Way back in the early 90s when the Soviet Union collapsed and was breaking up into its individual component countries there was talk on the political side in this country about what "we were going to do with all of those of the Soviet Union scientists and engineers" who previously were developing weapons for them.... and not a thought to the scientists and engineers in this country that were suddenly without jobs... That is just the Washington DC perspective of the world, finding problems elsewhere and ignoring the ones that matter most at home.

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The Lockdowns Will Continue Until the Morale Improves!

I keep thinking, "it can't get any worse" and then it does!

One scenario on my mind is that we will end up in a war with China and Russia that we will loose and, for the first time, have to accept responsibility for starting the war. I think it will be non-nuclear because we will loose (the Chinese and Russians having no incentive to use nukes). The result of this will be a Versailles-like treaty that imposes strict limits on our force projection capabilities. Both the treaty and the political fallout from such will be a lot like the "Millennial Treaties" in the "War Against the Chtor" novels by David Gerrold. I see this as one credible future.

Another possible future. based on emails I've received from a friend of mine in China, is a lot more harrowing, but ultimately a very positive outcome (at least from my perspective).

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Its all in the mitochondria

As damaging as above ground nuclear weapons tests are, maybe these lunatics wouldn't be so flip about pissing off a country with many more and much newer nuclear weapons if the public had a chance to see those things set off from a safe distance. Back in the day you could go to Vegas and go on a box lunch tour including watching the Army pop off an atomic party favor. Sure, there was sabre rattling in the cold war, but nothing like the psychotic things being done now.

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"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next 10 generations that some favors come with too high of a price." -Vir Cotto Ba

@Invisiblesun: "Putin did with Ukraine what US presidents have done with Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya etc. This is military aggression that should be criticized....."

Are Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya on America's borders? The U.S. arming Ukraine is like Russia arming Mexico.

@Dingleberry: "...As for whatever Republican is nominated, it really won't matter if they don't support Ukraine. The "unbiased" media will attack them for being anti-deviant, anti-grooming, being wayciss, muh abortionz!!....fill in the blank...."

Yeah, DeSantis is going full bore against the groomers /s/.
Insider: Desantis administration revokes Hyatt Regency Miami alcohol license after it hosted "A Drag Queen Christmas"
Watch Tim Pool's podcast about it. That's the BEST that DeSantis can do??? ARREST THEM ALL, the draq queens, the venue's manager, etc.

Pence is the biggest piece of shit in the GOP, even more than Bitch McConnell and Miss Lindsay Graham, and should be right at the front of the line for the with all of the Joey Shitpants administration and all of the warhawks in Congress.

His phony piety has always been inducing, and has always made me wander what skeletons he has hiding in his closet. If the answer is "little boys" I would not be surprised in slightest.

Tucker should ask more questions:

If all the US needs to do is print and throw money at a country formerly with a GDP similar to Bangladesh, and the result is an armed force that can supposedly not only stand up to but beat Russia, then what is the point of NATO and why are we funding it?

Where the rubber meets the road or iow the boots hit the ground, is where I think the commoners would likely draw their (the parents especially) line in the sandasphalt, when their progeny are drafted to spill blood on the soil of the was/is/will be corrupt quagmire named the Ukraine. How I long for the days, when the the commoners' bosses/barons/kings/senators were in the vanguard of military manoeuvers, which at least provoked some reticence/debate before going where fools/dying empires tread.

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Defiance to tyrants is obedience to God. ~Franklin
...the people must fight back how they can. Reverend Syn

Lately I've been watching YouTube video shorts of domestic and foreign news coverage of the war in Ukraine. One theme that keeps popping up is the Ukrainian's shortage of ammo and ordinance despite NATO dumping almost $100 Billion in military assistance into that black hole.

All of the fancy, new, state-of-the-art weapons systems don't do you any good if they are not supported and are too big to be used as a club once you run out of ammo. And, by all accounts, despite running weapons factories 24/7, the USA and NATO can't keep up. Any additions to production capacity aren't set to go on line until...2025.

Putin is doing what Russians do; purging the prisons and political enemies all while playing the long game.

(One source claims that the Russians have 20,000 Cold War era tanks that they are pulling out of storage and refurbishing.)

Finally, my point... The war mongers and military industrial complex can beat their chests all they want. Hollow threats. We are spread so thin we simply can't back up our threats anymore whether it be military projection, industrial output, or fiscal support.

We are absolutely stretched to the breaking point fiscally, monetarily, economically, militarily, and on, and on, and on.

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"Economists are no different than the prophets of ancient Pompeii who reassured that Mt Vesuvius would never blow. After all, it never had before." Baxter Black, DVM and Cowboy Poet

"You can avoi

Robodog: I wouldn't count on Boobus Amerikanus finding his hind legs if their kids are drafted. It's been bred out of the species. To back up my argument, I give you more than 20 years of men watching blue gloved trash at the airports feeling up not only them, but their wives and daughters. There is also the COVID escapade where the rights of them and their families were violated like a drunk prom date in ways we've discussed here ad nauseam. Then there is the "insurrection" fraud used to demonize half of the population. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 people who have had their doors kicked in at 4:00 AM by the feds for most of which amounts to trespassing charges. A couple hundred have been sitting in solitary for nearly 2 years.

If anyone thinks kids getting drafted will cause a revolt, I'll take the under on that bet any day of the week.

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"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next 10 generations that some favors come with too high of a price." -Vir Cotto Ba

@jesjohn94

They may think God is on their side but they have failed to learn from history. Israel got carried away into captivity and at other times conquered and oppressed for straying from what God wanted them to do. So I don't see him treating us any differently as a country.

Campaign promises are as reliable as the BS told to get someone into bed. After you get fucked all bets are off.

Pence is a garbage human being. He couldn't find his balls with both hands January '21 but he thinks we need to "support" Ukraine?

Biden wants to unconstitutionally EO universal background checks? What a shock, who did nazi that coming.

Counting on God being on your side? Which one, El, Yaweh, Allah, Zeus? How has that been working out for you so far?

I'm not sure God is in the business of choosing sides.

Humans should be in the business of determining what is God's side, and acting accordingly.

The caboose does not drive the engine.

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Diversity + proximity = WAR

-They wanted camps; I want ropes.

This entire scheme was planned years ago by DC neocons. I'm not sure Trump figured that out soon enough and found him surrounded by the bastards. The war merely started 4 years later.

I think people failed to recognize, from the time Reagan left office, the next 4 administrations sought out scirmishes to get into. Because the big war was Bush43, the Democrats made this appear to be a Republican problem. Name a Democrat since Woodrow Wilson that wasn't in war, besides Carter, who was trying to surrender to the USSR? Obama literally burned down the Mediterranean, in his 2 terms and it is still smoldering.

Any group that wants to expand government is going to be seeking War. When it isn't war, its emergency. They never let go of either, Biden still running the virus scam. In a place where the business is war and emergency, think we are going to get less of either?

It is going to come out, if they allow a real investigation, that the permanent government and leaders in Congress created the January 6th mess, to stop investigation into elections. The War and the climate scams were necessities, for them.. Biden has spoken of declaring a climate emergency. A climate emergency is when it is windy, zero and you are stuck outside.

The first thing they did in DC when Trump came in was block negotiations with Russia. They literally tried to make Trump meeting Putin a scandal. Speaking to Zelensky led to impeachment. Not only were many DC rats potentially exposed to having their crimes discovered, but Trump might interrupt their war. He already cut off their climate scam. The third leg? An open border. We haven't even begun to see the mess that is going to produce, starting with social services and housing.

We have a bunch of genocidal maniacs running the west. You couldn't dig up a more dangerous group running DC, than the group we have. They are delusional. The US isn't the same country Bill Clinton inherited, toughened by 20 rough years, yet king of the world. This country has been weakened by constant war and funny finance and they are oblivious to that fact. Trump pointed out we could have rebuilt the country with what we flushed down the drain in wars since 2000. War is heroin. Stimulate with it, you destroy what you build and need to keep doing it to maintain the demand. Of course, the climate scam is economic suicide.

Some of this stuff doesn't take any hindsight. In fact all of it. The Ukrainian conflict needed to be negotiated. The people living in the disputed areas were Russian. An administration and woke society is quick to scream racist, when it suits them, but this was an ethnic war waged against its own people. Azov considered the only good Russian a dead one. Zelensky or his predecessor outlawed the Russian language, something that has been spoken for a thousand years or more in that region. Imagine the reaction, if Texas outlawed Spanish? A strong Ukraine might have eventually invaded Russia, as NAZI's do what NAZI's do.

Elizabeth Warren is screaming more regulation would have stopped SVB. This was eventually going to happen, but regulation wasn't going to stop it. Pouring gasoline on the fire by a Democrat Congress and administration and emergency measures for a cold virus blew this up. The first thing they did after Trump left was throw another $1.7 trillion on the fire to bribe school districts to go along with their scheme and bail out the states that waged war against their people. The bullshit in this bill is going to negatively affect the country for decades.

Warren is attacking Powell. She might look at Congress and the Guinea running Treasury, who financed the horrible policies of the Obama administration. Everyone seems shocked to the eventual collapse of monetary finance of capital expenditures. We really don't know how broke we are, because its all covered up by collateralized, overpriced paper.

Could they fuck it up any worse? After attacking us for a year, with the virus scam, they are starting a war with a drained strategic reserve, low inventories of conventional arms and a blown up financial system. These people are either suicidal or genocidal and we are damage intended. WHO DRAINS THE OIL RESERVE FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES, LOOKING POTENTIAL WAR IN THE EYE? This is akin to emptying your cupboard knowing there will be no food in the grocery stores.

The trap has shut on everything. There are poor people in the US, but by world standards, they are well to do. Those standards are being maintained by the idea of free. Green energy is being sold as cheap, but it isn't going to work or be cheap. The MMT idiots in Congress and the Fed, cooked the goose There has been $23 trillion squandered by Congress the last 14 years, after trillons squandered in the Middle East adventures and there is no end in sight. A SYSTEM THAT FINANCES ITSELF WITH INFLATION CANNOT DO WITHOUT.

I could see this coming a mile away. It was a fact the game needed to deflate in 2008. People were screaming inflation. We might have hyperinflation, but we have reached to point there will be no real paper gains over any extended time. Zero eventually leads to zero on everything. It was clear long ago that after the fatal mistakes made in 2009 would make fighting inflation a deflationan event. Banks are stuck with mortgages because there is insufficient real capital to take them out of the trades and bad long term policy made them palatable. Only another bank buying them would have provided an exit, akin to someone buying anothers seat on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.

I recall, from back in the 70's that at a low enough rate, it would be profitable to desalinate sea water. We spent most of the past 14 years financing our government at zero. The bill is coming due, either out of the excess valuation of government paper or the budget. The next stage is the goverment either cuts or the USA starts to experience capital flight, maybe merely just the fact overseas money quits flowing in to finance waste. The entire world is short capital. I guess war is the solution.

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The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.---John Kenneth Galbraith

@ Mannfm11,

I offended wondered.....if Trump were still in office, would we be involved with this Ukraine fiasco? I am not 100% sure, but I doubt it, especially after the fraudulent impeachment that came out of that cesspit.

Neither party has even won a war they've started since WWII. Money and men expended. The result is nothing but a bill that is paid for in the future.

The national debt would be quite a lot smaller if the gov hadn't been involved in so many military adventures.

How much of the national expenditures have been to take in every Harry Hardluck and Sally Sob-story from all the military misadventures we have had in that time frame?

We can't afford Diversity anymore. We never could.

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Diversity + proximity = WAR

-They wanted camps; I want ropes.

The main credit I'll give DeSatan is that he can read the room better (faster) than the GOP establishment. The current regime seems hellbent on escalation, so I'm not sure it will matter by then.
Am I the only one who finds the MQ9 incident story strains credulity? Even if I did not, am I supposed to be outraged? This crap continues to unfold like a bizarro Tom Clancy work.
Long SPF 5000 and permanent orange afros

@Dingleberry, everything they did was to make certain Trump didn't stop this war, starting with the Russian nonsense. The only things that changed were the blow up dates, which would have happened 5 years ago. I doubt they would have had the virus scam. We don't have a Democracy. Most of the people haven't figured that out and it is probably too late. We ae looking at a war between oligarchs. We are looking at austerity that is going to shock most Americans and control that will do the same. We are full fascists now.

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The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.---John Kenneth Galbraith

Mannfm11 wrote..

Could they fuck it up any worse? After attacking us for a year, with the virus scam, they are starting a war with a drained strategic reserve, low inventories of conventional arms and a blown up financial system. These people are either suicidal or genocidal and we are damage intended. WHO DRAINS THE OIL RESERVE FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES, LOOKING POTENTIAL WAR IN THE EYE? This is akin to emptying your cupboard knowing there will be no food in the grocery stores.

@Mannfm11 -- Things make sense when you consider how having those in power be agents of a foreign-power would behave. (It doesn't have to be a foreign-power, the leadership could simply be disconnected and insulated/apathetic to the extreme, but the psychological 'tint' of malice is better explained as being a group that is completely disconnected and hostile/antipathic to the people.)

There was someone, years ago, who said "they hate you and want you broke and starving, if not dead" -- such observation is neigh inescapable now.

Dingleberry wrote..

I offended wondered.....if Trump were still in office, would we be involved with this Ukraine fiasco? I am not 100% sure, but I doubt it, especially after the fraudulent impeachment that came out of that cesspit.

@Dingleberry -- Consider how Trump acted on 06 Jan. Consider how he caved to the "government 'shutdown'" with that omnibus that was arguably Treason (because of how it restricted funding of Art 4, Sec 4 obligations, in favor of illegals/invaders). Consider how his "mass deportation" threatened at the end of June was 'paused' for two weeks (ending on the week of Independence Day) in order to " negotiate" and where it was eventually swept under the rug and forgotten about. Consider how he made a show to reject the TPP, only to embrace it under the guise of the USMCA. Finally, consider how he had four years to enact anti-corruption policies, a major part of his slogan "Drain The Swamp!" as well as being how he lost the election: it simply would not have been possible had he stood against corruption and meant it.

So, no; I don't believe that Trump would have either the foresight or the firm hand necessary to avoid the Ukraine entanglement.

America involves itself in foreign misadventures that are not in our national interest. Perhaps this is to distract the public from the problems created by our non-existent border, our hollowed out financialized economy, astronomical medical care costs, and a politicized just-us department.

The queer senator from South Carolina was recently quoted as saying that Vladimir Putin should be "taken out". I doubt that our rulers are stupid enough to attempt to do so, but I'm not so sure anymore. Given our porous border, it would probably be less difficult for a foreign power to "take out" any of our former presidents who have killed thousands of foreigners in a vain attempt to impose deeemocracy throughout the world. Lots of foreigners have axes to grind with us.

Leber wrote..

NASA needs Russian rockets to get to the space station

Wrong. Not anymore. Spacex is providing crewed and cargo access to the ISS and has been for awhile now.

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The difference between Americans and Europeans is our ancestors threw off the yoke of tyranny, theirs embraced it.

@Mannfm11 - Your comment "There are poor people in the US, but by world standards, they are well to do" reminds me of something a former co-worker from India said.

"Only in America are poor people fat. Americans have no idea what it means to be truly poor." -- He was very right.

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'Power, like the reproductive muscle, longs to be exercised, often without judgement or right' - Gerry Spence

"Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers

@Mannfm11,

Quote:

You couldn't dig up a more dangerous group running DC, than the group we have. They are delusional.

Exactly. And reality can be denied for awhile, but not rescinded. Eventually it catches back up.
You can deny you're in plane crash, all the way down to the ground.

Putin is serious, but our DC people are Clowns.(D.C. = Dangerous Clowns.)
The clowns whine and lie about events around the protest on January6th.

They should consider that the next January 6th likely won't be a comical 'quasi-insurrection' with a Buffalo shaman.
It may damn well be the real thing.

History doesn't just rhyme, it often hurts.

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"Threats are illogical. And payment is usually expensive." - Sarek of Vulcan

@Mannfm11
Some very clear and common sense commenting, thank you. Wish I had more up thumbs to give.

If you are in the "God is in control" camp, you probably don't think that He is going to allow the USA to escape this age unpunished. He could do it supernaturally as in Biblical times, but it might be more satisfying if He allowed satan-worshippers to do exactly what we are watching.