I remember reading somewhere along the lines of “not being in an active state of war” as well.
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Ukraine’s quickest path to NATO membership is Trump pulling the US out 
Vance shares the same sentiment towards Russia, but will be viewed even more favourably by them because he is more predictable and therefore reliable. Trump will never give up his spot willingly, but he should be very careful about not standing too close to any windows, and should pay very close attention to any food he is served moving forward.
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It also requires the country to not be currently fighting any sort of war. Not sure how Russia’s invasion will be worked around
Yeah my first instinct was to think that its fake (but not that the shooting was fake). It just seems too perfect and we live in an age where that stuff is extremely easy to create.
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They could probably side-step this. Technically neither Ukraine nor Russia are at war. Neither side has issued a declaration - Russia claim it is a “special military operation” and Ukraine call it a terrorist action.
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So what do you propose? Cave in to Russia, despite of the fact that they’ll come back again after some time?
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Another day, another dose of weirdness in the US…
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Polls not looking too bad for Ol’ Joe…
@Limiescouse tell me he’s got it in the bag.
We are in a place where what will happen is utterly unknowable. The collection of data do not make sense at all and so while people will push their pet theories for what the data mean and what they think will happen, anyone who gets the outcome right will still be largely guessing. There will be a lot of people smugly convincing themselves they were right come Nov even though they were for entirely the wrong reasons.
Every unimpressive thing Biden does he seems to get rewarded by a small bump in the polls. Not enough to actually get ahead, which is where the concern from the left is coming from, but enough to keep it in “WTF is happening?” territory. Just like his recent interview with Lester Holt. What I saw of it was pathetic. Not his performance in the optics of being old, but of having a shit message. I feel like I’m going a bit crazy to then see a portion of twitter sharing clips and going “he’s back…now tell me he’s too old” and it feels like Im being trolled
Normally you think of these elections as binary issues either one guy wins or the other does, but we’ve got non-trivial chances that we also have one or both die, or one or both get removed from the ticket for other reasons.
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I’m at this stage basically ignoring everything that is not linked swing states. A 5% bump for Biden in California is useless, as is a 5% bump for Trump in Wyoming.
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The limitation of that approach is that moves within a state of interest are generally not independent from what is happening in other states. Ohio might not be in play, but what you see in the data there can help bolster your ideas about what is happening in the states you are interested in.
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This is a proxy war, the longer this goes on the better it is for the West.
This the downfall on Soviet Union was in major part due to the drain of Afghanistan. Whilst the sanctions have not had the anticipated effect (due to India and China), Russia is going backwards and is hurting. Recent drone attacks on refinaries or a drop in oil price illustrate how precarious their position is.
If Russia is to win, it will only be perceived as weakness of the West. Lacking stomach and this will only embolden Putin (and others like China). Putin is explicit that Ukraine would only be the start.
I honestly don’t know how the US would respond if Russia decides Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania is next (NATO countries) let alone somewhere like Kazakhstan
Trump would turn a blind eye.
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Georgia, Moldova and the Baltic states would be next in line probably.
Russia doesn’t care about the Baltics, during the USSR they expended lots of resources of them making them one of the wealthiest Soviet Republics (Georgia as well), irony of ironies. Now, it’s just Russophobia and digging up Soviet soldiers and destroying monuments to the fallen… I guess we all forgot their complicity with the Nazi regime, including mass murder of Jews, Poles, and Slavic peoples.
How do the Baltics not appreciate being annexed and ruled under a dictatorship for decades, whilst having thousands of people deported to Siberia?
How ungrateful of them.
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I agree with Georgio and Moldova, but the Baltic states will prove to be difficult considering they are all part of Nato, so any attack by Russia will trigger Nato’s defence pact
Does it has to be an invasion? Russia can conduct cyber attacks or even small-scale terrorist attacks (blowing up power stations) to harass and exhaust those countries. None of the Baltic countries have strong social, economic, and political structures.
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As long as west is using the time to arm themselves I suppose.
But this means that Ukraine will be decimated.
Russia can continue the war for far longer.
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This republican ticket, beyond all the critiques of Trump and Vance as people and what they believe in, is historically inexperienced. It’s amusing to see given this was supposedly a very serious concern Repulicans had about Obama having only served 4 years in the Senate.
Although that probably isnt any different than the flip the Dems have done over the power of the administration rather than the person. Republicans typically countered the Democratic criticism of W’s intelligence with the idea that you vote for an administration not a president and W will bring with him the very best of the Republican party (which of course was actually the problem), and now Dems are arguing Biden’s strength is the quality of the people he has put around him who are empowered to make decisions.
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Photograher explains how he got the photo.
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