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[Lord Shonus]

Nah. They'd have to swim. That was a deliberately silly example.

[mainiac]

What do you think the point of the NAFTA superhighway was?  Get rid of the wetbacks by sending em to canukland.

[scriver]

I wonder if Sweden still has American/Nato support. I hear bad rumours about Russia's military drills.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If Russia was going to invade Sweden, they would have done it back when they were a superpower. In any case, Sweden is connected to the EU, which is in turn connected to NATO, so I'm guessing the answer is yes.

[misko27]

Yes. If they wanted to invade something, They should have invaded Switzerland. So Neutral that I didn't even join the UN till 2002, and only then by Referendum. Of course the matter of gettting there would be a problem...

[Helgoland]

Meh, bribe the Italians

But that part got me thinking: In a full-blown non-nuclear military confrontation, who would win: Russia or the EU?

[Frumple]

... what would you considering "winning"? Depending on the goal in question, a lot of variables shift around.

[misko27]

Yes, to Quote Defcon: "Nobody wins. But you can try to lose the Least"

[FearfulJesuit]

Jim DeMint is resigning his office to go lead the Heritage Foundation.

You have to wonder why...there do seem to be a number of people bailing the Republicans one way or the other.

Be fun to watch his replacement election, though.

[RedKing]

Simply put, DeMint knows that Senate Republicans are in the minority, and that as Senators it's up to them to be the grown-ups. In other words, to seek pragmatic solutions rather than ideological ones. Senate Republicans are rapidly becoming the "black sheep" among the party faithful, because they're not as in-the-bone-crazy as the House Repubs. They're committing heresies like backing away from Norquist's tax pledge, and actually attempting to work with the Commie Pinko Cryptoislamic Terrorist Democratic Party to find some legit fiscal solutions.

DeMint would rather be free of that taint. By going to a shill tank like Heritage, he can be as diehard far-right as he wants to without having any kind of consequences, and divulge himself of any responsibility when a compromise solution is inevitably reached.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

They also passed a military bill including a provision that the military's medical insurance covers abortion in cases of rape, 98-0. I doubt the House Republicans will be as willing, even having lost a number of their crazies.

[FearfulJesuit]

I actually can't wait to watch the Republicans over the next four years. I think, secretly, in the heart of every liberal is a small little voice that wants to have to make a hard choice at the voting booth. It's a long, long, LONG way yet before that's the case, but there does seem finally to be a realization in the more unorthodox parts of the party that something's gone wrong in the rhetoric. Unfortunately, there's nobody who recognizes more than one or two places where the party's out of whack...but a hard defeat in 2014 may speed that up.

[SealyStar]

The local representative, Justin Amash, has been taken off the House Budget Committee... for being too insanely hyper-Republican. That's right. The Republicans actually axed a guy for being too extreme. Case in point: he voted against Paul Ryan's budget proposal because he thought that the cuts Ryan proposed were too long term.

Is this a sign that the Republicans are slowly and surely returning to some level of sense? Where they're actually starting to deal with the most extreme fringe? I hope so.

[mainiac]

But that part got me thinking: In a full-blown non-nuclear military confrontation, who would win: Russia or the EU?

I imagine that Russia would do quite well in the opening weeks when they'd be trashing on eastern Europe before the western European forces could come fully into play.  But after week three or so Russia is going to have a few problems on their hands as rioting breaks out in all their major cities and their economy collapses.  The Russian economy is based on energy exports that overwhelmingly go to the EU and friends of the EU.  In turn they import many essentials from Europe.  Even though Russia has some reserves, they don't have enough to last a multi-year post war rebuilding period after their essential export infrastructure is damaged.  It takes years to build natural gas pipelines.  Without Russian energy Europe would need to heavily ration electricity and fuel until alternatives come online.  Without trade the Russian economy collapses back to the early 90s.

The winners in the short run would be China who would be able to import Russian natural gas for a song but not in large enough quantities to keep Russia going.  The winners in the long run would be France and Japan.  France would make a killing exporting electricity from their nuclear plants for years after the war.  Japan would probably suffer initially as they would be leery of buying Russian gas during the war.  But after the initial distaste Japan would enjoy a great position important Russian natural gas as it would take years for the physical and commercial infrastructure of Russian exports to Europe to mend.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Europe has a history or tearing up any empire that decides to occupy large amounts of her for an amount of time. And; in 2012+, the timeframe for collapse would be weeks, not decades. I bet the possibility of Europe getting assaulted ever again are near-zero. Inner-EU strife does not count.