I'm Confused

I'm not that big into politics, I don't care to get into the stuff like 99% of the time, but why is there such an outrage to the possibility of reversing Roe vs Wade?

Wouldn't it be wiser for it to be a state-by-state thing, where the citizens of that state would have a bigger say on the issue?

Plus, when did the whole more federal government vs more state government mindset suddenly flip between the parties? Correct me if I'm wrong, but did not the Democratic Party eventually branch off the Anti-Federalists, the same who wanted the federal government to have as little power as possible?

« Last edited by Warrior13 on May 4th 2022 »

I have no idea what Roe vs Wade is, the only thing that confuses me at the moment is this pointless war in the Ukraine. I hope it ends soon as it's starting to looks like it could get considerably worse very quickly if Putin gets trapped in a corner. Russia is getting beat big time, they are struggling to find weapons and facing crippling sanctions whereas the rest of the world is supplying Ukraine with the best weapons available. Russia's supposedly great army are nowhere near as good as advertised.

Dennis - Roe v. Wade is the court decision that federally protects the right to abortion. If it's overturned as the leaked new decision suggests, that means that each individual state would be free to choose whether or not to ban them.

Personally, I think it should be upheld. I'm usually for state's rights, but in this case I think banning them would be a net negative. Not because I'm in favor of abortion as a concept - I'm definitely not - but because the people who are mostly getting the abortions are people who probably shouldn't be having children anyway. Teenagers, the poor, abuse victims, single mothers, and people who just plain don't want or aren't ready for children. The foster system is already incredibly stressed, too many kids already don't have a good life. If you're 17 and find out you're 6 weeks pregnant, or you find out your kid is going to be born without a heart or something, is it really a good idea to keep the baby? Now, late second and third trimester abortions are a much more dicey concept. I don't think you should be able to be 6 months pregnant and suddenly decide you don't want it anymore.

You can argue all day from the religious angle, or from a "consequences" angle - they should've used condoms or bene on the pill, or not had sex till marriage! - and maybe if they had better sex education that would work, but the fact of the matter is that young people are horny and do stupid things, and as a young person who has done many incredibly stupid things in the heat of the moment, it would've literally ruined my life at 20 if some of our scares had been real and we had been forced to keep the baby. And you can tell me all day about miracles and plans and things happening for reasons, but it's not something I'm going to change my mind on.

I don't have the stats at the moment, but I think abortions are at an all-time low anyway. It's basically a nothing burger. I have questions for people who are 100% against all abortions: When a 17 year old girl and her boyfriend make a mistake, she has a baby and can't take care of it well and struggles to find a job and can't go to college and is using WIC and every other support system, are you going to complain because your taxes went up? Are you going to help foster these kids and help give them a good home and a chance? We can talk all day about "consequences for actions" but at that point you are just punishing the innocent child.

As for states voting on it, that's fine IMO for things like weed, but in a case like this I don't want some bozo living across the state from me to make that decision for me.

Regarding Ukraine, yeah what a mess. I have no idea what Russia was thinking. I think the idea was to steamroll the whole country before the West could start funneling money and weapons, but that clearly didn't work. Seeing all the junk Soviet stuff from the 80's getting destroyed by modern NATO gear is pretty funny though. I think this war will still end up a technical "win" for Russia, since so much Ukrainian infrastructure and territory is just completely destroyed, but I don't think even the most pro-Russian person out there would be able to claim this has in any way been a good move for Russia.

I don't know where Russia got their reputation as a great fighting nation from. Here's a list of wars they have lost:

- Crimean War
- Russo-Japanese
- Finnish Civil War
- Latvian War of Independence
- Estonian War of Independence
- Lithuanian-Soviet War
- Georgian-Ossetian Conflict
- Polish Civil War
- Spanish Civil War
- Soviet-Afghan War
- First Chechen War

Russia's army is overrated in my opinion, we'll be adding the Ukraine war to that list. When will countries learn, you can't win a guerilla war. All the Russians are doing is destroying the infrastructure in Ukraine pretty much how the US made a mess of Vietnam. Russian troops are deserting left, right, and center. There are rumors of a coup going on to overthrow Putin. Even China is distancing themselves from Russia who have become a pariah.

Strangely enough talking about wars, the US have never ever in their history won a war without the help of another nation. I researched it, I thought that it can't be possible but it is. The main ones they lost are:

- War Of 1812
- Powder River Indian War
- Red Cloud's War
- Formosa Expedition (Paiwan War)
- Russian Civil War
- Korean War
- Bay Of Pigs Invasion
- Vietnam War

Remember we are not including wars where the US got help from another nation.

Hopefully things will end soon, Putin is mistaken if he believes he can put the former USSR back together. All he has done is ruined Russia's standing in the world, and it is going t take them many years to recover from this.

I think I'm with you steelersrock01 regarding abortion. There are instances where it is clearly best for everyone involved that the baby should be aborted. Once the baby has a heart my stance on the matter changes. When you go to the hospital and you hear your child's heart beating for the first time the reality of the situation sinks in, and you know that there is a child there. It's an amazing sound, it's like a race horse galloping on cobbles.

I think Russia's military reputation comes from Napoleon's failed invasion, honestly. There's a whole mantra around not invading Russia in the winter. That and the Red Army's meat grinder tactics in WW2. They're known for just throwing millions of men into battle more than any tactical brilliance, I think. Throwing 3 million men into the mountains Middle East obviously doesn't work and the US failure there just reinforced that. 20 years in Afghanistan and literally nothing to show for it.

Let's pump the breaks on that list of "losses" though. The War of 1812 was most certainly a draw, if not a soft American victory. Those 3 Indian "wars" I hadn't heard of, but a bit of research suggests they're really small scale and it's not like things really turned out well for the natives in the end. You can hardly count the Russian Civil War against America. The Korean War was a stalemate, and Vietnam was a mess, I'll give you that, and the Bay of Pigs an abject disaster, but that one was more a foreign policy failure than a loss in war.

BTW, there are tons of wars that the US has fought on its own and won. Tecumseh's War, many other indian wars, the Texas Revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish and Philippine Wars, various South American and Caribbean occupations, early wars in the Middle East. The US military reputation has taken a hit post-2001 but overall has been really effective. Most wars just involve multiple nations because the US is so young it's basically always been connected globally.

Here's a list of wars that America has won, but they had a helping hand.

- American Revolution
- Mexican War
- Civil War
- Spanish-American War
- World War I
- World War II

At least they were on the winning side of the important wars.

I might be missing something, but we didn't have any help in the Mexican War, Civil War, or Spanish American war. In the Spanish War we fought alongside some revolutionaries but it was very much an American led conflict. World wars had help, obviously. This also isn't counting the many wars the US won by itself against various native tribes.

Mike: Honestly, I have no idea why the Supreme Court ever made a ruling on it, as the issue does not really have anything to do with constitutional rights. It could, but, of course, they would first have to amend it into such. That said, I do not think reversing the decision will do much more than get various parameters set (primarily around how late it can be done). I mean, no governor, whether, liberal or conservative, is foolish enough to try to ban the act. We are at a point, after all these years of having the precedent, where there is no going back.

Dennis: Russias deployment of troops and plan of action might not be the best, but, lets be real, they could nuke Ukraine at any second. Puton wanted to save having to rebuild the entire country, which is why he has taken the approach he has. But he could easily say screw it, nuke the country, and then take ownership.

« Last edited by Warrior13 on May 6th 2022 »

Nuking Ukraine would be an absolute disaster and likely lead to full-scale nuclear world war. The other nuclear powers wouldn't let Russia get away with it. Nuclear weapons as we know them today (in the Hiroshima/Nagasaki sense) will never be used because it is a death sentence. The countries that have nukes have enough of them to destroy the world a hundred times over.

I'm not so sure about that. If Puton bombed without it affecting any of the UN nations around it, the world leaders might let it pass. They clearly don't want to start a nuclear war with Russia, evident by how they only send weapons to Ukraine.

No way Putin uses nukes, things would immediately escalate if he did. Warrior13 is right, at the moment the US, Nato, and even China don't want to get involved for one reason or another but once Russia starts using nukes it becomes a different ballgame.

Putin will be overthrown in the coming days, or mysteriously die from health complications or some other cause. Russian soldiers are deserting at an alarming rate, he is also losing his generals, and the people are no longer behind him. Something will be done, some kind of arrangement will be done with the Ukraine where they give up some territory and the war will end.

Yeah, unless Puton gets something out of it, he will not stop. He is not going to have himself look weak in a losing effort.

That said, I would not be surprised if he amps up the missile strikes should Ukraine not look to settle.

Not looking good for Putin, he is losing his support from his army and his people by the day. They want this madness to end. When this is over Russia should not go unpunished, in order to have sanctions lifted in my mind they should be forced to relinquish their nuclear weapons. The world would be a much safer place.

Yeah I do feel for the average Russian who has no say in any of this and is suffering for it. Not like the Ukrainians are, but still. People say "well just vote him out!" but it really doesn't work that way.

Russia will surely be punished somehow, I doubt it will be anything to do with nukes though. There are just too many, have they even kept track of all of them? Who do you give them too, the US? Distribute them to the other nuclear powers? Too risky and will likely be seen by Russian-allied and non-aligned countries as the West just consolidating power even more.

Unless some nukes are used, I doubt Russia gets anything more than the sanctions in place. Shoot, even if they missile Ukraine to oblivion and take it over, all the other countries will eventually get over it because of the gas import for Russia.

« Last edited by Warrior13 on May 10th 2022 »

Surely they can dismantle the nukes? After the Second World War Germany was ordered to demilitarize as they were a defeated nation. Surely the same thing can be done to Russia in return for sanctions being lifted. Seems like a fair trade to me.

I'm shocked how quickly Putin has aged in the last six months, he is looking more and more demented by the day with all the stress on his shoulders. Surely the people in Russia can see that the guy is looking unstable and needs to be taken down. Just get the feeling Putin invaded the Ukraine for his legacy as he knows he is dying. He wants to be remembered like Stalin and Lenin.

As for nuclear weapons, after the way the Russian military hardware has been breaking down I'm wondering if Russia's nukes would actually work, do these things get tested at all? I know North Korea likes to make sure their's are in working order but what about the rest of the world.

I don't think they really get tested. Not sure how you could, really. A lot of that stuff has been collecting dust since the 80s.

I have to think the brainiacs of the world have a way to tell if the bombs are still active. Science stuff beyond my scope. lol

I'd be surprised if Russia even knows where they all are. I'm pretty sure all that stuff was distributed throughout the USSR, and there was a lot of craziness when the USSR fell. Wouldn't be surprised if there were dozens or hundreds of nukes buried across eastern Europe that are unaccounted for.

That would be crazy if so.