coal

Lion

Probably Watchmen. 

>Putin's Endgame, Belarus 

Putin's endgame is clearly evidenced both by his Eurasian Union, and his imperialistic behavior seen in Crimea (which is a part of Ukraine) and Donbas (which is another part of Ukraine). 

There was never any agreement that NATO would not expand east.  Russia has no "sphere of influence" because no one has a "sphere of influence", as we do not live in the 19th century or fight gentlemanly wars between generals with enigmatic facial hair.  We fight proxy wars with the underlying threat of nuclear conflict if nuclear powers engage one another.  Absolute evidence notwithstanding, Russia has used both the argument that Clinton agreed not to expand NATO West (a lie) and that Russia's "sphere of influence" is being intruded on, as a pretext for a land grab which is materially indistinguishable from Hitler's pursuit of Lebensraum.  

These are, of course, transparent nonsense.  What Putin wants is to create a viable supranational economic bloc that is sufficiently diversified and powerful to at once be internally self-sufficient while resistant to Western sanctions for any reason.  That's his goal.  Annexing Belarus would be wholly consistent with that objective.

Notably, this is not the same thing as reinvigorating the Soviet Union.  Putin has no interest in that because his allies nor himself benefit from the return of communism; but he would very much like the return of control of the geography the USSR held.  After all, geography is destiny.  Putin knows this as well as anyone else. 

I could do this tonight

A bourbon that was about $450/oz.  

I agree.  The Simpson's avvie needs to go... 

Replace it with something more... not the Simpsons.  A nice tree, perhaps. 

Smollett is the judas who betrayed woke politics; the tragedy beckons. 

I am still not done with your prior post.  But, by all means ask about Russia as much as you like.  It is among my favorite subjects. 

It means something that Sommelett faked a hate crime; his motive is as meaningful as his actions were stupid and ill conceived.  The obvious question of "why?" yields an equally obvious answer, and a less obvious one.  The obvious answer was that he thought that being the victim of a hate crime would boost his profile.  He's got an overlapping set of identities that place him in a discrete intersectional minority; gay AND black... to be sure.  He is also an actor, whose proclivity for narcissism is exceeded only by his hubris and stupidity.  Pity, really.   (Of course the real victims are those who are actual victims of hate crimes, each of whom now bears the additional stigma of having to overcome the doubt this disgusting facade of a man perpetrated.  But, for our purposes, they are not part of the drama.  Only participants in this particular drama merit my attention here.) 

(More tomorrow.  Tonight, I tire.  This is not the most important thing I am doing, but wanted to get the foundation of this out.) 

Every Shakespearean play has and follows a five-act structure.  The first act is the exposition, in which the characters and their circumstances are laid to bear.  The second act introduces the play's rising action, in which the conflicts between the characters begin to unfold across the plot's narrative structure.  The third act is the climax, where at some point the conflicts laid to bear come to a head, the crisis unfolds, the great battle is fought, or the lead character makes a decision that will forever bear on his fate.  The fourth act is the penultimate falling action, where the third act's events' effects take form and visit themselves upon the protagonist.  The fifth act is the resolution, in which all that was or will be is seen before the audience's eyes and the protagonist is laid to rest in the bed of his making, or sails to victory.  

To conceptualize political discourse in our time as drama is fitting.  But, unlike a Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Othello, Hamlet, or Macbeth, the drama before us is not singular -- even if loosely linear.  If the "drama" in general were to be plotted, it might look like overlapping connected lines on a scatter plot; with figures from one story line appearing in the next, and the next, and the next. The tale would still be filled with sound and fury, told by an idiot, signifying nothing; though it would lack the cogency and beauty that may have been had on the stage.  Even still, in some form, the plot structure remains. 

Here, I am referring to the plot structure of "woke" politics -- a sphere of political discourse which is most appropriately analogized to drama since, after all, most of it is fictional, all of it is narrative based, none of it is particularly referential to the facts of any individual case with fidelity, and it is unambiguously archetypal in nature.  At the risk of proceeding without adequate foundation for any one of those claims, let's move right to the point: woke politics is more drama than it is truth, and like drama, it is bound to a structure, and the structure to which it is bound entered its third act with Jusse Sommelett. 

Not sure if that is a compliment or an insult.... but there is nothing propagandistic about what I've written; in fact, it's probably the least monolithically ideological set of ideas you'll find. 

Cheers.

Ask me more questions if you want more answers.  

I'm enjoying most of these.  

Though, I might add a disclaimer... ask me about anything other than sci fi lol

Worst Movies I've Seen Parts of Lately:

LaLa Land

Moonlight

These aren't my top movies, but it's a list of good ones I've seen lately:

Sicario

Body of Lies

In Burges

>endgame

There is a lot more I am going to say about this, and I'm going to say it in the context of what is happening with Belarus. 

I appreciate the questions that have already been asked and will answer them.

That said, more people should ask me more questions.  So far, these have been pretty good! 

I heard of this story, saw it on facebook... went somewhat viral.

While the story is not unbelievable (there are tales of animals demonstrating unusually good will towards humans that are as old as human civilization itself), it is highly improbable. 

Several factors contribute to this: 

1. Children make up all sorts of wild stories;

2. Children are especially likely to make up wild stories to get the attention of adults; and 

3. This particular child got a lot of attention from adults and when asked as he certainly was he likely came up with what he thought was the most amazing story he could in response to the adults' amazement that he was still alive. 

>Belarus

That is one of the most interesting developments in Eastern Europe since Putin rose from obscurity (by which I mean, the abyss that was 1990s Russia) to restore order post-Yeltsin.  I've got some other questions to address first, but be sure that I will have a lot to say about this. 

The short answer, though, is that it looks to me like Lukashenko, who is at the point where he would want to retire, is looking for a way to avoid making the same mistakes that Hafez Al-Assad did.  So, yes, I think Russia is going to annex Belarus.  But, this response does not do that issue justice.  I will have more to say later. 

> I wonder what you think Putin's endgame might be

I don't think Putin has a unidimensional, monolithic "endgame".  What I think he has is a recognition of his vulnerabilities and his strengths and priorities he wishes to advance in light of those so that he remains in power and is not murdered in his sleep, or by other means. 

The strengths exist on various levels.  Internationally, Russia is the natural ally of all enemies of the United States.  Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and the like all come to mind.  This is less because of differences in the people (Russians and Americans are very much alike in nearly every way that matters), but with the political histories and traditions of the two countries.  Russia is an old world country with a history of invasion from the Kievan Rus to the Second World War.  Nationally, Russia is a country that has almost no historical, cultural, or other institutional memory of what it means to live in a democracy.  Top-down rule has always been the rule, and that did not change from the Tsar Nicholas II, to Stalin, to Gorbachev, to Putin.  Yeltsin was the only variation, and that lasted less than a decade.  Putin is a new Tsar, and the people understand that democracy is little more than a rouse to trick the rest of the world into thinking that Russia is more Western than it is.  Historically, insofar as Russia has always been ruled by a monarch or a despot, the people -- regardless of their actual thoughts -- do not rebel, or at least they haven't done so meaningfully since there was almost a color revolution in Moscow in 2014. 

The weaknesses exist on the same levels.  Internationally, Russia's standing in the world has fallen precipitously.  It's allies are falling and its client states (namely, Iran and Syria) are either in ruin or were working towards peace with the United States -- which means the end of alliances with Russia.  Iran has a nuclear deal.  North Korea isn't de-nuclearizing, but they have no value to Putin.  Venezuela is not a diplomatic asset but a liability as civil war resulting from economic instability beckons an American style foreign imposed regime change, or a Gaddafi style uprising against Maduro.  Personally, I'm rooting for the latter.  As Putin knows, if Maduro is out, then Putin is more likely to face a color revolution of his own.  These things do not happen in a vacuum, and Putin knows this.  That is why he has threatened intervention as he has.  The same applies to Assad in Syria.  Nationally, the Russian economy is in crisis; there is a rampant HIV/AIDS epidemic resulting from drug use and shared needles; Russians abuse drugs and alcohol at higher and higher rates; unemployment is at record highs; economic opportunity is almost nonexistent above slave wages.  Indeed, there are many Russians whose material conditions were better under the USSR than under Putin.

Domestically, however, Putin faces the additional challenge of preventing popular uprising while enriching the class of oligarchs his regime has minted.  This presents problems, because consumption is conspicuous and Russia is failing economically for working Russians.  The reason is obvious:  enriching oligarchs, which is only accomplished by stealing from the state, means that the same money leaves Russia and never returns.  It hides in secret bank accounts in Cyprus, the Isle of Mann, Gibraltar, Panama, and other jurisdictions that do not comply with the United States' and EU's reporting requirements.  It is unclear how much longer this can continue.  But, there is also the derivative problem of ensuring that his oligarch's wealth is not frozen from Western financial institutions, as happened under Obama.  Where sanctions of the sort entered by the Obama administration become the new norm, Putin's utility to those same oligarchs diminishes. 

So, this is the "hand" Putin's holding... or a brief preview of it at least. 

I'll say some things about how he'll play it and how he is playing it in a subsequent post. 

>I did not know you were so versed in Russian things.   Where does that come from in your biography?  

College and grad school.  I focused on Russia, the Middle East, and Central/South Asia.  Since then, I've read a fair amount.  It's an interest I've had for a very long time.  Never knew it would become so relevant in 2016. 

> I think you & [I] agree that Putin has some discernible leverage over Trump so I wonder what you think Putin's endgame might be. 

There are many conflicting accounts of what kompromat Putin holds on Trump.  I have heard many rumors.  The golden shower tape from Christopher Steele is one, but there are more salacious rumors.  The more interesting rumor is that KGB has a video of Trump having sex with an underage prostitute from many years ago.  However, the extent of Trump's business interests make it mutually beneficial for him to remain ignorant of much of what Russia has.  

People underestimate Russia, and Russian intelligence.  Many Americans know that Putin was a relatively low level bureaucrat in Dresden (rather than somewhere that mattered), and while some have fallen for the romance of his storied "legacy" (and I use that word loosely) in the KGB, most are skeptical.  Americans see his antics, generally, as absurd.  No self-respecting man Putin's age stages photo shoots of himself without his shirt on.  But, it is because Americans see Putin as a comic book villain and little more, that they don't see him for the real threat he poses.

There are two questions that matter:

1. What does Putin have?

2. How will Putin play his hand? 

American intelligence access to Putin's inner circle is now mostly limited to signals intelligence, which is a problem because the Russians are about as good at figuring out when their technology has been compromised as Americans are at breaking in.  Moreover, Russians have stopped using electronics for their most sensitive materials, which further complicates things.  It's not like we have an Ogorodnik (Огородник) who could copy them with secret film and leave them in a dead drop now.  Things just don't work that way anymore.  So, there is uncertainty with Putin.  Understanding him is more about understanding his real (not imagined) life's history (by which I mean, the one he lived rather than the one he wishes to induce others to believe he lived), and the psychological profile which results.

I'll say some things about my personal theories on this subject in a subsequent post. 

>Shutdown

Trump signed a bill to avoid the shutdown.  What astonishes me is how stupid he is, and how weak his political instinct has become.  The man has absolutely no sense of tact.  He brandished his way into the White House calling names and accusing everyone of being incompetent, yet he has without exception proven himself to be the most incompetent person ever to hold the title.  The damage he has proximately caused has not yet outscaled that of Jimmy Carter, at least not provably so, but he is within that range.

Trump's basic problem is that he is too stupid to distinguish between Fox and talk radio's interests, and his own.  Their objective is to boost ratings, and the way they do that is by creating conflict and controversy.  Shutdowns are great controversy because they force people to take sides.  The last shutdown was caused wholly by the so called president's fear of being called a little bitch by Anne Coulter and Sean Hannity on Fox.  He's a pathetic coward.  They knew that if he shut the government down, he would lose.  They knew that this crisis would hurt hundreds of thousands of people; and help only themselves.  They baited him into doing this, with the full knowledge that he would lose, and he took the bait.

This is important because it represents a change in who holds the power as between Trump and the media.  Before this, he did.  Recall his conversations with Ailes where he basically told Ailes to eat shit and die if Ailes didn't get rid of Megan Kelly.  Now, all Fox has to do is insult him and he'll roll over and take it like a two dollar whore -- which, it turns out, is exactly what he did.  And he lost the shutdown and he will lose this idiotic state of emergency -- not even perhaps in the courts of law, but in the court of public opinion.  

The right wing fake news media know this too.  They are at once his pimp and his pied piper. 

>Are you still fond of Kamala Harris? I myself think she is a disingenuous, deplorable dirt bag, and by a far stretch the worst of the Democratic bunch given what's come up about her recently.

I didn't forget about what you wrote.  I just like a bank of ongoing questions to keep the thread moving forward.

I still support Kamala Harris.  The reasons primarily are because of the fact that she has consistently and without notable exception represented the kind of leadership I think the Democratic party is most in need of, and she is inoculated against the more acrimonious absurdity of the progressive left because of the fact that she is a non-white woman.  

There are three groups whose activities are at this moment oriented towards portraying Harris as being, more or less, a black Hillary Clinton. 

The first and most active group are the Russian influence operations that have converged upon her to try to drive a wedge between millenials and Harris on more or less fraudulent bases.  The first and most obvious fraud is how people are being misled to think that she was unfair as a prosecutor.  This is profoundly wrong.  Unlike Clinton, however, who was inclined to defer and dodge the significance of past accomplishments and thereby gave the impression of weakness on those issues (which Trump poignantly exploited at all relevant times during and before the 2016 election), Harris is less likely to back down.  The second and nearly as obvious fraud is how she is being portrayed as some kind of shill to Israel or Wall street.  This is so absurd and lacking in anything vaguely resembling a factual basis that it requires essentially no response.  The third and more subtle way that she is being misportrayed is that she is some kind of a race traitor.  The Russian influence groups don't really yet seem to understand how to drive a wedge between her and black voters, but they've proven capable of learning from past mistakes so this could become something more threatening.

The second group against Harris are the progressives who, no matter what, seem to hate everyone who differs even the slightest from their perspective.  This is the same group who believes that political truth is created through narrative rather than fact; and communicated through meme and seemingly moral indignity.  This is the same group that would have opposed Kevin Hart hosting the Oscars, who blamed the Covington Catholic school boys for inciting racial conflict in Washington, and who likely were mislead by propaganda (from Russian influence operations) to believe such lies and idiocy as the notion that Hillary Clinton was a racist because of the 94 crime bill.  Now, that is not to say that I support the 94 crime bill or any other aspect of Bill Clinton's supposed legislative accomplishments.  I generally dislike Bill Clinton, though there were some things -- but not many -- which could have gone worse if someone else was in charge under his presidential tenure.  In any case, though, this second group is the most vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation operations because they are the least capable of distinguishing between fact and the fiction that is their particular narrative-based theory of how the world works (i.e., that the world is nothing more than a power struggle between oppressors and the oppressed).  These people are the most dangerous to the Democratic Party and the most likely to get Trump re-elected through their stupidity and intransigence.  They include, for example, the likes of Keith Ellison and Kirsten Gillibrand.  

The third group against Harris are the Republicans who correctly interpret her as the most viable threat to Trump's re-election.  They include Bannon, and likely Trump himself.  These people know that to the extent that they can drive a wedge between progressives and minority voters, and between middle america and the democratic nominee, Trump will be re-elected.  They will do this by exploiting the progressives like Gillibrand and Ellison, and their rhetoric.  Many "independents" and many others will fall for this manipulation.  

You are welcome.

More questions are encouraged from all.  About nearly anything.

We've covered a lot of ground here.

topic suggestions:

Brexit; hard or soft, deal or no deal

European Union and its Fate

German Politics, 19th Century to Present

Immigration in UK and US

Conflict in Africa and Middle East, and Impact to Immigration

Middle Eastern Politics

Saudi Arabia

Israel

Palestine

Syria

Iran

Soviet History; Lenin to Gorbachev

Russian History; Kievan Rus to Putin

Cold War

Ukraine

Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia

NATO

Russian Literature; Dostoevsky in particular

Central and Eastern European Politics

Central Asian Politics 

Bilateral Chinese-Russian Politics

Geopolitical implications of climate change in the Arctic

Russian politics (on any level)

American History

European History

World History

>McCarthy

Nearly every aspect of Joe McCarthy's life and political career obviate the extent of his paranoia, personality disorder(s), and mental illness.  

In February 1950, McCarthy got his rise to stardom when he gave a speech proclaiming without evidence that the entirety of the State Department was "infested" with Communists who were working for the USSR and China.  He put together a list of names -- not unlike the list of enemies Nixon would create at a future point in time -- which he divined were members of the communist party but who were nevertheless in the State Department.  This was the first of what you all might understand today as a "Deep State" conspiracy theory.  That obviously got everyone's attention, and people wanted proof.  So, naturally, he doubled down and wrote Truman calling for a congressional inquiry into the same; which happened, in the form of the so called House un-American Activities Committee.  Why HUAC was horrible requires no explanation. 

Highly negative.  Want me to elaborate?

You can always have a hug.  

* hugs *

That is a much more complicated question....

First, the allies continuing to march is exactly what Stalin was afraid of; in part because he was a paranoid delusional type out of touch with reality, and in part because Churchill had every intention of doing exactly that as soon as the Nazis were defeated.  So, even though Stalin overestimated the degree to which the USSR was liable to invasion--and it is a matter of historical fact that he did--by the allies, there was one ally (Churchill/UK) that was entirely ready and willing to make Stalin second on their list after Hitler.

Second, the fact that the Stalin was next on Churchill's list does not mean that Churchill was wise in this respect.  There is a fair counterfactual argument to be raised that if Churchill wasn't such an overzealous browbeater, the Cold War may well have been avoided.  Of course, the fact that Truman nixed plans to cooperatively invade Japan by ground with the USSR coming in from the north and the Americans coming in from the south; and instead dropped the most powerful weapons yet developed in the course of human history on Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- and gave the Soviets exactly no warning of this -- didn't help either.

The British knew what we, the Americans, were up to in Japan before a certain point in time in 1945; and they knew about it long before it happened, even to the point of contributing to the nuclear research and development.  The Soviets, on the other hand, had no idea.  They were totally caught off guard and once it became obvious to the world in general and Stalin in particular that the Americans had no intention of cooperating with the Soviets in Japan, and that the Americans brought the Japanese to their knees with a pair of nuclear weapons... and the fact that all the allies except Stalin knew of this long ahead of time (though some knew more than others; as the French were not read in to the same level as the British, for example) it was in the time between Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender that the Cold War began.

Stalin knew of what happened in Japan, but he couldn't believe that the Americans had a weapon of such magnitude.  He was mortified.  Psychologically, he was having flashbacks to when Hitler betrayed Stalin after Hitler invaded prematurely before the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's expiration.  That is also probably the genesis of the idiotic analogies between Americans and Nazis by the Soviets following WWII, which continue to this day (I mean really... just take a look at the Kremlin's propaganda in Eastern and Southern Ukraine right this very moment). 

Now, given all of this... the thing to have done would have been to keep marching.  Stalin didn't have nuclear weapons until after the soviets stole the technology about 5 years later, and even then, the technology they had didn't even approximate what we have now.  It was, at best, a set of weapons that had to be delivered by a high-payload bomber which would have invariably shot out of the sky before it even got past Hawaii.  But, doing so would have been idiotic; war was perfectly avoidable, and there was exactly zero reason why this should have escalated further.  But it did.

The point I'm making is that the Cold War should not have even happened.  There should have never been an ideological struggle between "capitalism" and communism, and the fears of communism should have never been the sole animating force behind American foreign policy in the first instance.  Any doubt to that end was resolved when Nixon was in office, and when Nixon went to China.  Kissinger's book has some worthwhile perspective on that subject.  Something similar could have happened with the USSR.  It almost did with Gorbachev, but for reasons that had much more to do with the USSR's imminent implosion than because of anything Reagan did or wished he might have done.

Without question, both immediately after and at all subsequent points from 1945 until 1991, WWII's Allies minus the USSR could have defeated the USSR militarily at any point in time.  The only question was "at what cost" that victory could have been achieved.  The closer to 1991 you get, the higher the cost would have been.  However, in 1945 that cost would have been fairly insignificant. 

The reasons for this require little analysis beyond the obvious fact that the USSR lost tens of millions in WWII, and despite the modest efforts towards industrialization achieved before and during WWII, the USSR was very much an unsophisticated and almost entirely agrarian entity that was absolutely decimated by WWII.  This, after they never even really recovered from the catastrophic losses sustained in WWI.  While much of Western and Central Europe was also in shambles, the United States exited WWII stronger than the rest of the world combined.  The US alone could have taken on the USSR and won. 

More questions are welcomed, but they should be good questions.  

I'm on record that I don't give a fuck about Sci Fi... so keep that out.

AJ is worthless. 

>  News Sources

I get news online from all over.  All in all, Reuters, the Associated Press, and Vice are fairly reliable.  

Beyond that, McClatchy DC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post are usually good. 

For political coverage, CQ Roll Call is the gold standard. 

If you want to look outside of the US, I suggest Spiegel, Deutsche Welle and the Suddeutche Zeitung, as well as the Financial Times. 

For world affairs, Foreign Affairs Mag is second to none.  Foreign Policy mag is to be avoided, because it is the IR equivilent of the National Enquirer (also to be avoided).  

Well, the reason I have such profound issues with people like Buchanan are because he has been demonstrably wrong on nearly every policy he has opined on; his analysis on nearly every historical event he has weighed on has been misguided; his insight on nearly every current or past issue has been out of touch with reality; and his biases cloud his ability to understand or forecast the probable, or even plausible outcomes of any present trend in the future.  Basically, he's the equivalent of a raving lunatic with a pen... a deranged old man whose understanding of the world is wholly lacking in anything vaguely resembling competency or coherency.  

But, it's not enough to just call him names... however amusing that may be.  There's got to be a justification for all those adjectives, and the justification lies in careful consideration of any position on any issue he has ever taken.  While there may be, I admit, some issues on which he is not totally wrong, I have yet to see them; though a broken clock is right at least twice per day and he may be no exception.  But I don't know.  Though what you gave me about him and his patently absurd theories about WWII... he can't even get the facts right, and given that he can't even get the facts right, there's nothing further to be said about his opinions because they're based on nothing.  It is for this reason that Buchanan is not taken seriously by any person in any competent field, anywhere in the United States or anywhere in the world.  At best, he has a few who adore him among the Hungarian and Italian far right... a modest following of troglydites in the US, and that's it.  

I disagree with that characterization of Churchill.  But, however popular neoisolationist frivolity may be among the populist right at this particular moment (due in large part to the fact that we are just far enough away from WWII to have a living memory of what happens in the absence of an indispensable nation underwriting world peace by and through the barrels of our guns), public opinion will change on isolationism as soon as war breaks out anew in such a way that hurts America and/or Americans.  

I will respond to the rest of your thing in a bit 

I have not read Buchanan's book, and don't intend to do so any time soon.  Patrick Buchanan is a pseudo-intellectual fraud, and his reputation precedes him in this and numerous other respects.  That all being said, my criticism of Churchill is for failing to take stronger, more aggressive, more decisive action when it was beyond obvious that Hitler was the kind of menace that had to be disposed of permanently at various different points long before England even entered the war. 

Of course, the same and other criticism could be leveraged against Stalin (who in his naivety and stupidity thought Hitler would honor their little peace pact, and then hid like a coward from news that he was double crossed while soviet soldiers were being massacred as the generals were afraid to act without direction from Stalin).  But, Stalin at least had the logistical excuse that he was legitimately buying time to militarize in terms of his little peace agreement after Hitler invaded Poland.

Churchill, on the other hand, had no excuse.  England was already militarized and he had no need to buy time.  The obvious action that should have been taken was Churchill to ally with France and the remaining allied countries -- and form them -- and reign a measure of hell down upon the Nazis sufficient to dissuade any further conquest on their part.  A working relationship with the less obvious menace Stalin would have been prudent to this end, too. 

>Aliens

That's an absurd question, which you know is absurd, and it is particularly absurd to ask it of me, given what you know about my antipathy towards sci fi.  

> Churchill

That's a difficult question.  I'll have to think about it.  Limiting this to WWII, obviously.  But, off the top of my head, in order:

1.  The universe of failures to anticipate Hitler's ambitions and intentions. 

This is one continuing and ongoing, unbroken line of failures which began with failing to attack the nazis after Hitler invaded Poland, continued with his failure to anticipate that Hitler would advance into France and assuming that he would be content with the Sudetenland; and the list goes on, through to May 1940 when he seriously thought that there was a prospect of peace with Hitler.  The only reason that Germany grew into what it did was that the Allied powers did not dispose of Hitler when it became obvious that he was a threat.  Likely, if he'd been less preoccupied with being paranoid about Stalin, he might have seen what was right in front of him. 

2.  What occurred on his watch as it relates to the Crown's prosecution of Alan Turing.

What the Crown did to Turing transcends immorality.  Alan Turing singlehandedly broke the code that the nazis were using to communicate.  The intelligence obtained from intercepted communications enabled the Americans and the Soviets to go on to win the war.  England repaid him by prosecuting him for being gay, and chemically castrating him before he committed suicide.  Churchill could have and failed to intervene to stop this. 

3.  The universe of the ways he treated Stalin in WWII probably had a direct hand in the Cold War's occurrence.

There is no doubt that Joseph Stalin was a pathologically murderous horror of a man, but he was not worse than Hitler at the time of WWII; nor did he present anything approximating the same level of threat to the world itself that Hitler did.  Nevertheless, it was Stalin who Churchill was more guarded about whereas Churchill thought he could do business with Hitler.  Turns out that the opposite was the case.  

Medicare is a complicated program.  I imagine it would work the way that health care works in France, which is that there is a baseline public option which is covered by tax dollars.  After that, private health care would be available likely with a supplemental insurance option for those who wished to purchase it. 

To explain that, medicare pays for about 80% of all medical services, but the remaining 20% can still be expensive.  So, a lot of people purchase supplemental health insurance after that to cover the difference between the amount charged and the amount Medicare pays.  

Basic stuff like routine checkups and prescriptions would be covered at 100% or almost 100% with a de minimis co pay, especially for kids. 

However, there's no indication that it has to work like I've described.  This is just one of about ten or twelve possible ways it could work.  

The basic idea is to make it so that people don't have to be afraid of getting sick.  If there's a problem, they go to the doctor and get it taken care of.  That's the way it ought to be, and that's the way it is in almost every first world country in the world. 

It doesn't have to be so much harder or worse for Americans, and it shouldn't be. 

> 20 Hour Work Week

I think a 20 hour work week would be very bad for most people.  That is about 1/3 of the hours I work, and about 1/2 of what a full time job is.  People need free time, but not that much free time.

> Bernie's health care plan

Medicare for all, you mean?

>One, death is only a reset. You become your higher self and from there you manifest into another mortal experience. So, with some caveats, suicide wouldn't throw you into a hell. It will just stop your life here and you'll start a new life. 

I don't buy any of that, but for reasons that would probably be highly unsatisfying to you.  

There is no indication that damnation is a punishment for suicide, anywhere in the Bible or within any realm of competent theology.  That's a weak, and unsophisticated argument.  There were many, many other problems I have with what you said, but this was the first and one of the most glaring.  We will explore why.

All sins are forgivable other than denial of the Holy Spirit, which is the sole suggestion of the limits of God's grace in the Bible.  Even then, we do not know the limits of God's grace.  To the extent you claim that suicide mandates damnation, you are not only assuming that there are limits but that you know those limits; and, the limits which you know are drawn at suicide.   You will find exactly no support for that proposition, anywhere in the Bible.  To the extent that any verse can be misconstrued to suggest that, there are other more probable interpretations and there are other verses which would contradict that interpretation. 

Theologically, there are obvious irreconcilabilities with that proposition.  Here are two examples that illustrate those, from the perspective of agency:

First, consider for a moment the implications, as well, of the proposition that suicide mandates damnation.  What are the additional circumstances that control?  Does it only mandate damnation if the suicide occurred after one reached the age of accountability, whatever that was, for them?  How could you know that such a person would reach that age or had reached that age by the time they'd committed suicide?  

Second, consider a suicide committed as a result of physiologically observable chemical imbalances in the brain due either to clinical or major depressive disorder; or, alternatively, poorly treated depression where someone was given something like Zoloft or Lexapro and that gave them the will to end it all.  Is something outside the scope of your control something sufficient to merit damnation?  Hardly, even if you buy into the theory of free will.  

In the big picture, original sin and human fallenness is the cause that is independently sufficient to justify damnation; which, as the scriptures make clear, is well within the bounds of God's grace to forgive; as is any action taken in life, which is secondary to original sin.  In that suicide is an act taken in life secondary to original sin, even if the intent was to end life itself, that too is by definition within the known bounds of God's grace. 

So, it turns out that there is a range of God's grace that is known.  Anything within the realm of that is forgivable, and suicide falls well within that scope.  But, there is not a reason to assume that the known bounds are the same thing as the limits of God's grace.  But, if something is well within the known bounds, then it must also be within whatever limits known or unknown may but do not necessarily exist.  

In this way, for you to assume that suicide falls outside both the known bounds and unknown limits is beyond preposterous.  Now, I also know that the idea that suicide mandates damnation is not originally your idea; because invariably you heard it from someone else, whose theological hubris and dogmatism was likely so palpable it was unknown to them (much as water is unown to a fish, because the water is all they know).  So, I'm not saying you're a bad person or a heretic or anything like that... despite my tone.  That is because I don't give you credit for this idea which I know is not yours.  You probably heard it from like... idk... some priest or firebrand minister or something.  

What TV shows do you watch? Why do you watch them? 

It is fairly remarkable that 14 year old boys on the internet have nothing better to do than pretend to be racists for the purpose of triggering so called SJWs into raging against them.  

Your whole account is entirely too transparent.  In this respect, your efforts have failed. 

But not the full quote

The video you are mischaracterizing can be found here:

tbh I think that's a really poor argument... 

I am glad you're at least not a homophobic bigot... lol

That said, I agree that there is absolutely no reason to ban assault weapons, one type of which is an AK 47.  They are among the best weapons ever designed or manufactured.  If engineering is art, the AK is a masterpiece.      

My thoughts, for what little they're worth:

Moral values

Not sure what's unclear.  Are you asking what I mean by "values"?

Oh... idk then... 

I don't see how it would change that debate