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November 3rd Led to February 24th
The Russian attack on Ukraine can be traced to the 2020 presidential election. Leaving aside the question of voter fraud, the replacement of Trump by Biden strengthened Russia’s economy. One of the first actions Biden took was to cancel the Keystone pipeline. He also discouraged drilling. Gas and other fossil fuel prices jumped. Russia depends heavily on energy exports so this was a huge cash infusion into its economy.
Biden appointed incompetent people such as Austin who became secretary of defense. When he wasn’t chowing down, he appeared to think that his most crucial issue was to root out conservatives in the defense department. A friend of mine knew a young man who joined the Air Force to work on cyber defense. With the emphasis on transgenders getting surgeries, he’s getting out as soon as his enlistment ends.
Austin also thinks that forcing people who are not at risk from COVID to get a leaky vaccine is critical. When push came to shove in Afghanistan, no one stood up to Biden and said that we should hold Bagram Air Base until the very end. It’s much more secure than Kabul but none of our generals were willing to put their careers on the line on behalf of the safety of our military. And in the debacle we left tens of billions of dollars of weapons behind.
Biden was always a gaffe machine, but by Election Day 2020 he was clearly unfit to be president. He barely campaigned. In his few press conferences since he’s become president, he calls on specific reporters and has the answers written out on 3×5 cards. His recent performance shows a man who is almost comatose.
https://t.co/llgadKtta0
pic.twitter.com/NyNiQZk26O— Ezra Levant 🍁🚛 (@ezralevant) April 28, 2022
Putin attacked Georgia when Bush was president. He then seized Crimea during Obama’s presidency. Now he’s attacking Ukraine. The only president he appears to have respected was Trump. The people who supported Biden are to blame for this debacle. And the escalation which is being pushed by Bill Kristol and other war hawks is dangerous. It’s good for Raytheon but no so good for Ukraine. We need to encourage de-escalation rather than ramping up the rhetoric.
Published in Foreign Policy
Biden’s war on energy is resulting in all kinds of despair around the globe: inflation at home, food shortages, emboldened Russia & Iran. The war on energy is the most impactful thing Biden has done, while in office. Weakness is provocative and destabilizing.
The selection Biden, the most corrupt president in history, on Nov 3rd was also a green light to the corrupt leaders of Ukraine and Russia to engage in mayhem. Corruption is provocative and destabilizing.
It’s one thing to say that the perception of American weakness emboldened Putin to invade a sovereign nation; it’s another to say that Ukraine is thus obligated to lay down and accept the boot.
Well, we can’t have that. If it’s better for Russia, that’s irrelevant?
I wonder how many components Raytheon gets from China?
I watched the video. At the end of the clip, what’s he got in his mouth? Nancy Pelosi’s false teeth? And before that, who’s he saying “yeah” to? Was he actually listening to someone pronounce for him the word “kleptocracy” and getting a quick reference to who they are “the guys who are the kleptocracies”?
Also Germany and the EU. These people are terrible.
The interviews with @DoombergT on this are riveting.
I’m appalled and very concerned that Biden’s clip in the OP was ever let out for public viewing.
Is it possible that this was a prelude to a 25th amendment thing? I doubt it. I think they all don’t care any more.
But if I (who is rather alternative in my view, seeing the current US and world affairs as malignly manipulated — and yet I excuse and give every benefit of the doubt to Biden’s cognitive state) if I am forced to see him struggling over a word, and then apparently after being clued in to the word, and then still misusing the word, what has the world — who has seen him up close — been thinking about Biden for the last year?
Apparently his handlers no longer care. They are happy to have an obvious marionette and to expose him to the US populace and the world.
It is very probable that Joe Biden has not made a single decision during his term including every executive order (even the Afghanistan withdrawal). And it’s probable that everything is just as it seems, deliberately designed to bring down the US, including exporting our petroleum products when we will very likely be needing them domestically, and shutting down rail deliveries of fertilizer to farms and grain to cattle ranches.
And, yes, de-escalation in Ukraine has never appeared to be a US goal. I’m left to think that they want this war to continue for their own purposes.
Multiple smart people have said this has to be happening on purpose.
Regarding the rest of your post, you wonder if people are getting paid off in some way like that German Prime Minister that works for Gazprom, now.
So Russia has Germany under its thumb and completely extortable for the next few years. How many years would it take to get the US using sufficient portable nuclear power? Are the constraints a production issue, a demand issue, a regulation issue (which should not really exist), a fuel issue or what?
I didn’t even know that. My new take on things is that everyone is and has been for years, corrupt; everyone except the wannabes that haven’t been sworn in yet. But it’s still hard when it pretty much hits you in the face.
Yep.
I would add coal as well. Nobody is going to give a crap about anything except energy if it gets bad enough. Personally, 25 more years of clean coal doesn’t sound that bad to me. Everybody talks about natural gas, but the logistics are horrible compared to nuclear and coal. I think on one of those Doooomberg videos he has said that we have a really good supply of natural gas. I wonder if natural gas vehicles will come back at some point.
I think there is a hell of a lot of oil in North America, really. People just don’t think about it. I know that the Canadian oil sands wood work a hell of a lot better if they had stuck a couple of nuclear reactors up there to use in processing. But there is way more oil in North America to be gotten in an ordinary way. I think mostly in Alaska and California. I think the Atlantic coast is under drilled, probably.
You heard it here first. Nina Jankowicz is a false flag operation to clog up the news pipes.
Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™
Then everything moves towards populism and socialism.
It would be nice if Ricochet’s Leading Never Trumper™ was dictator for a couple of years to use his idealism to fix all of this but it’s not going to happen.
f
OK.
What is the endgame here where Ukraine wins? What does that look like and how do we get there?
Jen pSaki says that that’s not for the US to determine. And the DHS ministry of truth says that we must support Ukraine in the mean time.
There is no doubt that Biden and the Dems contributed to the start of this war. We could argue for days if it was their incompetence or their corruption that caused it. I suspect great amounts of both.
Sadly from what I have seen the Ukraine contributed to destroying the Trump administration and making the Biden administration happen. So in a way Ukraine got what they wanted. Hope they are happy with it.
I feel for the Ukraine people, and wish to help them, but unfortunately Biden is in office and I can not trust him to do anything that is not incompetent or corruption. They are on their own. Maybe the EU will help them but I am doubtful. The EU like the US seem like they can not help themselves only their elites.
You’re willing that Ukraine fight to the last man. Are you willing that the United States fight to the last man for Ukraine?
I’m not. Thus, I stand in opposition to you. Which bothers me because I’ve always respected you.
Magical fairy dust and wishing really hard.
Oh, and the U.S. sending in the full might of the American military despite the objections of the people. (Ah, but it’s just the citizen class who objects to military involvement, so who gives a [REDACTED] about them?)
He’s sending to Congress “a comprehensive package to accommodate the Russian oligarchs”!? “Accommodate”?
Yep. This idea that a negotiated peace automatically means Ukraine is swallowed by Russia just demonstrates how alien the notion of a negotiated peace is to the State Department. If Putin is looking for a face-saving off-ramp, there’s an opening. But the Biden administration keeps poking at him, and Biden himself keeps saying crazy [REDACTED] about regime change in Russia. Or Lindsey Graham suggesting someone assassinate Putin. Belligerence is all they know. (This goes to more than just Russia. For example, Jake Sullivan meeting with Saudi Arabia and making sure they knew he was still big mad about Khashoggi — and in the process pissing off the Saudis. That’s not how you go begging the Saudis for more oil, idiot!) Four years of peacemaking by the Trump administration flushed down the toilet in less than one year of Biden. I only hope our next President can somehow build bridges again.
Yeah, looks like I’m a peacenik now.
Didn’t Putin meet him last summer? How did that factor into Putin’s calculations?
The point, surely, is not what is good or bad for Russia, or even good or bad for Ukraine, but what is good (or bad) for the US. It is true that concepts of ‘national prestige’ can have some play in foreign policy, but not, I would suggest, as a factor that overrides all other national interests. Ukraine should do what it wants – fight, surrender, make peace, ally with China – and of course it makes sense for them to use emotional blackmail to get what they want. But such emotional appeals should have no sway on the cold, hard calculus of what is best for America.
I’m not saying arming Ukraine to the teeth and calling Putin nasty names isn’t the best course of action. But to imply that stoking the war is the only possible course is surely overdoing it.
So good that much of the time the gas is flared off instead of stored and shipped, because the value of the gas isn’t high enough to justify the cost of transportation/ storage. A pipeline like Keystone XL would lower the cost of shipment and might make export of the natural gas more viable.
We have plenty of natural gas and oil here. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be accessing it, unless the goal is to deliberately keep us poor and desperate.
And it is.
I’m not convinced the Ukraine will win. The more desperate for a win Putin gets, the more likely he is to use nukes. After all, the US used them on Japan and ended the war in the Pacific. I wouldn’t put it past the SOB . . .
That’s what I think. Especially when you include Canada.
The government is doing everything wrong to keep the price of life down: fossil fuels, shelter, and food.
It isn’t even a matter of opinion. Exploration has proven it. The Obama-era talk about how we’re hitting “peak oil” was just another Greenist lie. We have an abundance of it, but our leaders refuse to access it. Deliberately. They continue to insist it’s to “SAVE THE PLANET!” but I think it’s more about “decreasing the surplus population” as Scrooge so eloquently put it.
She is actually right about that all we can determine is when it is time for us to end our support. We are in a very dangerous position right now. In some sense NATO helping Ukraine is a low cost exercise. Putin is trying to make it costlier, so that we stop supporting Ukraine. If we stop supporting Ukraine it is likely that Russia would be able to overwhelm them but, It is unlikely they can with NATO support. The problem is what happens if Putin decides that he needs to impose a military cost on NATO. As much as I want Ukraine to win I don’t want to see World War 3. Russian State media rhetoric is ramping up. This is all to say we are in an incredibly dangerous moment with the less capable president of my lifetime.
This is the way I would put it. I got this from Luke Groman. We are at peak cheap oil. We have stupidly lowered capital expenditure for seven years on fossil fuels. The left will babble about rig counts or something, but I’m pretty sure that’s accurate. Doomberg and Growman both say we are way behind. Completely caused by bad policy. Now it’s a strategic problem with Russia.
The other thing is now, there are all kinds of material and labor shortages for oil extraction.
Real freaking genius.
I honestly am not sure about this. I actually have no problem what so ever thinking this is all just utter stupidity. We have an incredible maleducated elite that instinctively practices empty virtue signaling. They have absolutely no concept of what the impact of any policy is. They just go by “Feels”. I honestly think elite education, social media, and magical thinking has convinced them there is no cost for any of this stuff.