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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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I fully second this, if only because the invaluable life lesson that I learned in high school: Bullies won't stop harassing you until they're given a reason to fear punishment over their actions, either from you or from a third party. Preferably from you, because then they're deprived the option of going about their harassment away from prying eyes.
Russia's actions towards the USA and other countries is just a form of bullying magnified several orders of magnitude in terms of severity of damage, threat level, and sheer malice.
I seriously doubt their bravado will survive, say, having the parts of Moscow's power grid that service the city's government facilities being completely shut down for several hours. Imagine if the FSB's HQ is part of those facilities.
Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 2nd 2018 at 6:54:02 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.![]()
That's exactly the kind of escalation-driving stunt I'm worried about.
I don’t typically share political jokes, but this one about the caravan
is
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I can personally vouch for that. Ignoring or avoiding problems usually just ends up making them worse.
Something else to keep in mind, is that they’ve been doing this in Eastern Europe and Central Asia for years. This is a systematic, brazen attack on Liberal Democracy everywhere, and we can’t afford to ignore it any longer.
Edited by megaeliz on Nov 2nd 2018 at 1:00:09 PM
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I'm pretty sure they haven't been shutting down power grids. If we're going to start doing the same thing to them, there's still a limit to what we can and should do.
Edited by kkhohoho on Nov 2nd 2018 at 12:26:46 PM
That's more than just a bonus, at least as I see things, it's an absolute necessity.
Short term the goal for Democrats is to capture at least part of Congress to put a check on Trump and the national Republican agenda, then try to get Trump out of office. That's the immediate need.
But for as long as gerrymandering is allowed to exist, state politicians are allowed to draw House district lines, and allowed to pass laws that potentially restrict voting rights, controlling state legislatures and governorships will be key to keeping national control. It only does Democrats so much good to temporarily seize control of the house or a few senate seats in red or purple states if by the time the next election comes around Republicans in the state have redrawn districts so that Democratic strongholds are broken up or erased from existence, so despite Democrats having a numbers advantage in the state you can count on two Republicans being elected to Congress for every Democrat, or if Republicans will have passed some BS law to pass the makes half of the Democratic base ineligible to vote.
It's not going to be glorious work or be won with uplifting and deeply meaningful rhetoric and ideas, it's going to be about convincing apathetic and low information voters in dying towns where families haven’t voted for generations that they have to get out and vote in races that will get little to no media attention or news coverage, where issues and candidates will both probably be mind numbingly dull and without much visible payoff.
But until the system gets a major change, like when non-political boards drawing congressional lines becomes the standard or attempts at voter suppression get politicians automatically sent to jail, that's the foundation that has to be laid if you want political control of the country. You can't just win at the top of the pyramid, or someplace in the middle, you have to get the largest and lowest layers too.
We can't just keep ceding that to Republicans. Not when they use it as their leverage to upend everything else.
Edited by TheWanderer on Nov 3rd 2018 at 11:22:40 AM
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |Anyone else hate Bill Maher? My grandfather puts him on every friday so I'm forced to listen to him, as he puts the TV too loud and my room is to close to the living room that even putting my headphones on won't hide it. Bill Maher shits on Democrats constantly, is way too serious and lacks actual comedy unlike John Oliver, and thinks the US is the end-all be-all of Democracy.
Edited by CookingCat on Nov 2nd 2018 at 11:42:51 AM
Yeah. The only way to get Russia to stop cyberattacking us is to make it clear that we're willing to go to the mat over it. Since Russia won't use nukes against us (as above, Putin is not stupid) and doesn't want to see this escalated to conventional warfare (because we'll have their army tied up witn a nice little bow, and Russia really doesn't want the US to have an excuse to return Crimea to Ukraine), what we need to do is prove that we have many, many more dedicated hackers and programmers with much better training, who can and will take major power grids in Russia offline.
Bill Maher's thing is he's incredibly sanctimonious, thinks religious people are stupid, and thinks all nations that are predominately religious are uncultured savages—and doesn't seem to realize that Saudi Arabia/Taliban Afghanistan isn't the only Muslim country in the world.
Much like other people, he got much much stupider after 9/11.
A typical "joke" for example is how a snake handler has it coming for believing God would save him—and I'm like, "I don't believe in snake handling but a guy is still dead."
It's a weird weird world when Ben Affleck keeps having to correct you on basic world and culture facts as well as to keep down the racism.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 3rd 2018 at 1:57:27 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.I think someone used the descriptor,
"If Steve Jobs was a talk show host, had the late term ego, didn't know anything about computers to offset his ideas about medicine, and was even more of an asshole."
Which is a weird metaphor, I admit but pretty spot on.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 3rd 2018 at 2:04:26 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Anyone notice Trump's dad looked like Senator Roark? Powers Boothe...President Trump's long-lost brother?

Some people here are frightened the Russians will escalate it.
To what? Nuclear War? That's unlikely in the extreme - Putin may be a megalomaniac, but he's no idiot. You're confusing him with Trump's stupidity - and Putin is anything but stupid.
Conventional War? They'll get bent over a surrender table in no time, and they know it.
US Intelligence was quite effective with Stuxnet. I'll wager the Russians are even more vulnerable than the Iranians - and even less likely to start a War they know they're going to lose.
Or put simply, make them learn a lesson the hard way and humiliate Putin and his Troll Factories. It's the only way to send a harsh message. So no, I think the CIA giving that warning is perfectly justified, and I hope they put their money where their mouth is.
And it shouldn't be subtle - like Trump, it should be overt. Gloating, boastful. Rubbing it in their faces that they can't do a damn thing about it. Get under their skin - make them angry.
Angry people do stupid things - and them making a mistake is precisely what's needed to bring them down hard.
Edited by TechPriest90 on Nov 2nd 2018 at 11:41:17 AM
I hold the secrets of the machine.