If the attack causes physical harm or loss of life, it is an act of war. If our power grid, gas grid, water grid, etc. gets attacked and it causes harm to any single person? That's technically an attack with a weapon of mass destruction. If it harmed one person, that means you ATTEMPTED to harm as many people as it affected. Take down a city's power grid, let's say Denver? Regardless of the LEVEL of harm that WAS inflicted, there's 300,000 people just in Denver proper, let alone the Metro are which probably got affected as well. You just tried to inflict that harm on every single one of them.

Oops, you cut someone's CPAP when they were sleeping and they died. You just committed one count of First Degree Murder and 300,000 counts of attempted murder. If that's not an act of war worthy of nuclear retaliation, I don't know what is.

Biden has made it very clear that he's going to make his move in Ukraine as economically painful for Russia as he possibly can.

He also said that if Russian or Belarussian feet even move an inch across the Polish border, he's going to wipe him off the map. He did so by publicly and succinctly spilling a ton of normally secret info about the intel they had gathered on Putin's plans, which Putin did not expect him to know. Pretty harrowing experience for a paranoid guy like Putin.

He may not be beating his chest or putting his hand on the iron on his hip, but he got the point across pretty solidly by international relations standards. There are 3 carrier groups one the other side of the Bosphorus, and strategic weaponry is getting flown into Warsaw as we speak. Strategic weaponry, not small arms, he put nukes on Putin's doorstep and he was not coy about it. That's about as solid a death glare as a politician could make, even more lethal in intent than putting nukes in Turkey.

So don't sell Biden short, he's steelier than people think. This is the guy that took Giuliani off the political board completely with 7 words during a primary debate, after all. And he's a Cold Warrior to boot. He was moving and shaking in Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Berlin during the height of the Cold War and he threw haymakers with the best of the hawks. If anybody knows how to handle this without a few mushroom clouds going up, he's one of them.

Belarus has basically been turned into a vassal state. Lukashenko was propped up and the election stolen on his behalf by Putin, just like Yanukovych before he got ousted. Putin's preferred method of operation is installing puppet governments that he more or less has complete control of. Lukashenko is literally one of his lap dogs, he was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union all through the 80's and up until the collapse and is "Independent" now. Putin serves as a Chairman of the Council of Ministers for which Lukashenko is Chairman of the Supreme State Council of the Union State.

Putin also prefers to have "buffer states" between him and NATO countries, hence his Chairman status on Belarus' Council of Ministers. It keeps him close to his puppet.

Currently he has control of Georgia and Belarus. That leaves Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and he probably wants Moldova back as well.

Ukraine is the first step after Belarus because Ukraine is essential to unfettered access to a year-long sea port, which Ukraine gave him access to previously. His only other ports capable of shipping out of such as Arkhangelsk are frozen in for significant portions of the year. The REAL reason for the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was to maintain hold of Sevastopol, his only green water sea port that isn't inaccessible for parts of the year and happens to have a Naval base stationed there that is of vital importance to him because the Russian Navy doesn't have the capability of leaving pelagic zone water.

That's right folks, the once great Navy of the USSR is now so pathetic it can't leave continental-shelf depth water and couldn't circumnavigate the globe or come anywhere near threating the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar, or even Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, he can barely even get to Taiwan. Which is why he's so desperate to reclaim Ukraine because right now the only access he has to Sevastopol is through his non-freight capable port in St. Petersburg or his non year-round port in Arkhangelsk. So he wants a land bridge to Sevastopol back very badly.

The reason Lukashenko is going along? Well, he'll end up replaced if he doesn't. He'll just simply disappear. He's been a Soviet all his life and he's still a party man, through and through. And when Putin is jonesing for something that bad, he'll kill half the party to get it if he has to.

False.

Roughly 8% of males are gay. And those are just the ones who answer the question. In reality probably 10-12% of the population is either gay or bisexual or at the very least a 2 on the Kinsey Scale.

They don't have to. They can not offer insurance and pay the fine, they have a choice.

Half of the directors immediately beneath him in rank resigned over his appointment. Citing his discriminatory actions and rhetoric towards the LGBT community. So yes, it is an important topic for Eich because his directors resignations wouldn't have been for the reasons they cited otherwise.

Freedom of association. Eich is free to spew all the hate he wants and donate to whatever political cause he wants. The rest of us are free to not associate with him or do business with his company. Boycotts are a perfectly acceptable response to bigotry.

As far as pragmatism goes, Eich and his ilk are the biggest example of not wanting to work together over strong disagreements there is. Look at how many filibusters have been held, how few bills passed, how many attempts at repealing law in recent years over in DC. Hitting conservatives in the wallet over their childish temper tantrums is also a perfectly acceptable response.

We're overpopulated to begin with. We WANT birthrates to level off if we want our economy to improve for the lower classes, which we definitely do.

And secondly, there is no "left" in this country, politically. That you think there is shows just how uneducated on the subject you are.

The LGBT community tried that. What the steeplechasers promptly did is why that is no longer an option.

"Civil Unions" and "Marriages" in many states are anything but similar and don't confer anywhere near the same rights. Because conservatives promptly passed laws to make that happen the instant civil unions were granted.

Conservatives shot themselves in the foot by doing that, because they gave the LGBT community no choice but to push for the whole shebang.

The employees don't want him either, half of his directors resigned over his appointment.

Except that the most widely distributed version of the Bible is the King James Bible, you're mostly correct.

Vigorous checks and balances and input from scholars don't mean jack shit when it has been rewritten to either A: allow a king to divorce his wife or B: push for military campaigns into the east.

Not to mention the Apocrypha, and the fact that it only exists because it was left out by a council called by a Roman emperor trying to consolidate power in a religious uprising of sorts.

Nobody is suggesting that he be muzzled.

Freedom of association and all, the company that appointed him CEO is not free from the consequences of having done so. We are defending his right to say whatever he wants, whether it be in the form of speech or lobby money. We are punishing his antisocial actions by refusing to do business with him.

There is no hypocrisy in that.

We have a different definition of "Politely Disagreeing."

When I politely disagree with someone, I just continue about my way. I don't lobby the government to relegate them to second class citizenship.

TL;DR: I want to write code but do not want to actually maintain it.

in the same way that ham radio people are vastly behind the revolution in wireless communications.

You're on crack, sir!

Hams have always been at the leading edge of long-distance wireless communications technology. In early times, hams were largely the ones responsible for clever antenna design (which was something of a black art in those times) and improving the effectiveness of various types of radio circuits. They are constantly pushing the boundaries of doing more with less. A good ham can communicate with someone halfway around the world with a simple circuit and 9-volt battery, for instance. Nowadays, the bleeding edge is software-defined radio. You'd better believe hams are using, developing, experimenting, and field-testing right now, as we speak.

Imagine: 300baud modems-- that's what many hams are left with, wirelessly.

Hams have to work within the limits defined by both nature and the FCC. When there is only so much bandwidth available to legally use, and you need to send a message a great distance, 300 baud may be all you get. And in a lot of cases, it's all you need.

Aside from the physical limitations, hams are unlikely to get access to the kind of spectrum that cell phone providers enjoy for short-range high-speed digital communications simply because they don't have quite the same purchasing power as a mobile megacorp.

Aircraft technology changes much more slowly than automobile technology not because the members of one industry are more incompetent than the rest, but rather because the markets are vastly different. Anything that leaves the ground as part of the aircraft has to be FAA certified pretty much all the way around. It's safer for everyone involved to stick with proven designs, even when newer ones might make things easier on the pilot or more efficient for the plane. The stakes are just a wee bit higher in a plane than in a car of the engine stops. Aircraft have lifespans of many decades, whereas most people discard their cars when they're between 5 and 10 years old.

T-Mobile - Unlimited voice, high speed data and messaging $70 + $20 Phone installment plan = $90 per month

At $90/month, it's still twice the cost of Straight Talk on the same network. (Although no doubt T-Mobile has better customer support.)