have all you people opposed to "bank bailouts" not yet figured out that they were loans?

do you know what happens to your savings when they're put into a bank that goes bankrupt?

it was franklin roosevelt - not ronald reagan - that legislated the lender of last resort, to ensure that people didn't lose their savings and their mortgages when their banks collapsed, due to no fault of their own. this is a good and necessary policy, and it's why we have government, and what government is for.

this is the continued legacy of world war two (which ended with the occupation of japan, germany, italy and the uk) and it's offshoot, the korean war. 

these occupation forces remain required.

if winston churchill were alive today, the bnp would think he was too right wing and refuse to nominate him.

trump's pretty tame, in comparison.

the ceasefire in ukraine isn't a deal, but it's an agreement to keep talking about getting to a deal.

the russians have been pushed around for decades. they withdrew from east germany and handed over poland without a fight in return for security assurances about the expansion of nato that have been repeatedly broken. nato has a history of breaking it's promises and taking up a return to aggressive positions partly because there's a change in leadership every four to eight years. the russians can't stand this - they demand and need certainty and predictability. the russians hate chaos, chance, randomness. they are themselves extremely predictable, in turn.

there was a coup in ukraine in 2014, followed by a shifting of nato military assets into eastern europe. biden then immediately pulled out of afghanistan and the middle east and dropped everything in eastern europe. any observer would clearly conclude that biden was planning an attack on russia via militarizing ukraine as cannon fodder. so, putin hit first. the outcome has not been pretty, and russia has demonstrated a distinct level of operational incompetence, but it was a calculated move that was probably correct.

the russians moved into ukraine to block nato advances and are demanding their reversal to pull out. it's consistent, it's clear and it's rational. that's their position - to ensure their defenses cannot be breached by a swift nato offensive. their primary fear ought to be german rearmament.

the media is framing this as something like "putin will agree to a ceasefire if ukraine eliminates it's defenses" and are presenting that as unacceptable. they are deducing that trump has failed. this is dangerous and unhelpful as it's trying to prolong a war that's got us on the brink. this is because trump is a republican; they wouldn't frame the issue this way if trump were a democrat.

what is the truth here? the proposals being put forth by nato to defend ukraine include positioning offensive weapons systems in ukraine (labelled as defensive) and occupying ukraine with nato soldiers, called "peacekeepers". the nato peace proposals have consistently been ways to strategically move deeper into the iron curtain. nato must know that the russians know that they're bullshitting them.

yes, the price of peace will need to be an acknowledgement that ukraine - whose very name means buffer zone - will need to be abandoned. if nato will not abandon or partition ukraine, it is telling the russians it continues to plan to march eastwards. the russians have no choice but to put on their hats and say "nyet. enough. you stop here.".

will trump agree to this? i'm going to suggest he has to. 

i have repeatedly pointed out that it is necessary for the united states to occupy germany. we've completely forgotten this, somehow. the russians have not forgotten this. it was trump that shifted american troops eastward in order to enforce a protection racket, and as soon as america lifted one pinkie toe off their jackboot on the german neck, the spectre of german fascism instantly returned. 

it is more important that america occupy germany than that it try to conquer pockets of russia via ukraine, and the russians have proven that nato forces are not getting through the russian defences. they should give putin what he wants because they have to. the alternative is endless trench warfare and millions more dead for a few more inches of land, like world war one. we said never again, but here we are.

but i know my history and i know you want the russians on your side in a world war or protracted conflict. you don't want to fight the russians; that doesn't generally work out well. churchill was an asshole, which is why stalin got along with him.

the world's not a disney cartoon. there's bad people running worse empires. i want putin and russia to fight with the west in the imminent apocalypse and not against it; we need them, we can't win without them. in the long run, only the chinese win by a continuing russian-american hot or cold war.

i want detente.

only trump is crazy enough to do it.