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Because the people who inhabited Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland experienced firsthand the cruel occupation by the Bear then operating under the name the Soviet Union.

Ukraine making ridiculous demands means they’re not serious.

One might rather think that sacrificing and dying by the hundreds of thousands is an indication of "seriousness".

Demanding that an invader leave one's country and leave it intact is a demand that by no rational definition is "ridiculous."

The art of negotiating, by all the evidence, escaped the attention of the author of The Art of the Deal. One does not initiate the negotiation process by conceding everything. One does not begin, unsolicited, the process of negotiation on behalf of another by selling out the one represented.

At the beginning of my participation in this thread I concluded by saying: "But the real measure of his task is to get people to now believe that it is more desirable for Ukraine to win than for them to lose."

It is astonishing how potent the the Kool-Aid is once drunk.

We live in the age of nuclear tipped hypersonic rockets that can deliver utter destruction from afar in minimal time. In this world it matters not whether one's enemies' rockets come from neighboring Ukraine or from over the polar cap.

The age of the Cuban missile crisis belongs not to yesterday's newspaper but to the history books.

More than curious about how millions of souls that inhabit Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland have been so cleverly deceived by NATO into believing that Russia is something other than a warm and cuddly fuzzy bear.

He didn't fool me.

There are no words for this.

rxh4n1: That is not Ukraine’s goal. They’ve loudly proclaimed they want all the stolen lands back, including the Crimea. So far, Ukraine has been unwilling to make territorial concessions. To achieve their maximalist goals will require a major expansion of the war.

Well of course the question posed assumes that there was an agreement by the terms of which Ukraine accepts a geography less than its original borders.

So, what is the answer?

I point out that any negotiator with only an elementary level of negotiating skill would make maximum demands at the beginning of negotiations. To concede the opponent's position at the beginning is to negotiate against oneself - the amateur mistake of negotiation that has already been made by Donald Trump when he conceded virtually all the demands of Putin and then compounded his unsolicited error by attempting to enforce it upon Ukraine when be humiliated Zelinski in the Oval Office.

It is beyond me to understand how an unwillingness to concede proprietorship of one's own stolen land in a war is a "maximalist goal" or how continuing to defend one's borders requires a "major expansion" of a war.

But, whatever your quibbles, what is your answer?

Captain Walker: it's bad for the Ukraine to get in a security alliance with NATO where NATO can put arms close to Russia.

I am curious whether you think it good or bad for Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, as members of NATO, to have arms close to Russia?

Silverleaf:

Yes

I assume your answer is yes but let them stew in their own juices.

Okay.

Suppose winning were defined to be, a Ukraine, at least a part of which remains geographically intact, sovereign, and free to make security alliances as it pleases.

Would you then concede that for Ukraine to win would be desirable?

For a man demonstrably incapable of admitting failure or wrong, Donald Trump today faces a daunting challenge if he intends to convince the American people to forget everything he has said about Ukraine, about Russia and about America's true interests in the war in Ukraine.

If President Trump intends to commit up to the level of Lindsay Graham's expectations, he has to pivot, execute an about-face, and justify everything that he has so blatantly opposed. He must rehabilitate President Zelinski from someone who started the war to someone worthy of support. We must convert Vladimir Putin from a statesman to war criminal. He must justify the cost of any arms shipment to Ukraine after deploring such costs. He must convert himself from pessimist to optimist about the chances for Ukraine to prevail, after announcing to a beleaguered president Zelinski in the Oval Office that he "had no cards."

This is a task more daunting than faced Franklin Roosevelt in the run-up to World War II when he allegedly wanted to increase support for Britain but proceeded cautiously out of fear for public opinion.

In contrast, Trump must actually reverse his emphatically stated positions and now convince the public, especially his base, that he has not changed but it is Vladimir Putin who has changed. He will finesse the cost of sending arms to Ukraine by claiming he is actually selling them. He will not say that he has been played by Vladimir Putin, rather he will insist that he has exposed Putin for the aggressor he is.

The president must enthusiastically endorse new and heavy sanctions after he has stated that sanctions have not worked. He must justify the seizing of Russian assets after conservatives have argued that doing so weakens the dollar as it undermines confidence in America as the reserve currency.

He must advocate for cooperation with our allies in Europe after disparaging them in every context imaginable as he arranges for them to be conduits of our weapons.

But the real measure of his task is to get people to now believe that it is more desirable for Ukraine to win than for them to lose. At least he will at last be on the side of truth.

Fake News: Ukraine is approaching the collapse of Prokovsk (sp?) and neighboring villages. Ukraine is still losing, and still expending Ukrainian soldiers like cannon fodder because Ukraine’s NATO handlers don’t care about Ukrainians.

True News: Russia is approaching collapse across the front. Ukraine is not losing and is not expending soldiers like cannon fodder; Russia is still unable to win and is expending soldiers like cannon fodder because Russia's political and military leaders don't care about Russians.

The map that shows Russians exchanging thousands of lives for 100 m gain at the rate of a thousand a day? Perhaps you mean the map that shows Russians advancing on bicycles?

Perhaps you mean the map that reveals Russia's exhaustion of matériel, banking crisis, inflation, drop-off of petroleum production, shortages, disappearance of oligarchs, death of generals, shortage of manpower, hiring of mercenaries etc., etc.

Will all the zeepers commit seppuku?

Rather than passive aggressive celebrations of schadenfreude for an Ukrainian defeat that looks increasingly less likely against the evidence of the disintegration of Russia, isolationists should begin rehearsing a credible explanation of why Donald Trump is flip-flopping and evaluate for themselves what to think next.

We want to be careful here lest we be guilty of what the Germans have done to AFP in Germany that has made us so indignant which is to allege guilt by association.

Yes, you have proof that he is a convicted pederast, okay, that is not in dispute and, of course, that does not prove an international conspiracy.

To be fair, there is a reasonable inference to be drawn that he got a sweetheart sentence. Again, not proof of an international conspiracy. But there is another inference to be drawn from a quote of the prosecutor at the time who says that he was informed to go easy on Epstein because he "belongs to intelligence", or words to that effect.

Again, it is not exceptional for law enforcement to protect confidential informants. But still, you need more to get this to an international conspiracy involving the CIA, and Mossad.

What we have are inferences that so far are short of proof.

It’s bigger than Epstein. It’s about the Deep State, the wealthy and the elites getting away with criminal behavior.

In the current obsessive climate of viral conspiracies the state of play is worse than merely indicting the deep state and wealthy elites, it has become about national corruption co-opted by international espionage. In short, if one believes the conspiracy, it is about our own government and international governments subverting our constitutional system and stealing our government.

At some point in the life of these conspiracies one has to ask, where is the proof? One must hold the conspiratorialists rigorously to their burden of proof, otherwise we fall into the trap used by Democrats against Republicans: it is not the nature of the evidence but the severity of the crime that counts.

So far we don't have proof, but we do have straws in the wind. Are there enough anomalies to require a squeaky clean and transparent investigation, perhaps by a special counsel, to preserve the integrity of our governing system?

It is in the nature of conspiracies that resistance to inquiry only reinforces their momentum. We seem to have come to that point. The threat to Trump's reputation for integrity, as well as the growing political damage to the administration, has come to the point that some concession to transparency must be made.

Many who count themselves among early supporters of the amendment by states movement make two points:

first, the arithmetic of the amendment confirmation process requires such an arduous supermajority among the legislative bodies of the states, that runaway amendments are virtually impossible. It would require only 13 legislatures of 99 to defeat an amendment.

second, the daunting arithmetic also means that no amendment of any sort has a prospect of passage unless there is a life changing national emergency, such as a fiscal death spiral. Otherwise the author is correct, the ordinary course of American politics will sadly not save us.

Men in women sports is not nationally damaging, they are a vexation.

A flood of illegal aliens overturning our constitutional system, a financial death spiral, and a war with China, are examples of things that would be truly damaging.

Men in women sports makes for good politics for Republicans while those other issues are life and death for Americans.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4327682/posts?page=4#4

The Supreme Court has no army or police force to enforce its decrees and must rely almost entirely on a carefully built consensus that its rulings will be respected and enforced by others. Only in rare and limited instances may a court enforce its will by the power of contempt.

That consensus is not just carefully built, it has been painfully built over centuries going back into English constitutional history. The court, aware of its dependence on general acquiescence of its authority by others, is careful to conduct itself and operate within a normative culture, a a set of assumptions about the manner and extent of the court's decision-making role.

The prerequisite of this culture is an assumption of the legitimacy of the court as an institution that decides the constitutionality of cases according to a commonly understood set of norms. These norms, as noted, are the products of centuries of small accretions, each one, presumably, acting with in the scope of then existing norms. Break away from this culture, defy the norms, and the court loses legitimacy and the power to enforce its decisions. Thus, the American system would lose its present capacity to decide the constitutionality of vital matters with consequences that no one can predict. Ultimately, the rule of law would be lost and a Hobbesian world result.

Yet the Supreme Court is a place for argument, for disputation, for the assertion of conflicting ideas about how we shall govern ourselves. In that environment it is natural, even inevitable, that Independent Justices will differ on the meaning of the Constitution. But up until now virtually every Justices accepts the idea of the primacy of the Constitution and the normative system under which they operate. Except Justice Jackson.

It is not so much that she is stupid, although she demonstrates that with virtually every opinion, the problem is she does not accept either the primacy of the Constitution or the norms of its interpretation. She rejects Chief Justice Marshall's declaration, "it is a Constitution we are expounding."

Rather Justice Jackson is the product of a cult that has a whole different worldview that grounds its decisions on the principles of the cult. She is utterly indifferent, even hostile, to the provisions of the Constitution or the body of law nurtured over centuries that expounds it. Rather, she reasons within the closed-loop of a cult that is the toxic admixture of academic Marxism and African-American Street resentments and unquenched thirst for entitlements.

A close analogy is the closed-loop Sharia system that is virtually impervious to logic or even science. It rules on temporal matters entirely without reference to the Constitution, laws or Western norms. It has its own constitution, its own culture, its own norms and its own rule of law.

To appeal with reason or precedent to an Islamist of the Sharia cult is a waste of breath. Neither that cultist nor Justice Jackson is open to overtures of logic or constitutional precedent. They pursue their own goals in a different universe.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4327682/posts?

Very interesting point!

But consider the implications for the credibility and integrity of America first?

Are we covering up the Epstein scandal to protect Israel? Is that putting America first? Are we compromising our integrity for the sake of a foreign entity, even an ally? What does that do for our reputation for transparency?

Is there something in the Epstein scandal that reflects equally badly on American intelligence agencies such as the CIA? If so, why are we defending and covering for the deep state? Are we covering for Israel, for ourselves?

Who controls American foreign policy? Have we virtually denuded ourselves of patriot missiles on behalf of Israel? If so, how does that square with America first? With abandoning Ukraine?

It might well be that there are sound strategic reasons to support Israel at the cost of supporting Ukraine. Let's hear those reasons, and let's acknowledge that that is in fact what we are doing – if in fact that is the case.

In other words, broad shibboleths generally decrying American involvement in foreign wars, one that has been invoked to inhibit support for Ukraine, are only for popular consumption because they were not applied to Israel.

Foreign policy by the selective application of maxims that are supposed to be of general applicability is no policy.