2024 tea leaves?

And numerous innocent others.

 

They may not be able to do that if he wants it.

I also believe he will win. It may take a contingent election in the House, but I believe the judiciary will back him on the trip there.

 

Legitimate question: is American public this gullible?
A slight aside: we had this in Ukraine. Ukrainian people fought off massive fraud in 2004 elections ("Orange Revolution"), electing President Viktor Yuschenko and a coalition of pro-Western, pro-democracy parties. Yuschenko turned out to be a pretty inept President, and a coalition of good guys broke into petty bickering and dysfunction. Much higher levels of ineptness and dysfunction, I might add, than anything you can accuse Biden/Harris/Pelosi/Schumer of, even allowing for Fox lies. So, our wise nation swung back and elected a party of pro-Russian goons, fronted by a guy who hired Paul Manafort as his chief consultant. That gang's shenanigans let to the 2013 Revolution of Dignity and gave Russia an opening to annex Crimea and eastern separatist enclaves - eventually leading to the current war. Millions of people displaced, tens of thousands dead, destroyed cities, war crimes, filtration camps - all or much of this would be avoided save one dumb overreaction by a disappointed electorate.

All I'm saying - will American public really take a chance on a different Manafort client, or whatever cardboard cutout his accomplices will nominate? This sounds quite obviously unwise.

 

2000.

2004.

2016.

 

From what I recall
Trump administration was the first willing to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine.
The Trump administration approved the provision of arms to Ukraine, including sniper rifles, rocket launchers and Javelin anti-tank missiles, something long sought by Kiev.
Prior Obama admin according to the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency provided UAVs, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices, medical supplies and 230 armored Humvee vehicles.

Quoting Republican Sen. John McCain. “The Ukrainians are being slaughtered and we’re sending blankets and meals,” McCain said in 2015. “Blankets don’t do well against Russian tanks.”

Obama admin never provided lethal weapons aid,yet many of the items that the Obama administration did provide were seen as critical to Ukraine’s military.
Part of the $250 million assistance package that the Trump administration announced (then froze and later unfroze) included many of the same items that were provided under Obama, including medical equipment, night vision gear and counter-artillery radar but in addition Trump admin provided sniper rifles, rocket launchers and Javelin anti-tank missiles.

There was certain grudge in some parts of Ukrainian population against Obama, because he clearly saw provision of lethal aid as a possible escalation to the conflict.

Later in 2018 a Democrat Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), an outspoken critic of providing lethal aid to Ukraine used so-called Leahy Law and influenced congress.
It was reported in number of outlets and papers, here is one: (I disagree with Mr Ro Khanna)

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/380483-congress-bans-arms-to-controversial-ukrainian-militia-linked-to-neo-nazis/

 

Sorry, but I'm a little shaky on the sequence of events. Was that before or after Trump tried to blackmail Zelenskyy by illegally withholding funding Congress already approved in order to get him to announce an investigation into the Bidens? You know, the one he has repeatedly admitted to doing?

 

It was right before President Poroshenko's administration quietly shelved money laundering investigation into payments to Paul Manafort, for his efforts on laying a foundation of LNR/DNR (separatist "republics" that are the base of Russia invasion). Coincidence I'm sure.

 

Unfortunately the people are the ones who suffer and the rich get richer.
So many people/govs have meddled in such a short time; not sure how it be resolved. Very very worried and very sad.

 

Gullible? I'm not so sure this is about gullibility. I really wish my fellow Democrats would pay some attention to flyover country. I wish they could see themselves as the arrogant we-know-better types that middle Americans often see them as.

 

I don't have a word for wanting to replace arrogant we-know-better types with lawless authoritarians.
Besides, how would "paying attention to middle Americans" even look like?

Again, Yuschenko vas very, very inept. This didn't make replacing him with a semiliterate mobster anything approaching good idea.

 

Well, that's the exact problem. You DON'T know. You might even have sneered at those awful red MAGA hats. Believe me, Trump intended that you should sneer. Tell me, have you ever lived in rural America? Ever been hunting or fishing? Did you join the military when you were of age? Do you come from a church going family? Ever worked around farmers? Now ask yourself...what has happened to these people and their communities over the last fifty years or so?

 

A Major thing I think the Progressive Democrats fail to understand or refuse to understand is that some of the social progress being shoved so hard by the Left is immoral to these people. Seriously immoral, even non negotiable immoral. I don't say that the Left is wrong to take the positions it does but I do say that the Left refuses even to listen. That's how a montebank like Tump got as far as he did. He may have merely pretended to listen but that's better than being consistently belittled and sneered at.

 

I now leave in a solid Trump neighborhood, that is simultaneously one of the nicest and highest-income one in town. What was it that happened to these people and their communities over the last fifty years or so? I can MUCH better understand the working-class Republican voters; know some of these too.
Also, I didn't have a chance of joining this country's military (on account of not being a citizen). But I go to church regularly and have my girls in Scouts BSA (volunteer as a leader, too). What is it I'm supposed to be missing?

 

Heard that. "A transvestite in a dress with a beard going into all the ladies' rooms in Boston". How many of these issues are blown up way out of proportion by the immoral scum on Fox?
Meanwhile, a 3rd-grader tells my daughter that "she's afraid of immigrants because they rape and kill people". Me and my family are immigrants.

 

You don’t need to be a citizen to join the U.S. military. Depending on your age, that may not have been the situation when you would have been eligible but it has been the case for at least the last few decades.

 

Of course FOX and others exploit this discontent and do so for profit. But I also think that FOX could not exploit the resentment of these people unless they were angry to begin with.

What are you missing? I don't know. Maybe nothing. Did you lose your retirement fund in the 2008 Crash? If so, were you bailed out along with the Wall Street bankers? Did you have trouble paying for mandatory health insurance when you just lost your job and did you hear that your livelihood was targeted for destruction?

 

I don't know; did they experience a 10,000% hyperinflation in a year? Shortages of milk and bread? A special ed teacher forced to reselling China-made goods in a makeshift market because her official salary now amounts to twenty bucks a month? Forced to eat canned seaweed because 1) that's pretty much all local grocery store sells and 2) need iodine to protect from "spotty" radioactive dust outdoors? I'm Ukrainian, Nosborne - who exactly do you want me to feel sorry for, 'cept folks in my native city's suburbs where russian liberators were raping and pillaging lately? Incidentally, I did have trouble paying for F1 visa-required health coverage; somehow it didn't convince me that universal health coverage is communism.

Pretty much anyone around me has a house nicer than mine, and all of them voted for Trump.

 

I am not asking you to agree. I don't care whether you agree or not. I'm asking only that we listen.

 

Still not sure how that would look like. Can you name one specific legitimate concern Dems are ignoring?
Also, "other side is not listening to me" is not a good excuse for supporting fascists. See, this is something I kept hearing about Ukrainian squabbles; stopped trying to "hear the Donbass" when people they were calling started murdering people (including people of Donbass, yeah).

 

From what I know one can't be an officer in the US military unless they are a US Citizen.
But E ranks - enlisted ranks are open to non US Citizens. I can be wrong,
People with higher education would want to have officer rank.