Lord Ratner

If the United States commits to supplying cheap uranium fuel for any civilian nuclear power program, Iran has no leg to stand on. Funnily enough, we've done exactly that and Iran refused. I am baffled by people who twist themselves into pretzels pretending like Iran is interested in anything but nuclear weaponry. That's what they want, and that is why they refuse any compromise. I have not advocated for that standard at all. You will not find a sentence anywhere on the internet where I claim that no countries should have nukes. I have continued to advocate that some countries can absolutely not have nukes. Iran being top of list. I believe Israel is one of the most obvious countries to have nuclear weaponry. They are disproportionately small for their region, and they are disproportionately targeted for extermination. If Israel did not have nukes today I would advocate for giving them nukes tomorrow. The fact that they have had them for decades and have never used them is all the evidence you need that they are not a threat. Yes, I actually do think that's naive. At the end of the day you cannot act on this type of scale without a moral framework, and that is almost definitionally subjective. That is why some of the disagreements are so intractable, because they are fundamentally disagreements about moral ideologies on a global scale. I believe that the United States and Israel governments are, on the balance, moral actors. I believe that the Iranian government is evil. (I also do not believe in God or any sort of supernatural truth, before anybody goes down that rabbit hole.) We are, in fact, always the good guys. You don't become the bad guys just because you do a bad thing if the overall character of your actions is good. That's important, because another non-objective reality of global conflict is that it's different when the good guys do something bad versus when the bad guys do something bad. Intent matters. And the response to the bad action is in fact dependent on the intent. That is fundamental in our justice system. That puts us in exactly the position to tell other countries they can or can't have nukes. I do not think for one second that you hate your country.

Yeah, just another moderate Democrat sprinting to grab the flag of moderation on a bunch of issues only after they have been settled in the court of public opinion. Where was he 2 years ago when the trans issue was burning brightly and parents were mobbing school board meetings to stamp out the ideology from their schools? Where was he when the teachers unions were keeping schools closed during covid, resulting in those math and reading scores? Where was he when Latinx wasn't the punch line of a joke but another crazy attempt to cram fake racism into every corporate budget? If he has a recent interview talking about the evils of Hamas or how the Whitehouse Ballroom project isn't fascism, maybe he's the guy. But as far as I know the only prominent Democrat in the entire country that isn't blowing in the wind of progressive ideology is Fetterman. I definitely would have lost the bet if you told me that the most rational consistent politician in Washington would be the guy recovering from a stroke. 🤣😂 I'm waiting for after Trump's presidency ends, for Democrats to suddenly realize the value of overturning Roe v Wade. Anyone notice how absent abortion is from the national discourse since that ruling?

That's pretty much everything we need to know about your position. This is exactly the Obama/Mandami/Sanders position. Call it power-guilt or whatever, but it takes an absolutely tortured view of morality, statecraft, and human nature to find the Iranian regime (both the old Mullah-led regime and the current IRGC-led regime) somehow deserving of nukes because of the most unintelligent interpretation of US and Israeli histories. It's been fascinating to watch conspiracy-susceptible (and attention whoring) conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens fall into this rabbit hole and become indistinguishable from the progressive politicians they became famous by attacking.

Ugly truth, and neither side seems terribly interested in solving it.

The straits of Hormuz are not open by any meaningful definition of the word and I think as far as the regime is concerned, you can't quite argue that the regime is still in power, as everyone at the top has been killed. But you also can't argue that it's a different regime, since The replacements subscribe to the same philosophy and tactics. It also appears that the irgc is in charge right now, not the mullahs, so I'd say the regime question is still very much open-ended for the time being. But then by the same logic, anyone characterizing the TBM capacity, nuclear capacity, or drone production capacity as "intact" is being equally pedantic. The straits are closed, and for the time being Iran has been neutered as a regional/global power. Personally I'd like to see the United States maintain the blockade on Iran and tell the rest of the world they can do whatever the hell they want with the straits. Open them, close them, minesweep them, abandon them. Whatever. The United States economy is the least affected by Hormuz, so if the rest of the world needs a reminder as to the value of free navigation of international waters provided by the United States for the last 80 years, so be it.

That's a huge bummer for you 🤣😂

Yep, "war." I usually phrase it thusly: China is one of the only countries in the history of humanity to have a significantly higher portion of males than females. They've incinerated the family savings of hundreds of millions of families by building towers that will never be occupied. And they have a youth unemployment problem. There is nothing more dangerous to a society than a bunch of unwed, unemployed young men. Do you know of any ways a totalitarian regime can unburden themselves of a bunch of revolutionary excess males? I don't think war is a risk for China, I think it's the plan. The only silver lining is that China's ~25 million excess males are offset by India vs ~45 million. And they aren't too crazy about each other.

Where's the WaPo article about the incredible effectiveness of the US airstrikes? I wonder if we destroyed any fuel bladders.

Everyone I have a conversation about "what's going on in the world," most people think I'm a little nuts for saying a war with China is coming within a decade. But it's hard to see how things like this are anything but a bad sign.

Jonathan Taylor Thomas?

Hahaha, same. I blew my budget on the MP5K, so now I need to wait to accumulate enough from the (self-imposed) $500/mo gun budget to buy the Thompson. And don't sell the dream short, they make a 100 round drum as well...

Have you bought it yet? It kills me he doesn't have a video with a drum mag

Careful, he'll accuse you of beating his wife or something; my TDS is making it hard to keep up. 🤷‍♂️

Nah. Young men should not be held to the standard of old men. If it's empty, he's good.

I was thinking about responding, but if you can't even keep track of what you're saying, what are the odds you can follow what I'm saying?