They were mercenaries from what I read.
Take away the nukes and maybe they aren’t number two.
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It’s a vile beverage that Ivan the Terrible forced peasants to drink on a daily basis, under threat from beatings and/or execution. His rationale was that constantly drunk peasants do not start uprisings.
And all vodka is pretty much the same - if you differentiate brands of vodka, it’s placebo.
Seriously that’s the only thing you could think to say? It isn’t much I just gave you more of a response than you deserved
Accurate.
Vodka is great. Vodka makes you more aggressive. Grey Goose and karkov are not remotely close. I’m disappointed in you, Loppar.
Grey Goose is not vodka. It’s some French concoction for the international market.
Russian Standard and Stolichnaya are the only authentic ones, but they taste (and should taste) the same - it’s the cheapest “premium” alcoholic beverage to produce. But if you want 100% authentic vodka experience then it’s samogon.
Good point.
Cyberwarfare
Weaponized Propoganda
Not to mention proxy wars in places like the Ukraine, or Syria.
“Hybrid warfare is a military strategy that employs political warfare and blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyberwarfare with other influencing methods, such as fake news, diplomacy and foreign electoral intervention.”
In this sense, Russia is very much at war with the US, and other democracies in the west. They’ve hit the countries of Europe with the same propaganda, cyber attacks, and attempts to influence or destabilize their governments.
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I mean, I was just messing with you but if Grey Goose isn’t vodka, my whole life has been a lie. Please explain, good sir.
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Been away this week. Saw this. I preferred about 15 of the other candidates in the Republican primary to Trump. I’m no supporter. To borrow a phrase, he truly is a dotard… at best.
I’m just trying to take an honest look and I feel the alarmism over Trump is way overblown (just as it was with Obama/Bush/Clinton). In fact his inability to do actual lasting damage is a testament to the safeguards in our republic (undermined as they are).
This one is easy. Trump is a narcicist and feeds off of attention. It doesn’t matter if the attention is good or bad he just thrives off of attention. Notice how when he meets with Putin he gets lots of attention? Come to think of it this one decision rule pretty much explains 95% of Trump’s behavior.
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We should be worried if Congress starts to get filled with Trump cultists.
I doubt he even knows who Oscar Wilde is but his business smarts revolve mostly around being someone famous.
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Military means a lot if not more than economy. Especially if they are using it, which the Russians are.
The hasn’t been an American president who hasn’t had to deal with the Russians since FDR. Good, bad or otherwise.
Despite the Helsinki debacle, we have to deal with the Russians.
We need them to stop killing people without the use of our military if possible.
Plus their ratched up involvement in Syria is a possibly game changing move in the ME. And it’s working.
Believe me, me of all people have no love for the Russians. The suffering they caused my family causes me to have a long memory.
No matter who is president, we need open channels with Russia.
Despite what people believe about the Cold War, those channels still existed even then.
Any military engagement with Russia will not be like an Iraq or Afghanistan, it will be much bigger with a lot more dead bodies.
I don’t see much difference between power and money. Both pretty much get you what you want. The Russians can take what they cannot buy.
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…we want them to start using the U.S. military to kill people…?
Trump is up for it.
Come on Nick, read the rest of my post. I don’t want to kill anybody, but I am aware of the reality that it happens and more than we know.
My apologies, @Basement_Gainz…and thank you for your reply.
I agree that the Republic will survive…LONG after both Trump and Putin have turned to dust.
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I am with @Powerpuff…great point, @zecarlo.
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Everything that has happened lately still begs the question (and I pose it to the group…):
Dose Putin have some type of “leverage” over Trump?
One Pundit put it best:
“At the same time that Mr. Trump continues to exhibit paranoia about American intelligence agencies, he displays a trust verging on gullibility in the mendacious and murderous government of Mr. Putin.”
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Vodka is something you gulp down to temporarily numb the pain of your pathetic existence and you most definitely do not use it to signal affluence - what that monstrosity called Grey Goose is supposedly for.
It’s an abomination plain and simple. From Wikipedia. Maitre de Chai? Are you kidding me?
Grey Goose was created by Sidney Frank Importing Co (SFIC). Sidney Frank, founder/CEO of the company, developed the idea in the summer of 1996. The idea for Grey Goose was to develop a luxury vodka for the American marketplace. SFIC partnered with cognac producer François Thibault (a French Maître de Chai, or, Cellar Master) in France in order to transition his skills from cognac to vodka production.
I stand corrected - besides Russian Standard and Stolichnaya I previously mentioned Narodnaya Vodka is also acceptable. It’s state-produced with the specific purpose of weening alcoholics from often deadly moonshine (samogon).
To say it’s rough is an understatement. Grey Goose fake vodka is for pansies.
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Back channels did in fact exist. There was a rule set in place then, and it lasted until the Helsinki Summit: nobody goes in any room with a KGB officer alone. Nobody, not the President, no single American. If Trump disavowed his own intelligence agencies, took Putin at his word, praised him, and insulted his own country in public, what in the world could they have said in private?
Did you HEAR Putin’s denial? “I didn’t know Trump was in Moscow.” First of all, bullshit, they bugged Stephen fuckin Colbert’s room and had him followed and Trump has for a long time been way more of a well known celebrity, and then Putin was like “there were tons of businessman, do you think we tried to collect information on all of them?” YES. This is the man who poisoned Litvinenko with polonium for pointing out the picture of Putin kissing a boys stomach at a rally and claiming there were videos of him having sex with boys (creepy picture for sure…), who had Ana Politkovskaya shot in the head in her apartment for criticizing him, who had Boris Nemtsov shot in the middle of the street also for criticizing him, who is in the process of negotiating the “questioning” of an american citizen who drew attention to the widespread corruption in the government (and Trump may let him question him…), the list goes on and on. He without a doubt collected kompromat on every single prominent businessman or powerful person who visited Russia during the entirety of his reign, and when one of those people had a legitimate bid to become president, he threw every single available resource towards making that happen. Now that it has happened, despite all these people spewing bullshit about how tough Trump has been, he has refused sanctions, refused to hold them accountable, ignored every atrocity they’ve committed, attempted to negotiate their readmittance into G-7, and now invited Putin to his house.
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