I fear that the only relevant Joe Biden red lines are the ones no longer extant in his brain -- those small arterioles delivering blood to nourishing brain capillaries that appear to be drying up within that wooden skull (testa di legno). But no matter. He's not Trump -- as one of my former colleagues, brilliant in his field, suggested to me recently. Fellow Boomers, will ye ever wake TF up? The Doomsday clock is relentlessly ticking, and Trump derangement is the bomb inside your very own brains.
To be fair, like Henry VI of England or some other addled king of old. Biden probably has little real influence or authority in his own administration.
The old doofus just rubber-stamps whatever his aides put in front of him if they promise him ice cream instead of fruit cup for dessert.
Except unlike Biden, as far as I can tell Henry VI was a decent and humane human, measured by the standards of the rulers of the day.
Your clarification, nobly put in the spirit of fairness, is true. Unfortunately, there have been US presidents, who, for better or worse, have at least attempted to put a leash on insane advisors (Victoria Nuland, anyone?) Perhaps, we should revise the qualifications list for the office, specifying lap-dog submissiveness at the top of that list.
Hubris is one hell of a drug, and the Trump and Biden Administrations suffer from hubris on a level so insane that Louis XIV, Akbar, or Ludwig II of Bavaria look grounded and unassuming by comparison.
At the same time, like many an insecure bully, they are constantly in fear for their position, and they know that their empire is slipping away.
Nudelman seems to be at home with just about any administration of any stripe, with the possible exception of Trump, assuming one is prepared to describe the latter as an "administration". I don't recall any president whom she served under making any meaningful attempt to reign her in. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Ah yes; sorry you misunderstood. The perils of brief conversations on "social" media. My meaning was that she should be reigned-in, was the prime exemplar of the perennially consulted sociopath that required severe restraints. Not that anyone had succeeded in doing so. As you imply, she is indeed also the prime example of the duopoly's "national security" establishment", at home in either warmonger party.
A leash has TWO loops. I think Obama had pretty good survival instincts apropos the folks who'd had Hillary, Kerry & the like arming cra-cray our Syrian jihadists, Ukrainian nazi oilgarchs, Israel, al Saud cliques and Daesh?
Poppy Bush & Cheney (and his finger puppet Shrub) were BOTH perfect representatives of how 'Murika, not Russia, just picked up where the Axis left off. Satanists & BPD ridden serial killers, everywhere have to acknowledge Hills, Rice, Victoria, Albright & Kerry... but Poppy Bush, Albright & Zbigniew MADE our world what it is?
Nope. He was installed. He did exactly what he was supposed to do. That is to get you unto TRS. And it worked. You are mad at Trump, and your guy makes sense to you. The irony of this is enormous.
Oh so there are rules? Open forums are ideas that are shared. Caitlen is not some writing goddess whose words are the only truth in this world. Open forum, open ideas. But if you feel like it, you can give me a zero for my comment; not a course I have to pass.
Debbie, John & Robby only chose Trump, because they'd never be allowed to install that huge Lord Humongous dude to scare librul boomer yuppies and PMC millennial Creative Class™ imbeciles!
Hey, guys, please stop arguing over who is a worse president--Trump or Biden. They are both terrible in their own ways. The great tragedy is that these are the sort of choices that the US political system offers up to its voters. Both major parties are thoroughly corrupt and dedicated to crushing the lives of ordinary people. I might add that together, they are doing the job very well.
Well, you know what George Carlin said: "These (great leaders) are the best we can do." The leaders and their political parties they lead didn't fall from Mars. We made them, not only by voting for them and contributing to them, but in our work and our daily lives. If we didn't positively do it ourselves, we passively let it happen. Certainly they are bad; they are not only the best we can do, they are the worst we can do. The question is whether we are going to do something else in the future. So far it doesn't look like it.
I ain't arguing. It's 'Murikanz RIGHT to LOTE in whichever senile, zombie, kleptrocrat we're allowed by AIPAC, WEF, Atlantic Council & CFR to kill millions of innocent COVID & AGW survivors with?
The problem isn't really the boomers, although I'll be happy to join you in heaping contempt on the stereotype boomer I think you mean. The problem is our habit (learned) of running to institutions and hierarchies of power for public safety and progress.
The Ayn Randian style of privatization is only possible because we allow unlimited accumulation of power in corporations and families. These are examples of the habit I mentioned. I despise contemporary American liberterianism. It is an incoherent theology attempting to justify transfer of any and all possible property to these hierarchies of power we call banks and corporations.
The institutions have been corrupted. We agree. Power in the wrong hands can lead to terrible suffering. In the right hands, can lead to the betterment of humanity. Civilization depends on some amount of power given to the institutions that run a civilization, or else we end up devolving back into barbarism. Which appears to be the direction the United States is heading toward: mass barbarism.
In case I wasn't clear before, power will always be corrupt/evil if too much of it is allowed to accumulate in any one person or organization. And money is, for now at least, exchangeable with power. That's why I'm an anarchist and not a libertarian. Down with property!
"with even progressive Democrats supporting Pelosi's move" Even? This suggests that such behavior is out of the normal for these hacks. They fully support the DemocRAT's war mongering and foreign policy crimes. Not an anti-war human being in the bunch. Time to stop giving them even the slightest shred of credibility when it comes to war and peace. They support the worst terrorists and war criminals on the planet. Case closed. Don't want to quibble too much with someone I wholeheartedly agree with... but you also under capitalized DemocRATS.
I remember back when Trump was in office, and his supporters would say that if Clinton had won, we would already be in a war with Russia. In response, I would simply shrug and walk away. Only now do I realize that they were right. Hillary was at the time, and remains to this day, a pathologic Russophobe. I believe it is highly likely that she would have started or provoked Russia into starting a war. On matters of foreign policy, I can see no significant difference between neocons and so-called "liberal hawks."
I agree. I think Clinton is more of a war monger than the war criminal Trump, and the DemocRATS are more enthusiastically supportive of war crimes, the surveillance state, the CIA, and Israeli and Saudi terrorists. People like Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson outflank the whole blue team from the left on matters of war and press freedoms.... and of course, they still suck horribly, but this is how truly right wing the DemocRATS are.
This is highly reminiscent of John McCain's visits to Ukraine in 2013, 2014 and 2017 in which he praised an actual neo-Nazi, rallied the opposition to overthrow the democratically elected government, and gave the Ukrainian army a pep-talk about going to war with Russia. I wonder what the late senator would think now of the war that he wanted so badly and which he predicted Ukraine would win against the country that he described as "a gas station with an army."
No doubt McCain would also have been a huge advocate of the most stringent possible economic sanctions against Russia. Those, too, have turned into a disaster, and all of it--the war and the economic blowback--lies at the feet of the neocon cult that runs US foreign policy. McCain was one of their brethren. Pelosi is not generally considered a neocon, but we must ask: When was the last time that she stood in opposition to a US war? (scratches head).
“Officials told The Associated Press that if Pelosi goes to Taiwan — still an uncertainty — the military would increase its movement of forces and assets in the Indo-Pacific region.”
The Pacific is big. Sure burn oil and gas , blow tens of millions for a completely unnecessary trip. I think they’re deliberately trying to provoke a war. Put it to a vote, for once, like they didn’t for Nam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. You wouldn’t want the Pelosis risking their hundreds of millions just for show, would you?
Dumpster fire of foreign policy indeed, but a dumpster filled with nuclear weaponry.
I am reminded how Japan's militarism and warhawks in the 1940s, whom also took over their government, the same as we see now in the US with the influence and power the Military Industrial Complex over our own corrupted US government - Biden at the top of the heap of corrupt public officials - I am reminded how disastrous the militarism ended up for Japan, ending with millions dead and obliteration of many of their cities including their capital Tokyo.
One wonders how the unrestrained militarism in the US will eventually play out, and if there can be any possible good ending to all this diplomacy of death.
This morning I read that Biden is sending an air craft carrier to Taiwan. The first thing I did was called my Rep to ask, "Please tell me how much money it costs to send an air craft carrier to Taiwan?" I said in addition to escalating war rumbles with yet another nuclear power, we taxpayers are spending money to protect the vanity of a senile SOTH. Ridiculous when the population is reeling from high gas and food prices. I said we will DUMP the senile President for this absurd decision! Let's make certain Biden does not get a second term!
Ah, an aircraft carrier with its associated battle group, historically the supreme method of force projection by the US military. Too bad for the US that such is no longer the case. In modern warfare involving the use of hypersonic anti-shipping missiles, aircraft carriers are known to the cognoscenti as "floating coffins." China has such weapons, as does Russia. The US has no defense against them.
Stupidity can anesthetize you to pain, but it doesn't last forever; pretty soon the West will wake up and find it has blown both its feet right off. And for no good reason but to make a stupid point, to maintain a myth no one believes in anymore.
The problem with the zero-sum winner takes all mentality that the United States Empire fosters and promotes is that there is no way to deescalate and still save face.
The US has long bragged that it can fight two world war events on different fronts at the same time.
It would appear they are planning to do so. Though little manpower committed to proxy war in Ukraine.
Why can’t people realise that most countries, including Russia, are on a defence footing whilst American forces are on a constant attack footing to invade foreign Sovereign states? Plus the military complex is the ‘cash cow’ that is attempting to hold the American economy afloat.
All that is pure bluster. What the world will learn in such an event is that the US can lose two wars simultaneously. The proxy war in Ukraine is essentially lost already. Russia's military capacity, short of all-out nuclear war, is far greater than the combined West's. A war with China half-way around the world is another virtually guaranteed loss. Even the US Defense Department's own war games a few years ago came to that conclusion.
Yes but the situations are not equivalent. Over the last decade UA rebuilt it's forces from practically nothing to hundreds of thousands of NATO-equipped and trained troops integrated with NATO intelligence. It was a huge, expensive, US-funded project. It's purpose was to deliver the final solution on the restive Russian-speaking parts of the Ukrainian population who have militias, most of the nation's productive industry and ports, and security support from RF.
In other words, both sides had been preparing for the current war for many years, their armies were poised, and the final rounds of public diplomacy began in December, during which the Biden admin issued only insults and in late Feb Putin said, in effect: Alright, let's see what you got.
Sending Pelosi to Taiwan is also obviously intended as a diplomatic insult. That's clear. But Taiwan is not actually ready to fight China. This situation is more like Hungary 1956 with the US and Radio Free Europe trying to get nationalists all riled up. This eye-poking of China is stupid and deplorable because it cannot serve the material interests of the people of Taiwan. It's purposes are 100% in the domestic political market. They say there's no such thing as foreign policy, it's all just domestic politics. That's not really true but only because there does exist important foreign policy that's not in the news.
Hearing commentators questioning US/NATO policies provoking Russia doing the obligatory disclaimer condemning Russia regarding the invasion I always want to ask them - what had to be done that was not done already? Point by point, going over the timeline.
Then that should be mentioned during the disclaimer pronunciation.
The disclaimers are usually strong and unequivocal suggesting the conviction behind them. Mentioning lack of information would necessarily make them weaker and likely bring condemnation on twitters.
The reason I ask is that the invasion did not seem like a good move to me, but my information is necessarily only very fragmentary. The Russians had done pretty well playing black over the last several years.
"a good move"? Goodness is relative to purposes. Which ones? e.g. domestic politics, foreign trade relations, security, diplomacy, domestic economy, supply security/redundancy etc.? Running any big country involves weighing up many dimensions that one can individually or collectively consider good/bad.
Is Biden a worse president than Trump? It depends what we're talking about: TV skills, proxy war outcomes, trade, judicial activism, employment, ...
If a referendum were held on the subject of independence vs reconnecting with the rest of China, it is unclear that the Taiwanese people would not choose the latter. And yet, all the noise that we hear in the MSM is about independence. Pretty typical.
Well, orthodox news in the "collective west" (TCW) aren't supporting independence for LPR or DPR.
What's typical here is the childish narrative of we're the goodies and they're the baddies. In one case the goodies say that democracy and human rights demands that the people of LPR and DPR suffer what they must for the integrity of Ukrainian sovereignty. In the other it is that the people of both RC and PRC suffer what they must for independence of RC.
The same bullshit has been used in every case since the UN police action Korea. I think Americans have had enough of it but most are too scared to step out of line. It's totalitarian without the single party rule. Oh wait...
Did they forget climate emergency and carbon. Funny how that stuff never gets mentioned today, but tomorrow when I want to fly somewhere, climate emergency or COViD thrown in my face. A ring of jets is not carbon nwutral.
Yesterday I wrote virtually this same comment somewhere else: The empire is hedging its bets on Ukraine. The way things are going, it is not unlikely that Ukraine will collapse militarily in the next months. So the US MIC needs to ramp up tensions with China right now, so that the US empire can seamlessly transition from war and weapons sales to Ukraine to war and weapons sales to Taiwan.
A war or substantial threat of war over Taiwan makes little sense, so I'm guessing that the current act is a distraction, maybe, as you say, from a disastrous outcome in Ukraine, either anticipated or already happening. It is also reasonably suggested below that it for the consumption of the domestic market, I think it two ways: first, the early stages of a war are always exciting and entertaining for dumb people, and second, the US may be looking at economic disaster, and a war would distract from the personal suffering of a depression.
If Pelosi and her fellow octogenarians really want to commit suicide, could they at least stay home and not provoke a nuclear holocaust? Come on, Nancy! Who will watch over your drunk-driving hubby if you go to Taiwan? What about your ice cream going to waste? How can we entice you to stay put and do nothing like you normally do in Congress?
stop bashing Pelosi...just buy all the "defense industry" stocks you can afford right now...we can all get rich... its a proven money maker... it worked for Pelosi didn't it?
Oddly, at the same time the empire is hell bent on poking the bear, whether Chinese or Russian, our military services are being decimated by poor leadership, lackluster recruiting, dismal retention and dismal morale. The only weapons we will have left, if we entice these superpowers to take the bait, will be special forces units (too small to do anything strategically) and nuclear weapons.
Kakistocracy - leadership by the least qualified, morons and idiots.
I fear that the only relevant Joe Biden red lines are the ones no longer extant in his brain -- those small arterioles delivering blood to nourishing brain capillaries that appear to be drying up within that wooden skull (testa di legno). But no matter. He's not Trump -- as one of my former colleagues, brilliant in his field, suggested to me recently. Fellow Boomers, will ye ever wake TF up? The Doomsday clock is relentlessly ticking, and Trump derangement is the bomb inside your very own brains.
To be fair, like Henry VI of England or some other addled king of old. Biden probably has little real influence or authority in his own administration.
The old doofus just rubber-stamps whatever his aides put in front of him if they promise him ice cream instead of fruit cup for dessert.
Except unlike Biden, as far as I can tell Henry VI was a decent and humane human, measured by the standards of the rulers of the day.
Your clarification, nobly put in the spirit of fairness, is true. Unfortunately, there have been US presidents, who, for better or worse, have at least attempted to put a leash on insane advisors (Victoria Nuland, anyone?) Perhaps, we should revise the qualifications list for the office, specifying lap-dog submissiveness at the top of that list.
Hubris is one hell of a drug, and the Trump and Biden Administrations suffer from hubris on a level so insane that Louis XIV, Akbar, or Ludwig II of Bavaria look grounded and unassuming by comparison.
At the same time, like many an insecure bully, they are constantly in fear for their position, and they know that their empire is slipping away.
Nudelman seems to be at home with just about any administration of any stripe, with the possible exception of Trump, assuming one is prepared to describe the latter as an "administration". I don't recall any president whom she served under making any meaningful attempt to reign her in. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Ah yes; sorry you misunderstood. The perils of brief conversations on "social" media. My meaning was that she should be reigned-in, was the prime exemplar of the perennially consulted sociopath that required severe restraints. Not that anyone had succeeded in doing so. As you imply, she is indeed also the prime example of the duopoly's "national security" establishment", at home in either warmonger party.
A leash has TWO loops. I think Obama had pretty good survival instincts apropos the folks who'd had Hillary, Kerry & the like arming cra-cray our Syrian jihadists, Ukrainian nazi oilgarchs, Israel, al Saud cliques and Daesh?
We have a soulless, near brainless old man supposedly the "leader" of the United States. And Trump was hardly any better.
Trump was a ragehead idiot doofus whose aides ridiculed him behind his back.
Biden is a senile idiot doofus whose aides ignore him or shush him in public.
Please share with us the last President who deserved respect. I'm 60 and am embarrassed by every single one of them in office during my lifetime.
I'd piss in every one of their shoes.
Carter being perhaps the least criminal, so had to be gotten rid of, tout suite.
Well, aside from Zbigniew, the bin Laden family, greenwashing TMI and such?
I said "least criminal", and that is a hella low bar.
Poppy Bush & Cheney (and his finger puppet Shrub) were BOTH perfect representatives of how 'Murika, not Russia, just picked up where the Axis left off. Satanists & BPD ridden serial killers, everywhere have to acknowledge Hills, Rice, Victoria, Albright & Kerry... but Poppy Bush, Albright & Zbigniew MADE our world what it is?
Nope. He was installed. He did exactly what he was supposed to do. That is to get you unto TRS. And it worked. You are mad at Trump, and your guy makes sense to you. The irony of this is enormous.
Have you READ any of what you're purportedly replying to?
Oh so there are rules? Open forums are ideas that are shared. Caitlen is not some writing goddess whose words are the only truth in this world. Open forum, open ideas. But if you feel like it, you can give me a zero for my comment; not a course I have to pass.
You're entitled to an opinion. But it has to make sense in the the context of the exchanges that went before.
Just saying, I'm missing that context so can't support you taking offense.
Debbie, John & Robby only chose Trump, because they'd never be allowed to install that huge Lord Humongous dude to scare librul boomer yuppies and PMC millennial Creative Class™ imbeciles!
Hey, guys, please stop arguing over who is a worse president--Trump or Biden. They are both terrible in their own ways. The great tragedy is that these are the sort of choices that the US political system offers up to its voters. Both major parties are thoroughly corrupt and dedicated to crushing the lives of ordinary people. I might add that together, they are doing the job very well.
Well, you know what George Carlin said: "These (great leaders) are the best we can do." The leaders and their political parties they lead didn't fall from Mars. We made them, not only by voting for them and contributing to them, but in our work and our daily lives. If we didn't positively do it ourselves, we passively let it happen. Certainly they are bad; they are not only the best we can do, they are the worst we can do. The question is whether we are going to do something else in the future. So far it doesn't look like it.
I miss George C.
Well said...
I ain't arguing. It's 'Murikanz RIGHT to LOTE in whichever senile, zombie, kleptrocrat we're allowed by AIPAC, WEF, Atlantic Council & CFR to kill millions of innocent COVID & AGW survivors with?
No let them argue. This exposes how successful the media is.
Meow?
The problem isn't really the boomers, although I'll be happy to join you in heaping contempt on the stereotype boomer I think you mean. The problem is our habit (learned) of running to institutions and hierarchies of power for public safety and progress.
Well the Ayn Randian privatization of everything is even worse. There needs to be a balance between the public good, and private good.
Currently we're all fucked because of this insane insistence that only private good matters.
The Ayn Randian style of privatization is only possible because we allow unlimited accumulation of power in corporations and families. These are examples of the habit I mentioned. I despise contemporary American liberterianism. It is an incoherent theology attempting to justify transfer of any and all possible property to these hierarchies of power we call banks and corporations.
The institutions have been corrupted. We agree. Power in the wrong hands can lead to terrible suffering. In the right hands, can lead to the betterment of humanity. Civilization depends on some amount of power given to the institutions that run a civilization, or else we end up devolving back into barbarism. Which appears to be the direction the United States is heading toward: mass barbarism.
Right now leaving the empire and going to join the barbarians sounds very appealing. Oh. Wait.... They are all gone.
In case I wasn't clear before, power will always be corrupt/evil if too much of it is allowed to accumulate in any one person or organization. And money is, for now at least, exchangeable with power. That's why I'm an anarchist and not a libertarian. Down with property!
"with even progressive Democrats supporting Pelosi's move" Even? This suggests that such behavior is out of the normal for these hacks. They fully support the DemocRAT's war mongering and foreign policy crimes. Not an anti-war human being in the bunch. Time to stop giving them even the slightest shred of credibility when it comes to war and peace. They support the worst terrorists and war criminals on the planet. Case closed. Don't want to quibble too much with someone I wholeheartedly agree with... but you also under capitalized DemocRATS.
I remember back when Trump was in office, and his supporters would say that if Clinton had won, we would already be in a war with Russia. In response, I would simply shrug and walk away. Only now do I realize that they were right. Hillary was at the time, and remains to this day, a pathologic Russophobe. I believe it is highly likely that she would have started or provoked Russia into starting a war. On matters of foreign policy, I can see no significant difference between neocons and so-called "liberal hawks."
P.S. I guess you could call me a "Hillaryphobe."
Hillary is a weapon of mass destruction.
I agree. I think Clinton is more of a war monger than the war criminal Trump, and the DemocRATS are more enthusiastically supportive of war crimes, the surveillance state, the CIA, and Israeli and Saudi terrorists. People like Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson outflank the whole blue team from the left on matters of war and press freedoms.... and of course, they still suck horribly, but this is how truly right wing the DemocRATS are.
This is highly reminiscent of John McCain's visits to Ukraine in 2013, 2014 and 2017 in which he praised an actual neo-Nazi, rallied the opposition to overthrow the democratically elected government, and gave the Ukrainian army a pep-talk about going to war with Russia. I wonder what the late senator would think now of the war that he wanted so badly and which he predicted Ukraine would win against the country that he described as "a gas station with an army."
No doubt McCain would also have been a huge advocate of the most stringent possible economic sanctions against Russia. Those, too, have turned into a disaster, and all of it--the war and the economic blowback--lies at the feet of the neocon cult that runs US foreign policy. McCain was one of their brethren. Pelosi is not generally considered a neocon, but we must ask: When was the last time that she stood in opposition to a US war? (scratches head).
I saw one video where Lindsay Graham does the same. They both could not be more explicit about what they wanted.
McCain and Graham went to Ukraine together in February 2017.
“Officials told The Associated Press that if Pelosi goes to Taiwan — still an uncertainty — the military would increase its movement of forces and assets in the Indo-Pacific region.”
The Pacific is big. Sure burn oil and gas , blow tens of millions for a completely unnecessary trip. I think they’re deliberately trying to provoke a war. Put it to a vote, for once, like they didn’t for Nam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. You wouldn’t want the Pelosis risking their hundreds of millions just for show, would you?
Dumpster fire of foreign policy indeed, but a dumpster filled with nuclear weaponry.
I am reminded how Japan's militarism and warhawks in the 1940s, whom also took over their government, the same as we see now in the US with the influence and power the Military Industrial Complex over our own corrupted US government - Biden at the top of the heap of corrupt public officials - I am reminded how disastrous the militarism ended up for Japan, ending with millions dead and obliteration of many of their cities including their capital Tokyo.
One wonders how the unrestrained militarism in the US will eventually play out, and if there can be any possible good ending to all this diplomacy of death.
If history is to be consulted, which it should, then the answer is no.
This morning I read that Biden is sending an air craft carrier to Taiwan. The first thing I did was called my Rep to ask, "Please tell me how much money it costs to send an air craft carrier to Taiwan?" I said in addition to escalating war rumbles with yet another nuclear power, we taxpayers are spending money to protect the vanity of a senile SOTH. Ridiculous when the population is reeling from high gas and food prices. I said we will DUMP the senile President for this absurd decision! Let's make certain Biden does not get a second term!
Ah, an aircraft carrier with its associated battle group, historically the supreme method of force projection by the US military. Too bad for the US that such is no longer the case. In modern warfare involving the use of hypersonic anti-shipping missiles, aircraft carriers are known to the cognoscenti as "floating coffins." China has such weapons, as does Russia. The US has no defense against them.
Stupidity can anesthetize you to pain, but it doesn't last forever; pretty soon the West will wake up and find it has blown both its feet right off. And for no good reason but to make a stupid point, to maintain a myth no one believes in anymore.
The problem with the zero-sum winner takes all mentality that the United States Empire fosters and promotes is that there is no way to deescalate and still save face.
This is entirely intentional.
The US has long bragged that it can fight two world war events on different fronts at the same time.
It would appear they are planning to do so. Though little manpower committed to proxy war in Ukraine.
Why can’t people realise that most countries, including Russia, are on a defence footing whilst American forces are on a constant attack footing to invade foreign Sovereign states? Plus the military complex is the ‘cash cow’ that is attempting to hold the American economy afloat.
All that is pure bluster. What the world will learn in such an event is that the US can lose two wars simultaneously. The proxy war in Ukraine is essentially lost already. Russia's military capacity, short of all-out nuclear war, is far greater than the combined West's. A war with China half-way around the world is another virtually guaranteed loss. Even the US Defense Department's own war games a few years ago came to that conclusion.
Yes but the situations are not equivalent. Over the last decade UA rebuilt it's forces from practically nothing to hundreds of thousands of NATO-equipped and trained troops integrated with NATO intelligence. It was a huge, expensive, US-funded project. It's purpose was to deliver the final solution on the restive Russian-speaking parts of the Ukrainian population who have militias, most of the nation's productive industry and ports, and security support from RF.
In other words, both sides had been preparing for the current war for many years, their armies were poised, and the final rounds of public diplomacy began in December, during which the Biden admin issued only insults and in late Feb Putin said, in effect: Alright, let's see what you got.
Sending Pelosi to Taiwan is also obviously intended as a diplomatic insult. That's clear. But Taiwan is not actually ready to fight China. This situation is more like Hungary 1956 with the US and Radio Free Europe trying to get nationalists all riled up. This eye-poking of China is stupid and deplorable because it cannot serve the material interests of the people of Taiwan. It's purposes are 100% in the domestic political market. They say there's no such thing as foreign policy, it's all just domestic politics. That's not really true but only because there does exist important foreign policy that's not in the news.
The Ukrainian regime has made it clear that "the Final Solution" was exactly what was intended for Russian sympathizers.
The United States and its NATO cutout encouraged this at every opportunity, knowing that Russia would have no choice but to intervene.
Hearing commentators questioning US/NATO policies provoking Russia doing the obligatory disclaimer condemning Russia regarding the invasion I always want to ask them - what had to be done that was not done already? Point by point, going over the timeline.
Do we have enough information on the state of play to make that judgement?
Then that should be mentioned during the disclaimer pronunciation.
The disclaimers are usually strong and unequivocal suggesting the conviction behind them. Mentioning lack of information would necessarily make them weaker and likely bring condemnation on twitters.
The reason I ask is that the invasion did not seem like a good move to me, but my information is necessarily only very fragmentary. The Russians had done pretty well playing black over the last several years.
"a good move"? Goodness is relative to purposes. Which ones? e.g. domestic politics, foreign trade relations, security, diplomacy, domestic economy, supply security/redundancy etc.? Running any big country involves weighing up many dimensions that one can individually or collectively consider good/bad.
Is Biden a worse president than Trump? It depends what we're talking about: TV skills, proxy war outcomes, trade, judicial activism, employment, ...
If a referendum were held on the subject of independence vs reconnecting with the rest of China, it is unclear that the Taiwanese people would not choose the latter. And yet, all the noise that we hear in the MSM is about independence. Pretty typical.
Well, orthodox news in the "collective west" (TCW) aren't supporting independence for LPR or DPR.
What's typical here is the childish narrative of we're the goodies and they're the baddies. In one case the goodies say that democracy and human rights demands that the people of LPR and DPR suffer what they must for the integrity of Ukrainian sovereignty. In the other it is that the people of both RC and PRC suffer what they must for independence of RC.
The same bullshit has been used in every case since the UN police action Korea. I think Americans have had enough of it but most are too scared to step out of line. It's totalitarian without the single party rule. Oh wait...
Did they forget climate emergency and carbon. Funny how that stuff never gets mentioned today, but tomorrow when I want to fly somewhere, climate emergency or COViD thrown in my face. A ring of jets is not carbon nwutral.
Yesterday I wrote virtually this same comment somewhere else: The empire is hedging its bets on Ukraine. The way things are going, it is not unlikely that Ukraine will collapse militarily in the next months. So the US MIC needs to ramp up tensions with China right now, so that the US empire can seamlessly transition from war and weapons sales to Ukraine to war and weapons sales to Taiwan.
"The empire is hedging its bets on Ukraine...."
A war or substantial threat of war over Taiwan makes little sense, so I'm guessing that the current act is a distraction, maybe, as you say, from a disastrous outcome in Ukraine, either anticipated or already happening. It is also reasonably suggested below that it for the consumption of the domestic market, I think it two ways: first, the early stages of a war are always exciting and entertaining for dumb people, and second, the US may be looking at economic disaster, and a war would distract from the personal suffering of a depression.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3186803/us-aircraft-carrier-group-heads-towards-taiwan-tension-over
Because nothing reduces tensions like sending a carrier battle group to the area.
In other words, the Pelosi visit is official US policy.
If Pelosi and her fellow octogenarians really want to commit suicide, could they at least stay home and not provoke a nuclear holocaust? Come on, Nancy! Who will watch over your drunk-driving hubby if you go to Taiwan? What about your ice cream going to waste? How can we entice you to stay put and do nothing like you normally do in Congress?
stop bashing Pelosi...just buy all the "defense industry" stocks you can afford right now...we can all get rich... its a proven money maker... it worked for Pelosi didn't it?
Oddly, at the same time the empire is hell bent on poking the bear, whether Chinese or Russian, our military services are being decimated by poor leadership, lackluster recruiting, dismal retention and dismal morale. The only weapons we will have left, if we entice these superpowers to take the bait, will be special forces units (too small to do anything strategically) and nuclear weapons.
Kakistocracy - leadership by the least qualified, morons and idiots.