It’s very well possible that the straight is safe, but the vessels are unnecessarily cautious.

Edit: Now that I’m doing the research a partnership isn’t even needed, just a contract. Which makes sense, the feds cannot hire a private individual to do what would be illegal for them to do themselves… conversely, a company who is contracted to do federal business also enjoys supremacy by virtue of acting for the feds.

So, the government tends to employ PhDs at a substantially higher (~50%) rate than the public workforce.

Edit: Yeah, oops, people generally use public / private the other way around.

I've had friends keep things that I lent them, but that didn't ruin the friendship.

I've had friends say mean things, but that didn't ruin the friendship.

I've even gotten into a fist fight with one, but tempers calmed and the friendship endured. (I mean, the US fought two wars against England)

It's important to know who your friends are, and the knowledge that Europe is not a friend, is worth more to me than Greenland.

It's hypocritical for Europe to claim North American territory, and then claim we should be concerned about a European nation claiming European territory.

Russia and Ukraine are both on the same continent. They're neighbors. That's a much tougher decision than whether a European nation should control Greenland... that's not even on the same hemisphere.

There's also an absence of an apparent ulterior motive. The US and Japan were also on opposite sides of the world, and had little to no prior history. It's not clear why (or along what lines) they would cooperate with each other in the presence of such real territorial conflict.

Germany is a somewhat closer case. Germany and the US had a shared history and tradition. Socialist / Communist politics were widespread in both, and the US was largely divided as to whether they would support or oppose the German socialists / war. So there is a much stronger case for an ulterior motive here. Indeed, Germany indisputably wanted many of their own people to be killed. Their leadership's desire to kill jewish German is beyond dispute... so as it relates to other classes of Germans (e.g. those who fill the Wiermact ranks)... I don't think we can rule out the possibility on the grounds that those people were (also) German.

However, to get back to the territorial aspect, Germany conquered a lot of land, and the Allies took it back. So, a closer situation to the current stalemate in Ukraine would be WWI. If they're not making any progress in terms of territory... what progress do they think they're making? The main change I see from here is that people are dying... so that's probably the whole point.

What is the alternative? One of them is the public vote for a leader, the state destroys that leader (or his allies, etc) and then what? Do we think the public just says “Oh, well, I guess we didn’t pick the right guy?”

That’s assuming DIY, but even if you’re paying $80 per change. If you do them every 7,500… you’re still $1,800 total.

$12k is plenty for a whole new engine, possibly a new engine and transmission on an economy car. For example, Ford will happily sell you a brand new 2.3 Ecoboost for a Mustang or Ranger or Explorer for $6k: https://www.trackey.ford.com/part/M-6007-23TA