I'll Get Right On That

I made the mistake of noticing that M1903 ball outranges M2 ball using GURPS: Gun Stats on the SJ Forum.

I have been taken to task for not citing my sources and allegedly using the bullet manufacturer's stats for ammunition.

Bitch, please.

The bullet makers don't publish the length of their projectiles anywhere I've found.

Gun geeks do.

But I have books with Army test data listed.  Books that I didn't bother getting out again because I don't really feel like I need to defend my doctoral thesis on a game forum when I don't even get a degree from it.

Besides, do I really need to cite specific tests when, no shit, the entire world abandoned round nose bullets for spitzer rounds in a very short time frame?

The US, after spending all that time stealing adapting the Mauser design to our way of doing things and chambering it for what amounted to a +P version of the M1892 ball, abandoned the M1903 ball round and rechambered EVERYTHING in M1906 ball.

The .30-03 and .30-06 are not interchangeable rounds either.

This was on top of having just reworked all the rifles in inventory to accept a real bayonet just the year before.

The ever frugal US Army wouldn't have proceeded on a change of cartridge and rechambering their rifles if the performance improvement wasn't blatantly obvious.

As I said, when the French secret was out, nobody said, "we'll just stick with the proven, heavier, round-nose bullets."

That's a big enough indicator that we don't need to dig up obscure Army test data and cite the exact weather conditions of the tests.

Another clue is nobody makes round-nose rounds for cartridges that don't use a tube magazine outside a few historical freaks doing recreations of period pieces. 

PS: GURPS has official stats for the Balle M, D and N with various time period versions of the Lebel!

Balle M (1886) is from Adventure Guns with 6d+2 pi, 800/3,300.
Balle D (1898) is from Pulp Guns with 6d+2 pi, 1,000/4,200.
Balle N (1932) is from High Tech with 6d pi, 900/3,900.

Balle M is a flat-nosed round, Balle D is the spitzer.  Balle N serves as an example of what happens when you make the bullet heavier, but can't increase the chamber pressure so you lose velocity because you also lost case capacity with that longer bullet intruding into the case further; but notice it still outperforms Balle M on range!

It's from wikipedia, but it's a handy comparison:

Gun Stats doesn't account for the difference in ballistic coefficient between round nose and spitzer, and boat-tails. 

Too Simple

There's a couple data points for libertardians that need to be pointed out repeatedly.

First, and largest, libertarian is too simple to have never been tried even before someone coined the term.

Where is this vast, successful, society living in accordance with the non-aggression principle?  Did you realize that a feudal system can be created within the libertarian framework?

The next largest problem is actually the same problem that socialism has; it doesn't scale.

At the monkey level both socialism and libertarianism work.  Once you don't know everyone personally, they fall apart.

I mean, if it's so obviously easy and simple, why isn't the Free State Project a shining beacon of freedom and liberty?

I, too, want to live in utopia.  Sadly, it doesn't exist and cannot be created.

The best we can hope for is maximizing liberty and pushing for the ideal can get us more of it; but way too many libertardians are absolutists.

When you go "all-or-nothing" you get nothing.  Every.  Single.  Time.

PS: For the Rands:  You really want me to respect you?  Stop running as Republicans. 

FedExSux

In my locale, there is no worse shipper than FedEx.

Especially if it's gun stuff.

Even DHL is better around here.

Read that again.

I've even had to threaten to call ATF on them because they claimed it was delivered on the web page and the driver had not even gotten within a mile of my house yet.

That was a fun call while they claimed they couldn't contact the driver and had no way of knowing exactly where he was.  Yet, ten minutes after issuing my threat the driver screeched to a halt in front of my house and a driver with a "I just got my ass chewed but good," look on their face delivered my return from S&W. 

Today I am watching a tracking number that left Tampa at 0720 with an expected delivery between 1045 and 1445.

It is now 1530 and expected delivery has changed to "before 1700" to a business that closes at 1700...

I loathe FedEx so much. 

Wrong Is Wrong

A word I'm entirely too familiar with is hypocrisy.

Have you noticed how many things are wrong conditionally and the condition is whom caused it?

Gas is over $4 when Biden or Obama is president: This is good.  We're saving the planet, you should drive less!

Gas is over $4 when Trump is president:  This is bad.  There's no qualifier like there is for saving the planet.

Black people can be as racist as they want.  Brown people can be as racist as they want.

Muslims can be as intolerant and homophobic as they want.

Indians can discriminate in hiring all they want.

If you're in a protected category, you can break the law for, literally, decades until you finally do something the press is concerned about.  If you're not, you can catch a felony for behavior that didn't even seem like a crime when you did it (look up three felonies a day).

If you are in a protected category, any slight against you is a hate crime.  If you are not, then even actual crime isn't treated as criminal in many cases; especially theft.

Speech and words are forbidden to you if you're white, straight and male.  These same words may be freely used if you are not.  There are no slurs about straight white men that are off limits to anyone.

Racism is racism regardless of whom does it.

Sexism is sexism regardless of whom does it.

Hate is hate.

Crime is criminal.

Discrimination is discrimination.

Now, to separate this rant from Storm Front...

I don't want it to be OK for white people to be racist.  I want it to be wrong for ANYONE to be racist.

I don't want it to be OK for men to be sexist.  I want it to be wrong for ANYONE to be sexist.

I don't want it to be OK for straight people to be intolerant.  I want it to be wrong for ANYONE to be intolerant.

OR 

I want it to be OK for EVERYONE to be racist, sexist or intolerant and let the games begin.  Because nobody likes it, except straight white men, when that happens.

You want racism?  We're good at it and only stopped because we were convinced that it was wrong.

What you're doing now is convincing us that, though racism was wrong, it was a mistake to stop being racist.  Which isn't really related, but being punished for being racist without getting any credit for the work done to end racism by white people makes us feel a bit put upon.

The entire idea was that black people and white people were equal and could be the same.

That includes following the rules, obeying the law and observing the social norms.  If we're equal, it's easy!  If not, then you shouldn't be granted access to things you cannot handle.  Like the children the Klan insists you are.

Why, in Gods sake, are you out there proving the inbred morons of the KKK right?  Granted that it's just a stopped clock being right twice a day moment but it's getting uncanny how you announce the time twice a day.

In short, stop fucking around and actually join Western Civilization.

It's a great deal.  Western Civ gave us the USA and "Liberty and Justice for all."

But that's not the only tool in the Western Civ toolbox.  Fascism and Communism are from Western Civ too.  You get to choose, but two of them you can vote your way into, not out of.

1 is 1.

I Figured Out Why *I* Was Offended

The "inclusion" and "sensitivity" changes for GURPS 4th Edition Revised could have been made silently.

They could have just gone through and eliminated the so-called offensive references without making an announcement they were making sensitivity changes.

They virtue signaled.

I'm part of a weird, in between, where I'm OK with not offending people, even fringe folks, but am getting sick and tired of the announcements that they are making changes to be less offensive...

While missing that the announcement is what's offending me.

I know, "straight white male, who cares if you're offended?"

My wallet cares.

What really pisses me off is that SJGames used to be the different gaming company.

They stood up against The Man and didn't do things like everyone else.

And here they are, in lockstep with all the other game publishers.

I kinda feared this when the theater kids took over gaming after Critical Role started their show.

In hindsight, that almost guaranteed we'd get a more "Hollywood Safe" crowd, or at least the companies would aim at this much smaller and more vocal market.

It was their market share to keep.

I'm gonna just keep playing with my version of the game with the racially insensitive references.

They don't bother me.

My four main worlds are an alternate WW2 with magic and LITERAL Nazis, an alternate history where magic became real after Trinity, an alternate history where WW3 started in 1997 and a conversion of Traveller.

All have bigots in them.  All of them don't care about the sensitivities of the groups being oppressed by the bad guys.

Nazis murdered people by the, literal, box car.

Racism and bigotry is a core part of Funny New Guys!

The Soviets don't love their children too in Twilight: 2000.

Traveller is so casually racist that there's hundreds of intelligent species that are called "minor races."

The move to inclusivity and sensitivity is a move away from dramatic conflict.

Without such conflict, the story is stale and boring.

Incessant Beeping

The recent, brief, power outage has convinced me that consumer level uninterruptible power sources do not need to beep to inform me that they have lost mains power.

A beep or alarm to warn me that they're about to go dead would be fine, but an alert that the power is out in a home is superfluous.

Power out in a home is VERY noticeable!

But thanks, UPS, for beeping!  I totally missed the lights going out, the fan shutting off and the TV going blank.

The beeps are the real hero! 

Make A Roll

FuzzyGeff is something of a math geek and his knowledge of statistics has colored how I do gaming once I learned a bit of statistics myself.

Because of things like the critical failure's default of 18 should result in a mean rounds between failures almost ten times worse than a rifle that is KNOWN to be unreliable.

That same critical failure would mean half the air wing of every aircraft carrier would be in the drink every cruise.

Many commercial aircraft would become lost and need constant guidance to find the airport and it would become insane to fly at night because of the darkness penalties.

There are a myriad of things that require a bit of knowledge, but no actual skill to perform and, if there's no stress, a person just does.

It's that stress part that can, often, be missed when a GM says, "make a roll."

Too many people look at the rules and see more places to make a roll than another rule-set and declare the new game bad because you CAN make more rolls...

But it is, and has always been, the decision of the DM or GM to call for a roll in any given situation.

If they suddenly start calling for more rolls when you change from D&D to GURPS it might mean they want you to work harder for it and D&D didn't have the mechanism to force you.

Twilight: 2000 has no mechanism for making the character respond to something creepy and frightful.  GURPS does.  So when in the catacombs under Częstochowa, I can call for a Fright Check and impose a reaction on the character.  T2K is a pure honor system to act afraid that I've seen fail over and over.

So GURPS has more rolls than T2K because of having rules to handle the frightened.

Which brings us to "GURPS sucks!"

Did the GM call for a roll under a rule that the game you prefer doesn't have that caused you to conform to the character you created?

The fright check from the T2K module "The Black Madonna" ticked off a couple of people who had played at my table under the OG T2K rules.  It thrilled others.

YMMV.

But, if we're going to overgeneralize, then I would say that the real reason that some people hate GURPS and cannot stand that other people enjoy it is because they are lazy.

They don't wanna work to make the character.  They don't want to put in the effort to learn how to assemble the character they want and, having failed to so, blame the game.

Then they don't want to be exposed to many die rolls, because a die roll is chance and chance is something they cannot control and without that control they may fail and without being able to declare, "I win!" they don't want to play. 

Contrast this to the person who did read the rules and learned to make the character they wanted.  They're never complaining about the rules.  They're an example of being satisfied by a successful application of labor.  Mike Rowe would understand the feeling.

The epiphany of realizing the complainers never learned to make the character they want to play comes from noticing that I have converted so many character from other games JUST to learn the rules.  I.  Have.  Never.  Failed.

GURPS has never failed to be able to accommodate a character from a different game.

Traveller, Twilight: 2000, AD&D 2e, Champions, Shadowrun, etc.

4th edition of GURPS is better at it than 3rd edition revised, but even 3eR never actually failed.

Not that the haters ever read this far. 

 

Commonality

The Bondi Beach and Brown University shootings have something in common.

Both took place where the victims were banned from having a firearm.

Both sets of, alleged, shooters were Moslem.  This turned out to be a rumor.

Neither nation is predominantly Islamic. 

One was definitely, "let's murder the Jews!"  The Brown shooting might have been trying to shoot a specific Jew.

The Bondi Beach shooting was slowed down by the intervention of a Moslem!

This will be touted as justification for not stemming the flow of immigration.

The thing is, you cannot tell whom in the crowd of immigrants are waiting for their moment to enact the intifada and who wants to live a quiet live in a mostly secular manner.

If you cannot tell, then you kind of need to accept zero immigrants from places that have any people who're waiting for their moment to murder our citizens.

If the people you do accept refuse to assimilate, they should be deported.  They clearly wish to remain citizens of their homeland, so they should live there.

If the children of the people we accept turn out to have a trend of being criminals and non-productive citizens, we should definitely stop accepting immigrants from those nations too.

The poem in the Statue of Liberty has no legal power.  The New Colossus was written by Emma Lazarus and she was of a political bent that eventually coalesces into Socialism.

Don't be fooled by her pretty words!

I find, as a student of history, that I have to keep pointing out that the prior mass-immigrations to the US are an anomaly.  The Swedish, German, Italian and Irish waves came from a people very much like the Americans they joined and they assimilated readily...  Though it took years of prejudice and change for the mistrust of Catholicism in the Irish and Italians to fade.

Yet, despite language and religious differences, these peoples became Americans.

I repeat myself again...

I want every single immigrant to this nation to either already be an American with the misfortune of being born a foreigner; or to become an American as quickly as they can.

That means abandoning their, former, national identity.

It means learning to speak English.

It means respecting our laws, and forsaking the laws of their homeland.

It means abiding by our culture and ways of doing things.  This includes dropping things from their culture or religion in conflict with our culture and laws.

If they cannot, then they don't get to stay here!

Americans strive to be the good guys.  We want to help people in need.  We want to save people.

But there are times when you have to realize that you cannot save everyone and you most especially cannot save anyone if you won't save yourself.  Saving yourself sometimes means letting others die.

We still have time to avoid our generosity from becoming a suicide pact. 

I've Said It Before

Dear YouTubers, especially GunTubers...

Tell me what you're going to say.

Say it.

Tell me what you just said.

Don't ramble on for 1/3 of the video with the justification for what you're about say.

Justfication comes after your statement, to support it, not before.

Take a couple classes on public speaking at the local community college!

America Dammit

I have long held to the belief that if you intend to live someplace you should join the citizenry.

I did not move to Florida and subject them to my Iowa ways.  I attempted to act like them not force them to act like me.

I remember why I left Iowa.  Why would I want to bring that with me?

Admittedly, it's a smaller move to change from one region of the US to another, but it was a change.

Floridians chafe at New Yorker's constant bitching about how things are better in New Fucking York.

Explain, again, why the fuck you're here, again?

I mean if Florida sucks and you're unhappy here, why don't you just return to the land of good bagels and pizza?

They've forgotten why they left.

Yet, they're still Americans.  Fellow citizens.

The problem is that people who aren't Americans are living here without a plan to become Americans.

This was not true of the other mass immigrations to the US.

The Swedes, Germans, Irish and Italians who came here and manifest destinied the shit out of The West were already most of the way to being Americans because there was, like, an 80% overlap between American and anyone from Western Civilization.  Much of the gap was eliminated through learning English.

There were large enclaves of these immigrants where, if they didn't assimilate, they did not leave without harassment.  Literal ghettos used to force assimilation.

My great grandfather and grandfather on Mom's side both experienced what would be called racism if we accepted Italian as being racist.  My mother and I experienced no such prejudice.  My grampa assimilated.

The present problem is Mexicans and South Americans are present in large enough numbers that their enclaves don't resemble ghettos but colonies.  Somalians are definitely running a colonial model.

We're paying them to do it.

At least Latinos are from Western Civ, but their flavor has less overlap with American thanks to growing up under less than Western Civ governments.  It wouldn't really take a strong effort to get them to assimilate.

Somalis aren't from Western Civ and would take a lot more effort to get them assimilate.

I'm not opposed to the effort, but any refusal to assimilation should be accompanied with a deportation.

Islam may, ultimately, be incompatible with Western Civ and being American.

American includes religious freedom that's anathema to Sharia.

Sharia and the Bill of Rights have a lot of conflict too.

Conflict that, if it proves irreconcilable, means they will not be assimilated and if they cannot or will not, need to find someplace else to live.

I am not the only person who marvels that not a single Moslem refugee population has taken refuge in an Islamic country.

I am increasingly convinced it is not emigration or refuge they seek, but conquest.  Colonization.

They mean to subjugate The West.

I hope to fight it, being of The West, I have much to lose.

Is Hitler Cool?

I would say that it depends on the weather and how deeply buried his remains are.

At times I'd say he's quite cool.  Others, he's rather warm and still others, quite cold.

The important thing is that he's dead and good riddance!

The prick added genocide to the lexicon and he isn't even in the top five for most murders by the leader of a government.

So, piss on his grave (if you can find it) and a pox on anyone who agrees with his ideals. 

Wading Into It

In general, I don't particularly care for Mr. Kasarda.  I was once a patron of InRange WAAAAAAY back and they did a series of videos with another creator and I had the temerity to express that if they were going to keep doing that I didn't wanna spend my money on it.

Karl told me where the door was and I exited.

I'd always found it ironic that he extols the support of viewers but shrugs when a viewer gives feedback and ends their support.

This video is about someone who appears to be a racist and a homophobe doing their damnedest to get to a controlling position at a gun club so they can expel the undesirables from the place.

I agree, that's bullshit.

I'm pro-LGBT.  I deplore racists.

However, this little spat with the Pima Pistol Club has a different angle from other sources.

The bigot mentioned at length in the video might have gotten their foot in the door because of the Antifa angle that seems to have attached itself to Mr Kasarda.

"Thou shall not freak the mundanes!" is an old adage.  It's essentially the same thing as, "don't scare the White people."

Antifa freaks the mundanes.

If they turn a 2-gun match into a pride parade or political rally, the normies get upset.

What if they just wanted to shoot the match without the political content provided, not by the match director or range, but by fellow participants who'd been encouraged to come by the match director or their associates?

As I said about Black Star Brewing years ago, "Is the beer any good?"

Karl sounds like the people who were trying to apologize for Black Star back then to me.

I didn't take a position on race, sexuality or gender when I asked about the beer.  But I would have had to listen to a lecture about racism, sexism and homophobia to get a beer there.

What if I just wanted a beer?

What if I just wanted to go shooting?

Both the principles in this fight seem unaware of how the normies see them.

The bigot will get farther before getting replaced because bigots tend to be good at hiding what they are in the spaces that matter to them retaining power.  I've forgotten how many times I've seen that meme play out.

I'm willing to bet, though, that someone in a MAGA hat would be barred from a 2g-ACM match that Mr Kasarda or his associates were running.  I'm betting that way because I've heard tell of exactly that happening there.

Someone was definitely told to go away when they tried LARPing a Rhodesian soldier and compete with an FAL.  Something about not allowing racist symbols...  From a guy who LARPed as an SS soldier how many times?

He's talked about safe spaces and ignores that groups like Antifa and John Brown Gun Club people actively try to make normies feel unsafe.  Antifa is probably doing it from the other side of the "we committed terrorism!" legal line too.

It's a bit hypocritical. 

Fuck You

After years of consideration:  Fuck you!

You wanted it, you're going to get it and I'm going to watch.

I tried to talk people out of it, but it's obvious that you don't want peace, you want WAR and I think I will not stand between you and the hot heads this time.

Remember.

You wanted this.

Enjoy.

I'll Try This Again

There's a level of education and skills called a, "registered nurse," or RN.

There are jobs that require that level of education and skill.

There are also jobs that require that level of education, but not that level of skill.  These jobs can be performed by people with much lower levels of education, but have been banned from this job by the license and credential requirements.

Thus, a CNA trained person was able to perform a RN required job successfully enough to earn a promotion because the skills needed for the job were obtained through the education and training a CNA gets.  This was illegal because you need an RN to get the job and they lied about their qualifications.

Do you fuckwits understand now?

I know what an RN does.

I know there's lots of jobs in medicine that don't require an RN to DO the job, but do require an RN to GET the job.

If you think that license requirement means that lower levels of education cannot do the job you're the ignorant fools, not I.  To listen to some of you, no lives have ever been saved by an uncredentialed bystander who knew how to do first aid.

It's not a difficult concept.

Citing jobs and tasks that actually require the full set of RN skills does not refute my point at all.

They way you're citing it, though, convinces me more and more that the medical profession is not particularly well educated and is primarily concerned with gatekeeping rather than treating patients.

Plus your comments have been refuted by people I know in meatspace who are definitely credentialed as RN's, vs your imaginary existence and claims in the comments on a blog. 

And with this, the Aesop Flying Monkey Entertainment Network is signing off.

Regular programming will resume. 

So Basic

Having a bit of a tiff with someone on Arfcom over basic dimensions.

A basic dimension is one without a tolerance.  No plus, no minus, it is what it says to infinite decimal places.

Most of the time that dimension exists as a datum for other dimensions.  Those dimensions have tolerances so the thing you're making can actually be made.

This person mentions this, but goes off on how you can never hold the basic dimension without some kind of tolerance on it.

To that I say bullshit.

I've worked places that held them on mass produced items.

I will say that you shouldn't use them unless that dimension is critically important.  It's expensive to set up to hold such a dim and uses more resources from quality control to assure it's being held.

But I did like him explaining to me my job for over 16 years. 

Grumble Grumble

People are going to watch YouTube videos about tanks and think they learned something.

They will be wrong.

While the M60 machine gun was offered as a solenoid fired variant in the M60E2, none were adopted.

Listening to the same dude from Australia repeat that the M60 was used in the... uh... M60 drives me nuts.

Battlefield Vegas doesn't have a coaxial gun and their M60A1 RISE clearly has the cradle for an M240.

Ask.  Me.  How.  I.  Know.

By the way, it's not the M240C.  The M240C feeds from the right side of the gun.  You find those in Bradleys.  The tank version of the gun is M240.  Feeds from the left.

Ask.  Me.  How.  I.  Know.

Prior to the M240 there was the M219 aka M73A1.  Prior to that there was the M73.

Thus ends the list of coaxial machine guns used in US M60 tanks.

Just to head off the, "maybe he got it confused with the M48," crowd.

The M48 starts with the .30-06 M37 machine gun and when it's finally upgraded to the M48A5 standard, it's gets saddled with the M219.

Even worse is his "history" and mention of the cupola.

The M60 has a .50 in that cupola, the M85.

He goes on to show lots of the mods made to M48A3's in Vietnam, including one where they removed the gun from the cupola and mounted it to a pintle on top of the cupola.

Did you know the MG in the cupola was an M2HB?

He doesn't.

It ticks me off because even War Thunder gets this stuff right and it only takes a couple of minutes to find it out.

Because I Done It

The new owner of the car formerly known as The Biscayne SS was down.

He's turning it into a phantom of a 1991 Olds Delta 88.

A worthy project.

But she's fighting.

I never did get the AC completely sorted out when I owned it.  It works intermittently for him.  Sounds like an electrical problem to me.

It will run great then die with no fuel pressure.

The connector in the trunk was showing signs of overheating and fuel could be restored by wiggling it.

Adam bought some Deutsch connectors and Marv and I replaced the trunk connector.

Fired right up once we jumped it, because the battery was dead from having the domelights on from removing the interior to dye them the Olds color (the reason that Adam came down).

So...

We're trying to troubleshoot things and there's stuff abandoned in place that creates a wild goose chase.

Adam tries to complain that it was my engine swap, so I must know all the ins and outs.

But nothing is where I left it.  Everything is rewired from where I had it, and messy.

I gave him a thick folder with all the documentation of what I'd done.  That's disappeared and Adam doesn't remember me even giving it to him. 

He uses the interior like a storage shed, so the junk rolling around could easily have pulled a wire and intermittently break connection.

Then he gets mad at us for being frustrated because he's got Huntington's Disease and his emotions don't process like normal.  He's in something of a hurry to get the car done before the disease progresses past the stage where he can no longer work on or enjoy the car.

But it was running when he left.

He made it ten miles before the fuel pump crapped out again.

I am taking the position, now, that it's not my project any more.  It can't be.  I have my own project that keeps getting put off for everyone else's stuff. 

I wanna help, but there's too many people working the problem and the mechanic he normally uses does sloppy work.  I know because I've cleaned up after him on The Beast. 

No Dentist For You!

I am sure glad my cracked tooth doesn't hurt because I cannot see my dentist.

They can get me in today, but the fucking insurance that The Lovely Harvey pays for every paycheck apparently doesn't show as active in the system.

She called HR two hours ago and they have not replied yet, so I had to cancel my appointment.

This isn't something that should be difficult, but her HR department routinely fails to get it taken care of.  We went through the same shit with her health insurance over her knee and a recent eye appointment.

And Everyone Knew It At The Time

The agreement to defend Ukraine's borders if they gave up their nukes was meaningless when they wrote it up.

The president of Ukraine was Moscow's buddy and they were really looking for assurances that NATO wasn't going to invade them and if they did, Russia would help stop the slavering western hordes.

NATO knew they weren't going to invade because NATO doesn't do that.

Russia knew they weren't going to invade because they had an agreeable government in place in Kiev.

That Ukraine would become pro-West and anti-Russia was never contemplated.

Russia invading wasn't on anyone's bingo card in 1994.

It was a big, meaningless media event calculated to make Bill Clinton and the UK leadership look good in the press at the time.  "Look!  We're bringing peace forever by reducing the number of nukes out there."

Actually it was good, those nukes were aimed at the West at the time too.

The Budapst Memorandum is doubly meaningless because the actions required of the signatories are minimal.

All it really says is Ukraine's borders will be treated in accordance with the Helsinki accords.

You know the non-binding Helsinki Accords?

So if you're on your high horse saying we betrayed Ukraine, remember that doing nothing is allowed under the Helsinki Accords.

But I was around and blogging in 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine the first time.  Ukraine didn't give Crimea to Russia.  Russia took it by force of arms.

Where were you Uke boys then?  I heard nothing for 8 years.  Obama certainly didn't send troops or arms.

Well, if you read the Budapest Memorandum and Helsinki Accords, we're supposed to head to the UN and hammer it out there.

1. Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).
2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
5. Not to use nuclear weapons against any non–nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.
6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments.

We sure made some sternly phrased resolutions.  That we did!  Just like the non-binding-never-ratified memorandum says we should.

Read that part again.

NEVER RATIFIED! 

Without ratification we're not obligated to do fuck all.

For 20 years everyone acted like we'd ratified it, but we hadn't.

It's like going to court for a crime that congress passed but the president didn't sign.  It's not a law, so your behavior wasn't illegal.

So, for the "nobody is ever going to trust us again" crowd; you've been complaining for three years about something that wasn't ratified for 30.  Where were you then?

I know where I was.  I was thinking it was pretty slick of Willy to have gotten those nukes away from a pro-Russian state without giving them anything in return.  And I hate that fucker.  THAT was our national interest and national interest goal achieved without any losses.

I think a lot of people need to learn how things really work out there before they go a ranting about betrayal.

I Still Wish Both Sides Could Lose

No, nothing Ukraine did was casus belli.

Russia is definitely the belligerent here.

Russia did not take their preferred leadership being deposed well.

They didn't care that the Ukrainian leadership was corrupt as long as it stayed in their pro-Russia lane. 

The US stopped caring about that same corruption as soon as the new leadership was corrupt FOR a certain family from Delaware.

But still corrupt.

When Russia took the Crimea, it should have been job one of the Ukrainian government to make sure it couldn't happen again.  I admit they adopted a more Western doctrine, but didn't spend near the money on defense as they should once they had a neighbor that had proven a willingness to take parts of their country by force.

The time to get ready for a war is before the war starts.  Some Chinese bloke said that, that or the cook on Alice.

Russian separatists and Neo-Nazis don't make the situation any easier or better.  Another sub-conflict there where I wish both sides could lose.

But there's some reality to accept on the part of the pro-Ukrainian side.

Without substantial outside help Ukraine cannot hope to keep Russia at the present front lines.  Even with substantial outside help, they will not be able to reclaim any territory lost to Russia.

To get back what they lost requires a cooperative Russia or a bigger war from bigger nations.  The bigger nation most capable of doing that isn't likely to do so because we don't want to get into a nuclear war.

In short, they be fucked.

The best they can expect is to get the war to stop at the present lines.  Worst is losing the entire place.

Russia isn't looking too great here either.  They've spent a lot more than they planned.  Even complete victory will be Pyrrhic.  Even with Europe continuing to buy their petroleum, it's going to be a long time before their economy recovers and most of the sanctions will likely remain in place as long as they squat on the eastern section of Ukraine.

Which brings us to why the fuck was the US involved in the first place?

Well, we don't like it when a bully kicks a little guy, so we were sympathetic to Ukraine and felt a little guilty about letting them get run over in 2014.

Plus the family from Delaware had a vested interest in Ukraine.

Selling them guns is a good choice.

Giving them weapons when they're never going to be able to pay us back because they're never going to win...  Bad choice.  Best to stay out of that.

But we did give them weapons and did so at a time when the coffers were pretty dry.  We've our own financial house to get in order and spending money on a lost cause isn't good business.

How much more do we need to spend until Russia decides that it's not getting any more of the place and decides to quit in place?  How long before Ukraine pays that back?

I'd love for them to be able to win, but what do we get from it?  What's our interest in making and keeping Russia an enemy?

I'm not saying we should be friends, but why are we making them a foe?

For what?

To keep Europe from being invaded?

That, still, sounds a lot more like a Europe problem than a USA problem and they fucking hate us anyway so fuck them!  I know, not all of them, but enough.

Besides, I'm sick of their lopsided tariffs and trade practices.  I'm especially sick of their protectionist hypocrisy and trade practices. 

You will note that I am not allowing comments on this rant.