Perhaps you wish to classify fascism as a religion?

Ukrainians are a people with their own history, culture, and language. It is as plain as day. I don't understand why you want to try to deny that. Oh! Wait! That's right, it's your job.

@Flyingsaucesir not all fascists in Ukraine are born there. Nor are all Ukrainians fascists. Interestingly however the Russian Xtian religion is far larger than the Ukrainian. The German fascists did a comprehensive job of decimating the Ukrainian Jewis population. The Ukrainians of East Ukraine & Crimea are primarily Russian speaking.

@FrayedBear Yeah, so?

@Flyingsaucesir So why is the US promulgated, financed & sourced Ukrainian government & its mercenaries committing genocide since 2014 to now against people living within the 2014 country boundary who have declared independence & formed their own nations?
You obviously don't believe that should be allowed. In which case you had best give everything in N.America nominally called the USA back to the First Nations People who it was stolen from pre & post your so called war of independence!

@FrayedBear Since 2014 the Ukrainian army has kept the separatists contained behind well-established lines that, until only in the last 100 days remained relatively stable. Now Putin is pushing those lines deeper into Ukraine, underlining the true motive behind his invasion: to gobble up the whole of Ukraine and thereby add a rich and tasty morsel to his ravenous and corrupt empire.

@Flyingsaucesir "ravenous and corrupt empire" - you describe the USA exactly.

@FrayedBear Except that the USA hasn't annexed any territory in like a hundred years.

@Flyingsaucesir no? Just steal the assets now leaving countries empoverished for years.

@FrayedBear You mean the oil that we paid for with dollars?

@Flyingsaucesir no like the copper from West Papua, the oil from N. American FNP lands, the testing of new drugs on orphaned children - now the whole world with COVID 19 vaccines, the oil & gas contracts stolen from Russia by bullying European countries to impose sanctions, the corruption of land & people in Africa to obtain oil at unfair price resulting in land degradation, oppression of FNP. Plus a raft of other examples resulting from oppressive unfair trade agreements drawn up by crooked immoral American lawyers. Oh, and not forgetting companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many others not paying their fair share of local taxes & fair wages to local workers.

@FrayedBear Well said. Mostly fair points, except thay about covid shots. There isn't evidence they are harmful (outside of the odd rare case of anaphylaxis or a blood clot). But you're kinda preaching to the choir here. I jave always been critical of the USA's policies, foreign and domestic. I cut my teeth on the stupid and misguided Vietnam war. But that is not the issue at hand. The question before us is, does Vladimir Putin have the right to extinguish a nation and annex their land? The answer is NO! You seem to be trying to tell me that two wrongs make a right. They don't.

@Flyingsaucesir Thanks for acknowledging. Has Russia, not Putin, subsumed any of Ukraine into Russia? My understanding is that Russia is merely helping two new countries retain their independence & freedom from genocidal intent by a corrupt Ukrainian fascist government.

@FrayedBear If that were true (it us not; Russia annexed Crimea in 2014; Putin has said in so many words that his intention is to erase Ukraine and make their land part of Russia), Russia would still have no business meddling in an internal conflict of a sovereign nation.

@Flyingsaucesir And how many times has "would still have no business meddling in an internal conflict of a sovereign nation" been applicable to the USA & its pursuit of mammon?

@FrayedBear Too many times to list here. But thank you for tacitly acknowledging that Putin's invasion is illegal.

@Flyingsaucesir They had a bad teacher then? Just followed the world leader's practice. . .

Yeah but Trump carried on the funding that provoked the situation started by his predecessors back to "suck my dick Clinton".

Putin expected the Done Cheato to have a second term, and planned all along to invade while his bitch was still in office. When things didn't work out that way he decided to go ahead as planned. It was now or never, because he's standing next to the pit of his his own grave, with one foot on a banana peel.

@Flyingsaucesir I don’t believe that. Putin knew Biden would be weak because of the botched Afghan withdrawal.

@Trajan61 What do or don't believe is irrelevant. Putin is getting in deep shit and Biden is tamping it down on him.

@Flyingsaucesir I fully support Biden’s efforts to help the Ukraine but he’s not doing enough. He should have let the Ukrainians have the Polish Mig 29’s.

@Trajan61 I agree that we have not been acting fast enough. But Biden is not alone in this. NATO is rightly being cautious. We don't want to give Mad Vlad an excuse to go nuclear. So yes, they're erring on the side of caution.

Why don’t we deport the Democraps to China instead. They’re the ones running this country into the ground with their crazy agenda.

I have to disagree. I don't want the MAGAs getting their way and having everyone like me that opposes them to be deported, imprisoned, or stripped of our rights and citizenship. I want to instead have a free and open society, where dissent is allowed and supported, as long as it doesn't involve insurrection or violence against one's opponents. But I also realize you were probably joking...

A. You're conflating apples & oranges. Israel/Palestine is not Ukraine.

B. Russia sent "little green men" (Russian soldiers sans insignia) into Crimea and the Donbas, exploiting existing tensions and instigating a civil war in Ukraine.

C. An internal conflict within sovereign borders does not entitle a 3rd party to come in and annex territory. You don't see France invading Spain over its internal contratemps with Basque separatists, do you? No.

D. I don't trust the American military industrial complex as far as I could throw it. But one thing is clear: Russia invaded Ukraine, not the other way around.

@Flyingsaucesir
A. No confusion here as a Kinetologist. They are functionally identical. Names, labels, colors of attire, even racial myths as license for atrocities might differ. A Nazi with a kippah is no better than one with an arm band. People are defined by action (in this context, words are also actions); by what they do;; by why and how they do it.
B. Breakaway states that didn't accept the FUKUS/NATO/ CIA/EU interference and overthrow of their elected chief of state and were being bombarded by their alleged 'own government' is Donbas. Little 'green men' also operated, uniformed and non, in Ukraine on the part of the West.
C. Basque separatists aren't being bombarded and slaughtered as racial inferiors by their own government. Conflating am I? Spain also presents no adversarial threat to France's security.
D. At least we agree on the first sentence. This, largely because it is at the behest and bribery of the military industrial comples that the USA has invaded and destroyed and killed millions INVADING SOVEREIGN NATIONS. Not to save their populations from mass murders, but to directly cause them.

@Silver1wun The idea that NATO would invade Russia, a big country armed to the teeth with enough nuclear weapons (and the systems to deliver them) to blow the whole world to smithereens ten times over, is positively ludicrous. Putin's supposed fear of such an invasion is a pathetically weak casus belli, but hey, you go with the excuse you've got, right? The threat that Ukraine and/or NATO poses to Russia is exactly that posed to France by Spain: zero.

It was a sad day that the emoji was removed from the likes list - it is the only emoji fit to put on flying sauce's trollery!

@Flyingsaucesir Russians have EVERY REASON to rationally fear NATO expansion. It isn't like the West han't interfered with and united to invade before. Promises were made to not expand NATO and, by George W"s own admission, were broken because, as he said, 'times change'.

'Times change' is FUKUS speak, for our so-called treaties and committments have a shelf life. Native Americans know this well.

Washinton's word and loyalties are to it's corporate benefactors of late. Next pandemic, when ass-wipe is in short supply, they should consider opening our treaty and (unconstitutional) Executive Branch "deal" document reserves for emergency public use.

@Silver1wun Just you wait. When Putin finally turns tail and slithers back into mother Russia no one will follow. Not Ukraine. Not NATO. No one wants to see all complex life on Earth extinguished.

Yes the USA has done lots of bad things. but invading Russia will never be one of them.

How nice that we agree on something! Do we also agree that two wrongs do not make a right?

@Flyingsaucesir 🕰 waiting but not holding by breath.

You have an interesting interpretation of the polling data. I think you see what you want to see in it. Well, let's go with that and see how far it takes us. If we accept the assertion that 92% of republicans have an unfavorable view of Russia, and we take the number of Republicans to be the number that voted for Done Cheato in 2020 at 70 million, that leaves about 6 million Republicans who do NOT take a dim view of Russia. Now here is a question that was not addressed in the poll: how many MAGA hatters identify themselves as Republicans? Not 100%, I'll bet! How many of those MAGA jerks place themselves in the same Party with Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, Lyn Cheyney, Brad Rafsthenberger, Jeff Flake, Brian Kemp...and others who have stood up to Done Cheato? Add a few more million in the Russia sympathizer column.

@Flyingsaucesir OK, lets take the same approach with the Democrats:

Start with 81,268,924 votes.

Subtract about 2,000,000 fraudulent votes.

You end up with 79,268,924 legitimate votes for Biden. Multiple that by 6%, and you get: 4,756,135 Democrats who do NOT take a dim view of Russia.

That's about the same number of Republicans who do NOT take a dim view of Russia.

@BD66 Hmmm, well (a) you are using the word "Republicans" very loosely. And even if 100% of mad MAGA hatters call themselves Republicans, the minimum number of MAGA hatters who favor Russia is probably closer to 6 million. And it may be double that. Or triple. Who knows? More study is required. And [b] this supposed voter fraud you claim happened is just so much hogwash. Trump's lawyers brought over 60 lawsuits around the country, and lost all of them for lack of evidence. Trump's own Attorney General (never was there one more supportive of a president that Barr was of Done Cheato) called Trump's claims of fraud "bullshit." And Trump's own cyber security czar said the 2020 election was the cleanest in history. When the Trump-friendly cyber ninjas recounted the votes in Arizona they found that Biden won by an even greater margin than previously thought. Trump tried to cajole and coerce the (Republican) Georgia Secretary of State into "finding" some more Trump votes, but they were not to be found. Trump's personal lawyer had his law licence suspended for bringing spurious claims into court. Many of the judges who heard those claims were nominated by Republican presidents. Some by the Done Cheato himself.

@Flyingsaucesir Think about this for a minute.

MAGA = Make America Great Again.

These are people who want to return to the way things were before the 1970's when:

We did not have $30,000,000,000,000 in debt.
We brought in immigrants who could do the most to help our country rather than whoever wanted to illegally cross our Southern Border.
Gasoline was 30 cents per gallon rather than $5.50 per gallon.
The USSR was our #1 enemy.
The kids did "duck and cover" drills to be prepared for a bombing from Russia.
We watched movies like "Red Dawn" where high school kids fought against Russian invaders.
We watched Tom Cruise shoot down Russian Communist pilots in his Navy fighter aircraft.
People watched professional wrestling where the German and Japanese bad guys were being phased out and the Russian and Iranian bad guys were being phased in.

You think these people are pro-Russian?

You are literally living in a fantasy world. You need to get out and meet more people and see how they think.

@BD66 I remember gas prices as low as 30 cents a gallon in the early-mid 60s. But I also remember the price hitting 1 dollar per gallon in the mid 70s, and it never went back down significantly.

Gas prices in Europe were aleady over 5 dollars a gallon in the 80s, and would have been here too if it were nit for the tens of billions in corporate welfare dollars the fossil fuel industry collects every year.

Inflation is a reality in every modern economy. And the US economy is the biggest the world has ever seen. So 30 trillion is not really as big a number as it sounds.

I would like to see the national debt smaller than it is. Unfortunately the Done Cheato had to go and give a huge tax break to the rich, and of course the national debt skyrocketed. Republicans, as is their wont, would fix the problem by cutting away the social safety net. I guess they like that "kersplat!" sound when non-rich people hit bottom.

Dude, you watch too many movies. Done Cheato is Putin's bitch, and mad MAGA hatters are if nothing else loyal to their führer.

@Flyingsaucesir It's truly mind boggling that slogans like:

Make America Great Again

And

America First

could inspire such fear and trepidation in people like you.

Prior to WWII, "Making America Great" and "America First" were things almost all Americans could agree upon.

@BD66 Well that's the thing: they're just slogans. Trump is a pawn of the white Christian nationalists, who would make America a theocratic dictatorship. There is nothing great about that.

We must not allow them to succeed.

@Flyingsaucesir Well, frankly, I don't know if that's possible, since, first of all, they don't plan to accept any election results that don't have them winning. Secondly, the Repubs plan to suppress voting enough for anyone likely to vote Dem in a red state next time in Nov. and in two years, so they may very well win enough federal elections to control DC anyway. Finally, I think they will bring on a violent civil war anyway, since they feel they need to purge the country of those unlike them who are contaminants.

@TomMcGiverin Boy, that's bleak. I sure hope you're wrong.

@Flyingsaucesir I hope so too, but, like Chris Hedges, who is also pretty bleak, I just keep being right about this stuff, year after year...

@TomMcGiverin they need to think about that real long and real hard. I didn't serve for 4 years in the Marines to let some dumbass MAGGOT try to turn my country into a NAZI NATIONALIST CHRISTIAN SHITHOLE. I swore an OATH...and there was no TIME LIMIT on it...fucking weasels.

WTF? What have you been smoking CJ?

@Flyingsaucesir

Take off your blinders

[nbcnews.com]

@CourtJester With respect to fossil fuels, Biden is in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Personally, I would love to see them cut off both Nordstream pipelines, but its not that simple. Germany and the other countries that rely on that gas cannot simply go cold turkey overnight. It will take time. Be patient. It will happen.

The delay of that part of the sanctions certainly does not represent giving Putin "everything he wants." Careful with your spinning CJ, you'll make yourself dizzy.

Is sending the Ukrainian army HIMARS giving Putin "everything he wants"? I think not.

I guess they never heard that old saying, "Be careful what you wish for."

@Druvius @HippieChick58 That arms deal with Ukraine was already baked in when Done Cheato took office. And he did his best to nix it. Remember that little faux pas with a phone call, and abuse of office, trying to extort a personal favor from a foreign leader? Trump held up the arms shipments for months....until things got too hot for him. Putin was no doubt emboldened by the gesture, and deeply gratified by all Cheato's hard work denigrating NATO at every opportunity. And what are we to make of Cheato's public rejection of his own intelligence community's analysis in favor of Putin's "very strong" denials? Yeah, Trump is Putin's bitch.

@Druvius more like tRUMP is Putin's BITCH...tRUMP is nothing but a sniveling COWARD and Putin KNOWS IT...thats why he wanted Cadet Bone Spurs relected so bad...he knew Bunker Boy would have let him have a free hand. tRUMP couldn't strategize his way out of a wet paper bag if someone handed him a lit blowtorch and said, "CUT HERE". He is the DUMBEST PRESIDENT EVER...