Yes, communism is bad: Liberty depends on the older generation telling the truth about tyranny.

...the hammer and sickle ought to be just as socially unacceptable as the swastika. Maybe this old guy needs to be a little more eager to remind people of that. How many millions must die before we decide that the red star is evil?

And we need to remember that the red star is alive and well in China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and, yes, Russia, where Putin has installed statues of Lenin and even Stalin (even most Communists reject Stalin), allowed his army to fly the old Soviet flag, and had his foreign minister wear a "CCCP" sweater when he visited Alaska. Never mind the illegal invasion of Ukraine to re-assimilate Ukraine into Putin's new Soviet Union. Do.the.math.

I don't know why Trump is not harder on Russia, North Korea and China. But specifically Russia. He tends to have some type of bromance with Putin. The fact that he gave Putin a red carpet and a flyby is just flabberghasting.

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend. — Abraham Lincoln

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. — Sun Tzu

I have no idea what is in Trump’s mind negotiating with Putin, but given even Proverbs says that “…grievous words stir up anger,” you might actually want to know what he is doing before just claiming he wants a “bromance” with Putin. Perhaps he is just trying to gain an advantage by flattering the man across the table.

Personally, I prefer to wait and see how Trump’s negotiations with Putin will play out before essentially declaring him a traitor to the U.S.

My take on why Trump doesn't take a harder line on today's Communists and other ne'er do wells is that he really doesn't understand people and politics. In politics, people have certain places where they just can't compromise, whereas Trump's whole life story is treating everything as negotiable. He also has a history of using nonsense (to put it politely) as a negotiating tactic, and hence he is reluctant to just shout "nonsense" when Putin's doing his best impression of a manure spreader. For him, it's just part of the game and not necessarily an offense.

"Personally, I prefer to wait and see how Trump’s negotiations with Putin will play out before essentially declaring him a traitor to the U.S."

I never said he was a traitor. And we don't need to wait and see.

• Trump has stated he would stop the war (depending on what you believe either before he gets into office, when he gets into office or shortly after he gets into office). He has done neither.
• Trump has repeatedly drawn lines and crossed them without any acknowledgement of crossing them.
• Republican senators are getting upset that Trump is not allowing them to progress with sanctions, with one anonymous Republican senator stating, "I’m sick of Trump and JD and their love affair with everything Putin,”
• He has been in office for almost 10 months and as of this time there is not a single bit of movement anywhere on this and Putin has not only kept marching forward, but has escalated. He got a red carpet from Trump and from Xi on the world stage. Trump is refusing sanctions or any pressure on Russia.

What are we waiting for?

>>Trump has stated he would stop the war (depending on what you believe either before he gets into office, when he gets into office or shortly after he gets into office). He has done neither.<<

True, although that was obviously just braggadocio. He has recently admitted that Russia is a trickier problem than he first thought. Well, duh. That doesn’t mean that Biden did any better.

As for “what are we waiting for?,” this is from a 9/13 npr.org article:

“President Trump told fellow NATO countries on Saturday that he will only impose new sanctions on Russia over its war in Ukraine if they stop purchasing Russian oil.”

Perhaps he simply understands that unilateral sanctions won’t really do much. As long as the EU countries (not to mention India and China) continue to buy much of their energy from Russia, Putin is just going to laugh at unilateral sanctions.

That is the problem. He doesn't really understand politics, has put in a bunch of people around him that are more focused on idealogy than skill, and he is running blind. You have Steve Witkoff, as negotiator, who has no experience in this space.

multi-lateral sanctions is just the latest thing Trump is going for. But he has already tried many other things that are not working because he is just being "soft" around it. Trump can't just text he wants sanctions from Europe, it needs to be together. Europe is not going to go out on their own first. Today it is sanctions, last month it was ceasefire, the month before it was a peace summit......

....would be to point out to Putin that Russia has signed the U.N. Charter and Helsinki Accords, which both prohibit acquisition of territory by war, as well as the Geneva Convention, and all three prohibit the kind of attacks on civilians that Russia seems to love. And then you say "Vlad, unless you're willing to repudiate the U.N. Charter and abandon your spot on the Security Council, you need to get out of Ukraine to the 1991 borders--and deliver up those who launched all those attacks on civilian targets to Den Haag. Sanctions will be eased once you, and the FSB cabal that serves you, leave power."

Maybe I am dreaming here...

Probably just a dream.

I think we should ship an enormous amount of missile defense systems, allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russia, provide warplanes to Ukraine and logistics. Then Europe should begin amassing a military in Poland and Western Ukraine. Push massive sanctions on Russia, full stop cut off of everything and then start sanctioning China and India for buying oil. Full stop the world has a ton of leverage, but we just dance around it while hundreds of thousands are dying. while we just trickle different levels of support. The only way that peace will be had, is that Russia feels that continuing is more dangerous and they will gain nothing vs. just stopping. Then draw up a peace deal. Why do we let Russia dictate our terms?

>>”Vlad, unless you’re willing to repudiate the U.N. Charter and abandon your spot on the Security Council, you need to get out of Ukraine to the 1991 borders—and deliver up those who launched all those attacks on civilian targets to Den Haag.”<<

So how do you intend to actually intend to accomplish that?

1. Sanctions? Hasn’t worked so far. Without the whole world involved in that, it only changes who Russia allies and does business with.
2. Nuclear war? I’m assuming we all realize the stupidity of that.
3. Conventional war with all of NATO getting involved? Not only would this get us into yet another world war (anyone see shades of WWI here?), I have a feeling it would eventually lead to #2.
4. Continue to waste billions arming Ukraine until both sides have killed untold numbers of soldiers and civilians and the front lines don’t change much? This was the previous strategy, but as you can see, it also hasn’t worked too well. If you actually gave the Ukraine enough weaponry to actually back Putin into a corner, what makes you think he wouldn’t consider getting at a minimum tactical nuclear weapons involved?

The problem as I see it is that to get Putin to do what you want, you have to give him a way out of this that also allows him to save face, otherwise he just continues to ally with China and North Korea, and do business with countries (including NATO nations) other than the U.S. and a few others. IMHO, this just gets us back into another cold war scenario at best, or a hot one at worst.

The ideas that the entire world will ever oppose Russia, or that we have the ability to fight all of China, India, and Russia I think are completely a pipe dream.

Dave, I remember walking through Checkpoint Charlie in late July, 1989, and if you'd told me that the Berlin Wall was going to be gone before winter set in, I'd have told you you were insane. But that noted, all it took to knock down the dominoes was for border guards in Czechoslovakia to start waving East Germans through the checkpoints into Austria and West Germany.

As I see things, just as in 1905 and 1918 and 1989, Russia is pretty vulnerable. Putin doesn't want to risk all-out war with NATO or a nuclear exchange; he's mostly taking conscripts from the hinterlands, along with convicts and foreigners, not his power base in western Russia. Nor is he risking his air force to the Patriots. He's learned what facing 1% of NATO's arms does to his army, so there is no way he wants to face 100% of them.

Put differently, as I watch red line after red line get crossed, I conclude that Putin is bluffing.

Now not that I expect Trump to do this, but to topple Putin's house of cards, what you do is arm Ukraine so that the Russia:Ukraine casualty ratio grows to about 10:1 while telling India and China that they have a choice; they can have low tariff access to U.S. markets, or they can buy Russian oil and sell key technology to Russia, but not both.

An even more horrendous butcher's bill plus a collapsing economy will get Putin quickly to the point of "I'd better get out of here before I'm hanging from a lamp-post.".

Having ABC pull Jimmy Kimmel off the air because of comments made by the chairman of the FCC should be troubling to us. I’m not a Kimmel fan, but he should be able to say what he did without fear of government reprisal.

We are going down a dark path in our country when even comedians are censored by their networks because of threats by government officials.

This will turn out badly for Christians.

Tom, you might want to repost that in the Charlie Kirk thread, no? (moderator; if/when Tom does this, please feel free to delete this comment of mine)