Comments By midnight fox

Have you considered 'somatic experiencing' therapy for your anxiety? My ex-wife is a therapist who started practicing behaviorial therapy, but nowadays finds somatic experiencing to be much more effective for something like anxiety. Cognitive behaviorial therapy, by focusing on working with thoughts, is very "cortical", but anxiety is much more of a "subcortical" process that can be better accessed using a somatic approach.

It is not possible to protect Donetsk and Lugansk staying within its borders.

In 2014, Moscow used Russian troops to clear Crimea of the Ukrainian military and government, and eight years later its people have been completely 'protected' from any form of security threat from Ukraine. Why would that be impossible in Donetsk and Luhansk?

There is no point in repeating this propaganda cliché. Crimea was not annexed. People of Crimea had a vote and decided to be part of Russia, just as they used to be in the past.

It's important to put events in the right order.

First, Putin: "I said to my colleagues: we must start working on returning Crimea to Russia," then, a Russian military invasion of Crimea, then a new government installed by Russia, then a referendum organized and conducted by Russia, and then a 97% vote in favor of joining Russia.

US and Britain were investing resources trying to limit Soviet influence in Western Europe after the victory.

This may be because Hitler and Stalin had formed secret agreements giving Russia the 'right' to use its military to invade and keep Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, eastern Poland, and most of Lithuania. Russia held staged elections in eastern Poland to make their annexation appear legitimate. The Lithuanian, Estonian, and Latvian governments were replaced with Soviet administrations who held elections for representatives to immediately request to join Russia. Russia violated the protocol with Germany by taking more territory than they agreed on. After the war, Russia didn't return these countries. I'm not surprised Europe was concerned about this.

Are you sure you have enough information about life in Donetsk and Lugansk republics to make such claims?

If Russia were intervening purely out of an interest in protecting the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk and enforcing their claim of independence, the invasion would have been concentrated on Donetsk and Luhansk, and not the entire nation.

The reality is there is zero difference between why this is happening to all of Ukraine now and why Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014.

Putin, in his own words then: "When we were parting, I said to my colleagues: we must start working on returning Crimea to Russia."

Putin, in his own words now: "Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia — by separating, severing what is historically Russian land. And today the “grateful progeny” has overturned monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it de-communization. You want de-communization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real de-communizations would mean for Ukraine. "

The natural tribal instinct is strong in some folks. Orange man bad, Putin bad, Russia bad. Right.

Do you accuse everyone expressing a different viewpoint than your own of acting out of tribalism, or is there something in particular in what I said that made you suggest I'm acting out of tribalism?

You seemed to have forgotten Obama Biden's coup in 2014, where we we spent billions of dollars in destabilizing a functional constitutional republic in Ukraine

I seem to remember seeing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians exercising their human right to protest against their government and then leading a revolution when their government turned against them. I also never misconstrued the $5 billion the United States spent in Ukraine during the twenty years between its independence in 1991 and 2013 to have been spent by Obama and Biden in 2014 to orchestrate the revolution.

ultimately placing snipers in their capital, killing hundreds

Who told you the identities of the shooters?

Let's also not forget about Burisima while we are at it. Biden and company have been pushing this for a long time.

Hunter Biden getting paid to sit on the board of a Ukranian natural gas company is evidence of what being pushed by them? Are you saying they pushed Russia to invade?

While war is tragic, I'm not going to buy the "we're at war with Eurasia. We've always been at war with them" narrative that Orwell so aptly described.

No one is saying we are at war. Russia is committing an unprovoked act of war against Ukraine. Nothing you've said justifies what Russia is doing to the Ukrainian people.

There is a lot more to do with this than Putin simply getting a wild hair up his butt and deciding to invade or retake a former piece of his country.

Changing the subject to the 2020 election and China isn't "a lot more to do with this".

What we're seeing is a completely unprovoked act under false pretenses that is destroying the lives and livelihoods of innocent people. Odd attempts to change the subject will never obscure that reality.

you will notice that the actions being taken there are laser sharp precision actions taken against non civilian military targets. It also appears to be very quick and focused.

You will notice the husband only struck his wife in the parts of the body that most efficiently cause her the maximum amount of pain while minimizing bruising and swelling. His abuse also appears to be restrained to exerting his control over her and not indulging in excessive emotional venting.

In 2020 (latest figures available) the Russian Federation's GDP was $1.483T. California's was $2.722T. We're talking about a country with half the economic power of one state!

There are only four or five nations on the planet that have a bigger economy than California. But GDP doesn't go very far in assessing the security risk a country poses. Personally I don't believe Russia is an immediate, direct threat to the United States, beyond cyber-espionage and overall economic fallout from its unprovoked act of evil. But there is a clear and genuine, longer-term danger of Russia and China overturning the international order and exporting their communist, artificial intelligence-enhanced surveillance prison state across the globe.

We were putting in missiles and other defensive armaments in countries that border the Russian Federation. Are you telling me you wouldn't have a problem with China putting a missile battery in Tijuana?

Those countries have a legitimate interest in defending themselves from Russian invasion and occupation. For them to secure the means of providing for their security isn't an act of aggression against Russia. Russia has been and is now proving again to be the unprovoked aggressor against them. We don't ask husbands who beat their wives if they would have a problem with their wife taking out a restraining order and purchasing a handgun.

Banks said:

The CDC and vaccine manufacturers say the effectiveness of the vaccine wanes over time, that's why there's a need for boosters.

This is common with other vaccines too. This article was written in April of 2019, before covid19:

https://www.science.org/content/article/how-long-do-vaccines-last-surprising-answers-may-help-protect-people-longer

It's not just flu. Recent studies show vaccines for mumps, pertussis, meningococcal disease, and yellow fever also lose their effectiveness faster than official immunization recommendations suggest.

...

Vaccines are approved and come to market years before it's clear how long protection lasts. Later, fading protection can go unnoticed because a vaccine in wide use has largely eliminated transmission of the microbes it protects against, making "breakthrough" infections rare.

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And declining vaccine immunity is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon: A breakthrough infection often leads to much less severe symptoms of the disease.

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"We simply don't know what the rules are to inducing long-lasting immunity," says Plotkin, who began to research vaccines in 1957. Plotkin is one of the world's most renowned vaccinologists, having had a hand in several vaccines on the market, including the one for rubella, and is the co-author of the standard medical textbook, Vaccines.

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For the flu, both killed (also known as inactivated) and live virus vaccines exist—and neither offers sturdy protection. Even when they closely match the circulating strains of influenza viruses, both types protect only about 60% of vaccinated people. And those modest immune responses rapidly wane.

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In people who receive the flu vaccine but become ill, the disease often is markedly less severe. Such partial protection was first recognized more than a century ago with the smallpox vaccine, which fully prevents disease for only a few decades, but powerfully shields people from severe illness and death for life.

When the FDA approved the Pfizer shot, they said their decision was based on clinical trials that showed it was around 90% effective in preventing symptomatic infection, but also said they collected zero data at all on asymptomatic infection. To me that means they were never interested in a vaccine that prevents all infection/transmission. And just like with how hit or miss it is each year with the flu vaccines due to how quickly it mutates into different strains, these vaccines no longer match the dominant variants.

I don't agree with the vaccine being mandated. I've just grown interested in learning about medical science.

The vaccine does nothing to stop you from getting it or from spreading it.

How are you sure about that? From what I've seen, scientists don't even know for sure how much it prevents infection or transmission.

I've seen studies that suggest it does both, but how much it does is difficult to find out for sure because each study has limitations.

As far as anyone can know, there are cases where vaccinated people can be infected and cause transmission, but what the odds are on that actually happening isn't clear.

It is illegal. But I’m also not aware of these Canadian truck drivers looting, starting fires, throwing objects and attacking police but I could be wrong. Also hearing reports of Canadian police seizing fuel that is being brought to the drivers. Don’t remember anything being seized from the rioters here in the us when cities burned. Isn’t that something.

That's all true, but none of it has to do with blocking public roads, which was the complaint back then. Either all protestors have the right to block public roads, or none do.

"We the People" need to be heard just as damn easy as the friggin BLM, and Antifah idiots n crazies were!!

I remember a lot of people saying it was illegal for protestors to block public roads and that if any of them got hit by a vehicle for being that stupid it was fair game.