed a decree making all national TV channels onto one platform for unified information under martial law.

Zelensky bans 11 political parties

#Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed a decree that combines all national TV channels into one platform, citing the importance of a “unified information policy” under martial law.https://t.co/DQvGRTc0GB

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) March 20, 2022

This is strange because most of eastern ukraine is russian speaking, unless he's planning on offering up the east to Russia.

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We always have to watch for political overreach and for those using a fig leaf "crisis" as a pretext to deprive their countrymen of their political rights. But in this case, I don't know. If your country has been invaded by a hostile foreign military that is dropping bombs on maternity hospitals and proclaiming your country doesn't even exist, I'm not so sure members of the Vlad is Rad party deserve a seat the table.

Somewhere the line between "opposition" and "treason" is crossed and any Ukrainian political party that supports the invasion is pretty obviously on the wrong side of that line. Do these specific parties qualify? No idea. But the facts here matter and I'd want to know more before I proclaimed a nation that looks like this as "not a democracy."