I am aware that the separatists are supported by Russia. My point is if the Ukraine can’t handle them then they won’t be able to withstand a full-scale Russian invasion.
Even if Russia wins a land invasion, it seems like they could be stuck with another Afghanistan situation with the US shipping all kinds of weapons to guerrilla fighters.
ukrainian military was caught off guard during a revolution and yet withstood two assaults from russian “full scale” invasion to take mariupol. it’s orders of magnitude harder to overwhelm now.
i don’t know what ukraine is thinking about taking back donbass militarily. they probably don’t want thousands more dead. and they feel doing so gives russia cover to pour over the border. the diplomatic route of asking for sanctions against the thinning donbass leadership seems to cost less lives, and donbass will fall back to ukraine as soon as putin’s death and/or regime change.
Maybe I’ve fallen for propaganda but this is completely at odds with what I thought was the expectation that Taiwan would quickly be completely overwhelmed. It’s far from clear, to me at any rate, how committed the US is to defending Taiwan. The US Navy is big but how much of it is actually going to be available in the small area and short time it might matter? And my impression is surface ships are highly vulnerable to missile attack.
It seems like Chinese uncertainty about a US response, the danger of escalation, and the certainty of a huge economic cost are enough to hold them back for now.
Besides tactical nukes, China has conventional anti ship ballistic missiles that the US has little defense against.
I thought US had pretty good anti missile systems? Plus dominating the air.
i would say, not really, his view is very outdated. he did enjoy a huge bump in ratings after crimea 2014, but the costs of that war have whittled the appetite for more conquests. propaganda is desperately trying to weave a “let’s repeat it” narrative, but public opinion keeps plummeting.
once the regime goes, it may be tough to hold swaths of siberia as subservient territories. plenty of people are fed up with moscow draining the political will.
Pretty good isn’t enough. And even a 100% reliable system can be overwhelmed. If there is an air power advantage it might not last very long.
14 hours for a normal 2 hour flight. Three different airlines transferred to, 3 delayed flights, one broken deicing machine, and broken fuel truck and a Karen yelling at the poor counter girl but I made it home.
Travelling is no fun right now.
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I see that you were shot with an AK 47, would you like to buy an AK 47?
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I mean if you sign on to be a supervisor and they force you to go pick the cotton even once a month it’s understandable that you’d be annoyed.
so i drove back in a very dark Target parking lot and hit some dude in a land rover and probably scratched his front grill or whatever its called (it was too dark to see).
bastard was sitting in a handicap parking with no lights on but he was parked and i hit him :(
never got into an “accident” here. i gave him my insurance card. is there an amount I’m better off paying him to repair it without involving the insurance or it doesn’t work that way here?
Yea its generally worth it to negotiate something outside the insurance. But it also kinda depends if this guy wants to get it fixed to perfection, which probably means a pricey repair in the Land Rover shop, which probably isn’t worth it. Or if he’s okay with some auto shop just buffering it up or whatever and then pocketing a few hundred on top of that. But the nicer the car, the less likely they’re gonna go for the cash deal.
I did this once when I put a tiny blemish/dent in someone’s bumper, I paid him a few hundred cash on the spot and that was that. But it was an older Toyota.
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i cant even understand what my deductible is if i just tell him to contact my insurance. all i see is “property damage liability - $25,000”.
i clearly hit his grill or whatever it’s called on the right side of the plate but it was too dark to see how much damage that was
Right, this is where the status quo of the US selling arms to Taiwan and making vague proclamations of support while strengthening ancillary alliances (Australian sub deal) actually makes sense, even though it seems super dumb. Like, Taiwan is obviously a country, so it seems dumb to pretend it isn’t, but if we acknowledged reality and said, yes Taiwan, you’re a country, that would be incredibly inflammatory. Yeah, it’s annoying to havre to deny that obvious truth to humor China. It’s like talking to a four-year-old about his imaginary friend to avoid a temper tantrum. But when that four year old has nukes and a large military budget, well, let’s humor them.
There hasn’t been a naval battle between peer powers since the 1970s and that was between third rate peers India and Pakistan. I doubt anyone really knows how a naval war between the US and China over China would go. Some people in the USN and PLAAN probably know how it might go down but they aren’t all that talkative. The Chinese are building an impressive fleet of ships on paper, in any case.
It should be in your policy somewhere. You can always call you agent tomorrow morning and they can tell you what it is.
This kind of thing sucks because there is a whole industry of auto body shops whose main goal is to come up with the most expensive, yet thinly justifiable repair method. In most cases when someone goes to a business owner for an estimate to provide a service, the business owner has some incentive to be competitively priced, as the customer might go somewhere else.
However, in this case, the customer isn’t actually paying, so they really don’t give a shit how much it costs, And often times in their mind if it costs more that means they are going to do a better job (which is probably not actually true).
Often what will happen is that at some point he will call you and tell you that the shop estimated it will cost many thousands of dollars to repair it, but you seem like a nice guy and if you just pay him $X, then he will forget the whole thing. He will probably propose a value of $X is something a little higher than your deductible (to account for the fact that your rate will go up if there is a claim). You will counter with something less than that because you both know that he just wants the cash and (probably) doesn’t actually care about the damage (if he actually does, then none of this applies and the whole thing plays out a bit differently).
He will then just pocket the $X and not actually get any work done. He gets some free cash for a scratch that he didn’t actually give a fuck about. And you paid less than you would have paid in the long run if you went through insurance.
If he is really jerking you around, just tell him to fuck off and go through the insurance. You’ll pay more, but at least it will be a pain in the ass for him.
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There is usually no deductible for liability insurance, so they will cover all of it up to the 25k max. The reason to not call them is to avoid more expensive insurance, but my rates weren’t raised when I was at fault a few years ago.