Tens of billions, soon to be much more, are flying out of U.S. coffers to Ukraine as Americans suffer, showing who runs the U.S. Government, and for whose benefit.
I'm maybe sorta kinda a little reluctant to be pushed into a war with the Russkies by the same MF who likely pocketed bribes from Ukraine and whose party very probably rigged his victory.
In case you missed it today, the head of the FDA is blaming disinformation as the cause for the recent decline in life expectancy. So now the DGB really has the ammunition to eliminate whatever it sees fit. Were these people always buffoons and we just overlooked it?
The decline in life expectancy in the USA is due primarily to the continual, bi-partisan (NOT non-partisan!) outflow of jobs and hollowing out of the middle-class, initiated by Reagan and continued by every president since, Republican AND Democrat, along with a majority of both party's "congressional delegations."
There are notable hold-outs and non-participants, such as Ross Periot (sp?) and also a few who caucus with the Democrats and a TINY handful of Democrats. ... It's hard to think of a single Republican who fought against it in their voting behavior.
Reagan literally saved us from stagflation and economic ruin, by reinvigorating capitalism. His policies (whether he knew it or not) laid the foundations for the massive tech boom of the 1990s and the resulting trillion-dollar companies that have dominated the world economy since early 2000s.
Doesn't anyone remember that Japan in the early 1980s was poised to take over the world? Then Reaganomics and his huge military buildup and the coincidental microcomputer revolution all happened, Japan experienced its Lost Decade while the American economy boomed. Today, the dominant search, mapping, computing, and shopping apps in Japan are Google, Google, Apple, and Amazon respectively. They're also big into Instagram. Not a single Japanese company dominates any software field (though Softbank does have a large investment presence), and the top mobile devices are all made in Korea, China, and Southeast Asia... along with almost all appliances, parts, chips, etc., while Japan has retreated to some high end robotics, Toyota cars (none of which are made in Japan any longer), etc.
In other words, the U.S. actually dominates, because of Reagan, in my opinion.
"The Federal Reserve Bank sought to counter these concerns by embracing a restrictive monetary policy, through which they hoped to curb inflation and stabilize prices. The result was a dramatic limit in economic growth and one of the major causes of a recession".
"President Ronald Reagan's economic policy, or Reaganomics, had a profound effect on the United States. By cutting taxes on the very wealthy, the policy resulted in both an economic boom and insufficient funding of expenditures. The policy eventually led to large deficits and played a role in 'Black Monday' and the Stock Market Crash of 1987."
"... the deregulation of the savings and loan industry in the early 1980s allowed these institutions to compete with money market accounts and guarantee loans without federal oversight. As the result of riskier investing and lending practices, many savings and loans institutions went bankrupt and were unable to issue refunds to depositors..."
The deregulation of S&Ls actually happened under Jimmy Carter, who foolishly signed legislation that, among other things, raised FDIC protection from $40K to $100K for no good reason. Senior economists at the time warned against the deregulation. Unfortunately, Reagan came in not really understanding the issues, and things blew up.
The economic boom of the '90s actually resulted in budget surpluses, though mainly because of massive Dot Com cap gains windfalls and not because of government spending cuts. Reagan was admittedly unable to cut government spending, GHW Bush was basically a moron who launched a pointless war against Iraq, and also signed a large tax HIKE which unfortunately caused a lot of problems. Among other things, they enacted Kennedy's "luxury tax" on items of $100K or more, including luxury yachts, RV's, expensive jewelry and so forth. Once Clinton came in, along with a Dem Congress, all spending restraints were off. After a recession began in '92, it was discovered that this huge (25%, as I recall) tax devastated the luxury yacht industry, the last boat-making sector in the U.S., which sold to wealthy Japanese businessmen among others, causing thousands of layoffs of working class craftsmen and builders, Congress quietly rescinded the tax, after the damage was done. Idiots.
But the 90s rebounded, with the help of Newt Gingrich's Republican majority in 1994. I believe Reagan's greatest failure was his inability to rein in government spending. He did enact a federal hiring freeze the day he took office, but his military buildup more than offset those savings, and all of those agencies persisted.
Trump was clever. Given time and a supportive Congress, he might have actually succeeded in shrinking government. He called a hiring freeze, and in addition he began relocating agencies out of D.C. to the hinterland. For example, the Bureau of Land Management was moved out west to Colorado to be nearer to the actual land it manages. A farming bureau was moved to Kansas, sparking the mass resignation of a couple of hundred bureaucrats who refused to move. Getting these groups out of the Beltway was a brilliant move, though; D.C. is a country unto itself.
Under Trump, government receipts skyrocketed, and it's likely that had he been allowed to continue with his program of repatriating manufacturing and corporate capital, the U.S. budget might have balanced or even went into surplus within 5 years or so. Sadly, he was taken down, and the next guy reversed every one of his EO's and put the U.S. right back on the track of stagnation and industrial failure, completely without blowback from the clueless voters.
Ummm, bully for Reagan, he saved capitalism. Here we are 40 years later. Explain to me again how this has benefitted the average American again because I'm not seeing how making Google, Apple, and Amazon the dominant companies in their respective industries has done a damn thing for them.
Well, Google and Amazon didn't even exist during Reagan's time. Personally I don't approve of the cancel culture, censorship, and general oligarchy-ness of these Millennial-dominated corporations, but my basic point was that America rebounded because of its software dominance fostered by a more pro-business atmosphere under Reagan, and continued/renewed under Gingrich (and Apple increasingly has dominated mobile and desktop hardware through its brilliant software and excellent hardware implementations). The Japanese by contrast have excellent hardware but are missing the secret sauce of software, always a weakness for them. Note by the way that Tesla's secret is not so much its hardware by itself, but rather its next-level integration of software and hardware, for example their ability to remote-update their fleet through software upgrades over the air. I think of Tesla as a software company; their factories are highly automated and software-driven and of course guided y a brilliant visionary leader (who has suddenly become Democrat enemy #1, so maybe he won't be much longer). The Japanese are quite capable of catching up, in my opinion, but first they have to absorb and integrate these ideas, which is something they're very good at. I'm surprised that Toyota hasn't already come up with an answer to the Tesla roadster, but it's quite likely they will in the near future. They're making money with their massively hybrid-ized lineup, though.
"Reagan literally saved us from stagflation and economic ruin, by reinvigorating capitalism. His policies (whether he knew it or not) laid the foundations for the massive tech boom of the 1990s and the resulting trillion-dollar companies that have dominated the world economy since early 2000s."
Reaganomics - his own VP come Pres GHWB called it 'voodoo economics' - set the stage for the hollowing out of the USA's manufacturing infrastructure and with it the good jobs that built the USA's middle class. Far from building up the USA, his administration, the most corrupt in USA's history (to that point anyway) with the most indictments of any administration in history (and might still be top in that regard), he set the stage for the poverty and homelessness that plagues much of the USA today.
Of course, his administration didn't do it alone; every administration since has done disservice after disservice to the citizens of the USA by putting the interests of the ultra-rich ahead of the interests of The People. But Reagan's policies literally paved the way into the abyss - policies like attacking Unions, ending The Fairness Doctrine, loosening the restrictions on just about everything that was protecting The People, from pollution regulations to anti-trust, permitting consolidations that helped a few corps gain monopoly or near monopoly status in most markets, and I could go on and on and on.
This was also just propaganda, this time ordinary MSM propaganda:
"Doesn't anyone remember that Japan in the early 1980s was poised to take over the world?"
The booming USA you speak of in that paragraph was built upon the decay and hollowing out of American Workers and the middle-class, it was just hard to see at the time because we were still too close to it in time and the media stayed away from it - and still does as much as it can. While Wall Street soared through the gains of business from automation, millions of workers were put out of high paying jobs all together or forced into dramatically reduced pay. ... Apparently you think that's a good thing.
"In other words, the U.S. actually dominates, because of Reagan, in my opinion."
You're welcome to your own opinion, of course, and my opinion of yours is it's ill-considered, ill-informed, or both.
"As for Ross Perot, he is deceased, unfortunately."
Graham-Leach-Bliley was also key. It was passed on Clinton's watch and allowed Investment Banks to tank up at the Savings Banks pumps before heading to the stock market. Not being a paritsan jerk here, both parties, as you mention, screwed over the everyman for decades in between bouts of political finger pointing, but 'credit' where 'credit' is due.
Even taking your statement as given, the right solution at a given time in a given situation does not make that the right solution at all times and in all situations.
Quite the opposite.
"Know when to hold em
Know when to fold em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run..."
Those who seek a power higher than that of Kenny Rogers may wish to review the Book of Ecclesiastes.
No, Reagan did not save us. The economy runs on its own cycles and government has little to do with it. for example, the inflation, not stagflation, of the early-70s was fought with very high interest rates to a) protect savers and (b) make borrowing too expensive (https://www.macrotrends.net/2497/historical-inflation-rate-by-year).
Also, Reagan ended all drives to a sustainable economy as he and his libertarian supporters argued that the market should be left alone to pick winners, fossil fuels, and losers, wind and solar, that created the current global warming mess that we're in. We could have had fast reactors replace all fossil fuel fired power plants that would also provide hydrogen that would replace oil. We can thank libertarian market bullshit for all of our problems that could have been resolved with competent leadership.
Agreed that economic cycles are independent of who happens to be in power. Yet, Reagan in his first term came in with a GOP majority that cut corporate taxes drastically, including cap gains, giving a big boost. At the same time, of course, Volcker was tightening the monetary supply and jacking up interest rates to combat inflation, resulting in a steep recession in '81-82, but then the economy rebounded and really took off.
Whenever someone calls it "trickle-down", I tend to tune out. Sure Reagan's team did use that term. But I had friends running businesses at the time, one-man consultancies and such, that were absolutely not wealthy or uber-rich or 1%-ers, who benefited greatly from the tax cuts. It encouraged entrepreneurship. If that's trickle-down, then give me more of it.
Income gaps are a liberal foil. What's the income of the average rich person? A couple hundred thousand a year? A few million for a corporate executive officer? That's peanuts. The real wealth is in stock ownership.
While he was CEO of Amazon (not sure what his actual role is now), Jeff Bezos annual salary was about $200K, even though he owned $100B of Amazon stock. He founded the company, and has held onto his stocks for 20+ years, selling about $1B or $2B a year to fund his Blue Origin space company. By the way when he started out, he was helping pack books into boxes and ship them off. Is he income-gap-1-percenter-fucking-richie? That sounds like pure jealousy to me. Self-made man, the American dream, changed the world. He deserves every penny. Ditto Elon Musk.
Now if you want to say, Mary Barra of GM, who's paid $40m/year, is grossly overpaid, you may have a point, but that's really between her and the board. If the board is really that stupid... GM is circling the drain; no one buys anything they make, other than GMC trucks. Their quality sucks. They discontinued their EV program even though they claim they're electrifying the entire fleet. They were bailed out by the U.S. government, and have not paid it back. They're just a shriveled little husk of what they once were. So does she deserve that kind of pay? Of course not; she should get a million or so, plus stock options, and performance bonus based on multi-year results. The other $39m should be invested in several hundred bright young engineers to help them design & build the next generation of products.
As for "sustainable economy" what nonsense. Oil and gas confer vast wealth on the country, and that wealth is used to develop the green alternatives. Without wealth, we're living on a credit card. By basically shutting down oil and gas exploration, Biden just proved that beyond a doubt.
Reagan did start us down this path of ruin and dysfunction with his trickle-down economics and government is bad bullshit. Gore won the election but the Republican SCOTUS stopped the Florida vote count and thus installed Bush. The Republican Party is the enemy.
I think that they were in hiding up until now. Whether out of TDS and going berserk as a result, arrogance or simply indifference, they made themselves visible, and their egos propel them forward at an alarmingly accelerating rate.
I bet they have all kinds of footage of Hunter partying with hookers and doing G.G. Allin-sized amounts of substances.
Also, the establishment cunts are only good at doing ONE job: funneling the money-machine funds into the pockets of wealthy donors whose board members breeze into and out of the Pentagon, foreign relations committees, the presidents' cabinets...
They're at the helm of the Titanic and are kicking people away while they keep the throttle jammed at full speed ahead.
I don't think the mid-terms will accomplish anything and don't really expect we'll even SEE a 2024 presidential and general election. Some shit's gonna go down for sure, but who can guess what?
Right--because the U.S. has more to worry about from some church-goers than from the Alt-Left sociopaths currently in control of all major institutions, both houses of Congress, and the Presidency.
I am aware of Chris Hedges' prediction. I respect him for telling the truth as he sees it without fear or favor, but to me it doesn't matter who has nominal control of the government so much as who controls the economy, which in turn determines the hegemonic class. Because the hegemonic class is hegemonic, their values are treated as normative.
Barring something really unforeseen, I don't see "right wing religious fascist" types supplanting the PMC as the hegemonic class.
Any orders from a "right wing religious fascist" would be seen as illegitimate, to the extent that they conflicted with PMC directives, and resistance to those orders would be seen as legitimate, to the extent resistance was in line with PMC directives.
Trump was hardly a "right wing religious fascist" but the resistance to Trump, both in and out of government, is most instructive. To give an example, military personnel were openly undermining the authority and flouting the orders of the C-in-C and they were effectively immune from punishment, because those orders did not align with PMC objectives. In fact, those same military personnel were treated as heroes, because they were responding the interests of the hegemonic class.
Chris Hedges is a very bright man and I respect his writing and opinions. That said, he seems to be fixated on right-wing religious fascists that are nowhere to be found. The Neocons (Max Boot, Kagan, Bolton, Bill Kristol) are hardly in this category and they're the ones who have ginned up this proxy war that has the potential to explode. As it turns out, fascism in America was not a cross wrapped in flag but a little blue bird being choked by censors with advanced degrees.
That's an interesting prediction; I wonder if he's just saying it speculatively, or basing it on observable trends. Based on my reading, evangelical Christianity has been in decline in recent years. But, maybe it's a sleeping giant, about to reawaken.
By the way, interestingly, the most religious/observant branch of Judaism -- Orthodox -- also have the highest birth rates of almost any other group in the U.S., and in about 20-30 years is projected to balloon from 20% today to about 50% of all Jews in the U.S. by mid-century. In my personal opinion, these estimates are too conservative. Liberal/secular Jews are at the forefront of gender fluidity and all that crap, and you know, gender fluid types don't have children.
And by the way, Orthodox Jews are politically conservative; they mostly voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, for example. For that matter, assimilated/English-fluent Hispanics also tend to vote conservative; about 50% of them voted for Trump, compared to around 20% of all Hispanics on average. In other words, over time, Hispanics will be a potent Republican voting bloc. Already polls are suggesting that they're disenchanted with Democrat insanity and significant numbers are switching affiliation. 2022 should be an interesting election year.
Which Americans would overthrow it, though? Some 40-50% of Americans are fat and happy even as the ship sinks. Many on the right are starting to seriously predict civil war as the ultimate end result of the madness. We are so divided, so separated into bubbles, that it appears there is no chance of reconciliation in our lifetimes.
I myself am married to a liberal who listens to NPR all day and refuses to even consider the conservative ideas I am inundated with from my sources (though much more varied than hers). The tech oligarchy, the "mainstream" legacy news, and the liberal mindset have closed these people off from our version of reality, have indoctrinated them for 2-3 generations in K-12 and colleges, and now we are dealing with essentially an ideological divide that is beyond repair, except for a few "red pilled" former Democrats who are waking up. I wish I could red-pill my wife. I'm working on it.... At least my daughter hears both sides, and she's no liberal, at least right now in her late teens... we'll see what college does to her. (I'm encouraging her to consider $8K/year community college rather than the $70K/year liberal arts colleges my wife is pushing).
I think the immigrants will ultimately help. Assimilated Hispanics actually tend to vote conservative; although 70-80% of Hispanics vote Democrat overall, about 50% of fluent-English Hispanics said they voted for Trump in 2016, for example, and that number surely increased in '20. This year, remarkably, a record # of Hispanics are switching party affiliations and '22 is widely predicted to be a blow-out year for Republicans in that fast-growing community.
re" "which Americans would..."? Speaking only for myself, that's possible, but highly unlikely, considering the very restrictive pre-conditions I would put on joining such an effort. First, there would need to be a reasonable prospect for success. Second, there would need to be a consensus on a rational form of government that would include freedom of expression, a right to effective self-defense, and economic liberty, all free from government interference, to follow that success. Gee, that all sounds vaguely familiar... Problem is that we did an extremely shitty job of "keeping it"... Regarding an uprising for its own sake, I regard that as a vain and ridiculous exercise in stupidity. I have no intention of risking my life to create a power vacuum that would be filled by despots likely even less principled and more evil (and almost certainly more petty) than those we already have.
I think the change will have to come electorally, state by state. Florida and Texas are leading the way, along with a few other reasonable places like Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Arkansas. Interestingly, these places are also growing in population, whereas the liberal paradises of New York, California, Mass., Conn., etc. are all just treading water or shrinking (except for massive influx of illegals to California).
I think that's true. Unfortunately the neocons have had such a strong hold on American politics in the 21st century, and politicians like Cheney was a primary signatory on The Project For A New American Century. Blinken is often referred to as a rising star among the neocons, who always push war seeking world wide domination. Also Nuland is there as well, and she played a significant role in the 2014 coup in Ukraine under Obama. She's married to Kagan, the biggest neocon of all.
I feel the same way, and if you heard him today it was such a turn off. I never liked him, and know about his past political career, and he used his position in the Senate to push the war in Iraq. I will give Obama credit for this one, and he right on target, "Biden has an “ability to f**k things up." Really didn't endorse him for president because he knew how character flawed and opportunistic he is. Now suffering from some form of senility it's worse.
It's a banality to say that, "Everyone has something to hide."
In today's world it could be as simple as Barack Obama's chrome bookmarks.
Of course, as Mr. Lamo said, I have no actual evidence, only a cost benefit analysis and a vast history of powerful people enacting MIC and Deep State plans and dreams. For 'some' reason.
Comey tried to blackmail Trump when he 'warned' him about the so called "pee tape", but he failed.
Having said that, Trump spent a lot of time working with the *deep state.
*The Deep State that some people here have recently tried to tell me that doesn't even exist! lol
Saying that the deep state doesn't exist is denying reality. Whether you call it the deep state, the intelligence community, name the groups individually ( CIA, DIA, NSA, etc.), or whatever, it's not debatable whether it exists.
Yes, made by Oliver Stone in 2016. It is spot on historically. Very prescient. It is on YouTube now with a disclaimer that it may upset some. Oh really?
Watch every minute of it. It's irrefutable evidence that this election was stolen using emergency covid election rule changes and drop boxes with unverifiable mail in ballots. They used cell phone data to track the mules and then corroborated it with video of the mules visiting the drop boxes at odd hours during the night. If the GOP shies away from this and doesn't push the media to address it, we know the deep state is not repairable.
I too was a registered democrat and became an independent after 4 years of listening to the dems try to oust an elected president with lies. Now in office they certainly have not rehabilitated their image, but only damaged it further.
All I see is a bunch of Republican lackeys sheltering in the shade of the Democrats’ disfavor. They ain’t doin’ shit to help this country. No one in Washington is. Gore Vidal was right.
I left the D's in 2008...no regrets....and after what they did to Trump 2016-2020 - with their Russia hoax and two faux impeachments complicit with the Security state (FBI, CIA, Clapper, Brennan, Comey, Strok, Page, etc). The probably corrupted 2020 election was really creepy. Add in the even creepier shakedown & violence of t BLM and cancel culture movements. The corruption is deep and disturbing. Never again will I vote for a Democrat candidate even if Jesus declared!
I left the Dems behind in 1976 (I'm very old). I always voted third party or independent until the Iraq invasion. I am ashamed to say I was so horrified that I actually voted for John Kerry and Obama in 2008! I quickly realized what a puppet he was and will NEVER vote D again. Even if Bernie Sanders were to somehow be the candidate because he has exposed himself as a phony tool as well.
I saw it. It's incontrovertible - and dovetails exactly with the 25-30 hours of State Senate testimony I watched right after the election in: Michigan, PA, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin ( it all props up the 15 state primaries that were stolen from Sanders in 2016). The testimonies were all from election volunteers, and lower level election admins - and I didn't see one "politico" or liar in the entire 30 hours. These people were passionate, informed citizens ( especially in PA - they had tons of IT specialists and ex-military that were supervising local precinct elections).
If anyone wants to see it - let me know - I paid for a link and I can share it with up to 5 people.
If I'm not mistaken you're blaming Biden for the coup we perpetrated in 2014 during Obama's presidency. In Glen's articles he doesn't hold Obama accountable for a coup that was to oust a pro-Russian president and install someone of our choice. A coup willing to work with neo-nazi's which ultimately led to what is going on now in Ukraine and may very well wind up going nuclear. Obama was president when Gaddafi was accused of committing a genocide instead of putting down a coup of his own, and the lie was used to kill him and destroy Libya. During Obama's administration a lot of weapons, many of them from Libya, fed extremist groups to take down Assad. Obama gets a pass, and I wonder why? Yes, Chomsky in an interview says there is "One Western statesman of stature who is pushing for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine rather than looking for ways to fuel and prolong it . His name is Donald J. Trump." However, he gets to repeat his nonsense that Trump is the most dangerous person in all of history. Imagine after a nuclear war with Russia someone going through the rubble comes across a video clip that managed to survive and they here Chomsky call Trump the most dangerous man in all of history, but he is the only statesmen who could have stopped this nuclear war. Please don't get the impression I like Biden. I absolutely never did.
Yeah, the Obama denial is highly frustrating to see. I apologize if I was harsh in how I came across it before....it's just so illogical. Obama as you said started Libya and Syria. There was nothing special about him other than he could give a good speech.
If anything, Obama is worse than other POTUS while in office, as he shifted the concept of foreign wars to a centrist political position, which allowed everyone to 'safely' gather round the war mongering lobby. Now Biden, Obama's former VP, is starting another war. I'm honestly surprised he hasn't gone into Yemen yet.
During Obama's initial run for office I read an article in the Progressive. I can't remember the author's name , but he was a black man who worked with Obama in Chicago politics and he warned that Obama was no liberal. I thought he was being harsh and voted for him, only to realize the author of the article was telling the truth. I think Obama did some good things, like the Iran deal, but too many wars under his watch. Clinton was his secretary of state and many people don't know that she supported a military coup in Honduras which got rid of president Zalaya who tried to offer some help to the Honduran people. Clinton just turned the country over to elites and made it worse then it was before. I am not going to let Obama off the hook for that one either. Greenwald ignores every bad thing that happened under Obama's watch.
“The ongoing validity of Obama's long-standing view of Ukraine (echoed by Trump), which persisted even after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 following a referendum, that Ukraine is of vital interest only to Russia and not the U.S., and the U.S. should never risk war with Russia over it;”
The worst thing Obama did was keep “Giggles” Clinton around…especially after her “we came, we saw, he died!” fiasco on “60 Minutes”.
I remember Obama's chants, but there were just too many wars, too much droning during his administration to not hold him accountable and just give him a pass. He was no liberal either when it came to US policies. I voted for him the first time, saw his cabinet picks and thought this doesn't look good, and for his eight years in office I never changed my mind.
Libya was Hillary's project, her, Rice and Power. Obama said he was "51/49" on doing Libya.
Obama called the complete lack of planning for a post-Gaddafi Libya the "biggest mistake of my Presidency".
Clearly though, post-war planning is not just something that a President, the MIC and State simply 'forget' about. So it was nothing like a mistake.
He did green light it though and so that entire atrocity is on him. And that rare thing, a female psychopath, Hillary Clinton. And Israel. A big part of American history has been America blundering around MENA slaying Israel's many enemies, whether real, imagined,or even potential.
Got a link to said video clip? I'm pretty sure that's a mis-read of what he said as I've heard him talking about this... Any statements of him about Trump to that regard are based on the stupidity of Trump in thinking we can use nuclear weapons. Here's an exact quote, "Why do we have them if we can't use them." The man was simply unaware, to stupid to get or pick your cause, to recognize that nuclear weapons have been a part of a (fairly reasonable perhaps) policy of "Mutually Assured Destruction if they WERE used (MAD - a great acronym as it accurately describes any idiot who wants to use them) - let us not forget that!
I DO GRANT that Trump has been the ONLY PRESIDENT to even TRY to end the war in / with Korea since the Armistice, but, well, most people forget that, and anyway, it's not lost on me he might well be against this war in Ukraine (not that I give a fuck about his thoughts as he's unlikely to ever hold office again) and he IS a buffoon - just one who tried to stop that particular conflict. So, while he has some positive attributes, he is, just like Biden, and EVERY president since, say, Carter, a WILDLY bad choice for POTUS... The GOOD choices RARELY even RUN. And that is one of our biggest problems today! That said Tulsi Gabbard would be a great choice, and even the not as good Bernie Sanders would be FAR better than anyone since Carter!
Carter? The most incompetent President in modern history (before Biden came along). Gas lines and the 16% mortgage I had on my first house. No thanks, I’ll take the mean tweets, low inflation and world peace, all day and all night.
People say democrats started their down hill turn during the Carter administration, but I dislike Bill Clinton who really shifted the democratic party to the right, not to mention he brought 3 countries into NATO. I really think if he hadn't begun to do that we wouldn't be facing the possibility of a nuclear war.
That Carter was incompetent is a right-wing trope that began during the campaign season for the 1980 election. However, he wasn't at all incompetent. Rather, he was sabotaged in the Senate by none other than Teddy Fucking Kennedy, who was trying to "primary" Carter. Now that the asshole is dead, the truth - and proof - has come out regarding at least some of that sabotage.
And, he did have the bad luck of a military blunder trying to rescue the hostages. And, he had the bad luck that the Republicans cheated very badly in that election, namely by Reagan's people promissing the Ayatollah Khomeini of military weapons for its occasional wars with Iraq in exchange for holding the hostages until after the 1980 POTUS elections (November '79). ...That this happened came out at the time but was disbelieved only to later be understood as true (by the alert) in a similar way to what happened with Hunter Biden's laptop. And, the victors write the history and so now it's a trope that Carter was incompetent.
SURE would be nice if people could see through the propaganda.
I thought I heard it on this tape, almost positive, but not now. I don't make things up as I go. Chomsky has often referred to Trump as the most dangerous criminal in all of history, google it. I don't hold the same highly prejudicial position on Trump that you do, but I am equally unhappy with many in political life and with some more then others. The democratic party took a nose dive and veered right under Clinton and it seems it's been downhill ever since. I certainly don't think that the first president in the 21st century which didn't have us in a war was thinking of going nuclear. No doubt more BS from the left. Now, it is disconcerting that Obama supplied Poland and Romania with a nuclear defense system claiming just in case Iran ran amok which really upset Russia, since they claimed it undermined Moscow's nuclear deterrent. Trump didn't do that. I see you support Tulsi Gabbard and I agree, but she doesn't clobber Trump either, and puts the blame for what is going on in Ukraine squarely on our continued NATO expansion. I heard her on Tucker Carlson discuss that in great detail. That expansion got underway with Bill Clinton. I supported Bernie, with hundreds of dollars during his 2016 campaign, but found him a total turn off after his loss as i listened to him extolling the virtues of a lying, war monger, Hilary Clinton.
I want to object to this notion that American imperialism and foolish foreign covert wars is "veering right". It's not left or right -- it's just wrong. It isn't obvious who calls the shots in this country but it clearly isn't the voters.
Trump also wondered about what good nuclear weapons are if he could not use them.
"Donald Trump asked a foreign policy expert advising him why the U.S. can’t use nuclear weapons, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said on the air Wednesday, citing an unnamed source who claimed he had spoken with the GOP presidential nominee.
“Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can’t we use them,” Scarborough said on his “Morning Joe” program.
Yeah, I saw that when I was looking for exactly what Trump did say, but a third-hand account from Joe Scarborough is too unreliable to quote. The only thing I found on record was this:
MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.
TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?
OK, given what I already wrote about Trump's attempt to end the Korean war, it's not that surprising to me Trump would propose something similar regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine. However, I was really talking about the assertion Chomsky had commented Trump was worse or comparable to Hitler.
According to a link in that article, he did say it. In my view, that's the most misguided thing I've ever heard from Chomsky who should know MUCH better than that. However, while I respect Chomsky immensely, he's been wrong a few times before - just like ALL of us!
I think this confrontation was seen as very plausible, if not desired when we helped to overthrow a pro-Russian president in the coup of 2014. Everything that was done in between was escalating the possibility of a confrontation with Russia and now the Biden White House is pushing for a long drawn out war and that is the reason we are so willing to feed Ukraine weapons. We are using them as human fodder to take down Russia. we did it once before in Afghanistan.
What do you mean by we didn't do this? I know I didn't, you didn't, but I'm not going to accept the idea that a secret cabal, or governmental agency, or the military, set policy for what is happening now. They certainly influence policy, and I'm willing to give a lot of credit to the necons who were in Obama's State Department and are in Biden's now. So yes, our government and elected officials are responsible, and should be held accountable.
I suggest to you, my friend, that you as yet have an incomplete perception of who and what the so-called (and very real) "Deep State" is. However, if you prefer to think that "our government" did this, well, OK.
Yet, I request you then ponder the substantial numbers of times our OFFICIAL representatives have been stonewalled and not informed about things that We, The People are _supposed_ to have control over and decide for ourselves. Just look at the famous instance of James Clapper lying repeatedly to Congress UNDER OATH about illegal surveillance of the citizens of the USA. (At the time he got away with it but it was later PROVEN to be a stack of lies.) ... This is SO pervasive that to think our CongressCritters know what's going on is, well, in my view, abjectly naive. And if THEY don't know, they can't control it and so if OUR only means of being a part of "we" is them... how can you support "we did this?"
I acknowledge the deep state. I've read Blum's book and recognize the horrible things we have done since WWII. I've read Anthony Perkin's book as well. You should make your point to Wikepedia who blames Trump for this misinformation, "According to a discredited American political conspiracy theory promoted by Donald Trump and his supporters,[1][2][3] the deep state is a clandestine network of actors in the federal government, high-level finance, and high-level industry operating as a hidden government that exercises power alongside or within the elected United States government.[4][5]"
"Making a point" to Wikipedia is like trying to tell the NSA to stop spying on Americans; if you change something and actually put in the correct information regarding any defended topic, it'll just get changed right back again and do it enough times and you'll get banned from editing / adding material at Wikipedia.
Even the founder of Wikipedia has walked away from it and says it's not what he intended and the defending of certain political mountain-tops is both unethical and immoral and that if he had it to do over again he'd have put in place rules to prevent this sort of thing...
I would hardly call Trump "pro-Russian", unless using slightly less unhinged rhetoric some of the time is the standard for being "pro-Russian" these days.
I think that had Trump been in the WH now, what is happening in Ukraine may very well not be happening. I don't think I said he was pro-Russian, although he did say during his presidential run in 2016 "What's wrong with getting along with Russia." He was duly chastised for that. His diplomatic trip to Russia met up with a lot of Trump bashing, if remember.
I agree, and I think I give him more of a pass because there was so little respect for him, and his presidency which the democrats were determined to take down. The media was harsh and critical and attacked not only him, but his base. Look at Chomsky who feels he is the only Statesman who really could deal with the Ukrainian crisis which I think would never have happened if Trump had been president, yet he continues to claim he is the worst criminal in history. A few years ago I tuned into a TV program, and at that point everyone was leaving the meeting. I haven't a clue as to what they were discussing. Trump was the last to leave and said in an off handed way about all our needless wars, the millions of lives lost and all the money spent which would have been better spent else where. He seemed genuinely sad. I know that presidents can get pushed into a corner, and be forced to make choices they wouldn't have made if they had a free hand, but nonetheless no wars under Trump which cannot be said of Obama. Four years of no wars and Biden picked one up in Ukraine that was waiting to happen. The ground work was set during the Obama administration.
Let's *try* to inject some simple facts here: If there was a US-backed 'coup' in 2014, *when* was Yanakovych actually removed and how?
He was ousted by CIA agents disguised as Maidan protesters, right, who stormed the capitol and dragged him off? Err... no, not really. Protesters didn't take over until after Yanokovych's government left and the buildings were already empty. And then these allegedly CIA-backed extremists (the Maidan protesters were mostly just middle class folks, actually, and 10s or 100s of thousands of them who had stood in freezing weather for months) had regular elections to select a *moderate* replacement. Well, the US at least pushed the Maidan protesters to remove him from office so they could force elections? Nope. The US and Germany (at least) openly pressured the Ukrainians to KEEP Yanokovych until the next scheduled election and got the opposition leaders to AGREE.
So how did Yanokovych actually end up out of office on 22 February? He left, after the agreement was made to NOT remove him on 21 February. Yanokovych was president. Ukraine also had a Prime Minister appointed by their Parliament. Yanokovych with his bloody crackdowns on the Maidan protests frittered away his coalition majority, triggering the election of a new prime minister. Yanokovych was *supposed* to then address Parliament as President on the 21st and instead fled first to Crimea and then to Russia with a great deal of cash.
Why? Ukraine was out of money. Yanokovych and his cronies had embezzled all of it. The sudden change in Prime Minister made the depth of the corruption impossible to hide. Piles of documents Yanokovych attempted to burn and shred were left behind, many floating in the river. Stunning amounts of cash and gold were also immediately found at the homes of Yanokovych cronies, in addition to what they tried to hide in off-shore banks or carried with them.
Yanokovych was provably not removed from office until AFTER he left Ukraine and effectively abdicated. He could not be 'impeached' through the regular process because he was not there, creating a constitutional crisis. Even so, Ukraine instituted early elections, elected a *moderate* who pledged to try to reconcile with Russia, and the parliament-appointed temporary government peacefully handed off power.
There was no 'coup', not CIA-backed or otherwise. Yanokovych LEFT because he knew he would end up proscuted for crimes he could no longer effectively hide.
Kidding right? Did you really think I would fall for this BS? Yanokovych was corrupt, no surprise. Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe and certainly does not negate the reality of a coup in 2014 in which we were totally complicit. It's not me who needs to be informed. Never heard of the conversation you can even hear on line between Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the ambassador to Ukraine at the time, and Nuland in Obama's state department? If you have, you heard them deciding who is going to take over the reigns of government in that country with Yanokovych gone. Do you think Hunter Biden got a job in an oil company, Barisma, where he had no expertise, but pulled in 50 thousand a month, because, just because? Don't you read? Did you see the documentary by Oliver Stone. Did you ever read Max Blumenthal on the coup, or Parry. No? Well, before you inject yourself as an expert, do some research.
Next, ask "if there was a US-backed 'coup' in Iran in 1953, *when* was Mohammed Mossadegh removed, and how?" You must either be completely ignorant of the operations methods of the US "national security" apparatus, or a deliberate shill for the Deep State.
So you are saying that the coup was really just an incredibly tenacious and (self-) organized 1/6, complete with fawning media coverage that in no way reflected US priorities, and that all the CIA and neocon luminaries just were in Kiev at the time because of the tourist attractions.
And Victoria $5,000,000,000 Nuland just was doing the coup plotters a favor when she appointed the new Ukrainian cabinet.
And when he was a candidate, Poroshenko promised a negotiated end to the war on Donbass "within 48 hours" but then he forgot and launched another disastrous attack, which led to Minsk-2, which the US really really really wanted him to uphold, but it had no way of pressuring him to do so, because Ukraine is just so sovereign and independent.
So you are saying that many thousands of Ukrainians stood outside in freezing weather for months, even after vicious beatings and fatalities because... what? A bunch of CIA people told them to? Why would they listen? How many CIA agents do you think that would take and how much money? And how *competent* has the CIA been with coup attempts over the years?
As for US officials being there, why not ask the same question about Germany? Or *Russia*? MANY countries had officials there at the moment, for darn obvious reasons. The Western ones openly worked to keep Yanokovych in place, not out of love for him, I'm sure, but consistent with the policy we have followed with both Russia and Ukraine for years: "keep the devil you know". That was a BAD policy from my view, but I don't think you can make a convincing argument that it was not our policy.
I have no love for Nuland, but what did she say? She said "F the EU", reiterating that, no, the US really did NOT care about the larger issue. She suggested that an individual appointment would not sit well with the US and that another would be better. The 'advice' was followed. Do I like that or think there was no pressure behind it? Not really no, but that is a far cry from an externally-fomented 'coup' which conflicts with ground reality on MANY levels. How much Russian 'advice' did Yanukovych follow? Where did he seek refuge?
That Yanukovych dutifully caved to Russian demands is what incensed people to stand out there in the cold-- and the Ukrainians themselves said that. The actually issue of the EU trade agreement quickly got sidelined in the protests. ("Euro Maidan" quickly became just "Maidan"). It was not a pro-EU movement, let alone a pro-US one, but a pro-sovereignty/nationalist movement and resistance to Russian hegemony. They only made closer ties with EU/US because we weren't Putin and the choices were rather limited.
OK, now we know that the CIA cannot carry out a coup if the weather is bad. Got it. (If you ever lived in Ukraine, you would know that you can raise a crowd of paid protesters, regardless of weather.)
Not only that, but the coups in Honduras, Bolivia and Egypt, to give a few recent examples, didn't happen. And the CIA ever always only conducts regime change operations to specifically install an openly pro-US puppet. They never ever would do a bait and switch. That would be unethical.
Also, Victoria Nuland said a few things other than "fuck the EU".. She also referenced a sum of money, five billion dollars spent on regime change to be specific. Not only that, she named the post-coup Ukrainian cabinet. That the people she named were in fact appointed is surely mere coincidence. And that is just one phone call.
Both sides in Washington like the idea of a war in which no American troops are involved. After Ukraine, the next step in Putin‘s program of reconstituting the Soviet Union would necessarily be to attack NATO, which would put American forces directly into combat.
After the fiasco in Afghanistan, the Biden administration must be glad that, for once, the US has an ally that doesn’t have to be bribed and cajoled into fighting.
Good god, you people are just too far gone for any discussion. Really? Biden took bribes from Ukraine? You pricks just make shit up and then, well, there you are, yet another stupid, baseless allegation to add to all of the rest. You people are just too fucked up.
Corruption is the most likely explanation why a Ukrainian oligarch would give Hunter Biden $50,000 per month position on the board of Burisma.
Hunter Biden doesn't speak Ukrainian and has no relevant experience in the oil and gas industry. He's a crackhead who fucked his dead brother's wife and then cheated on her with a stripper that he impregnated and tried to cheat out of child support until she got a DNA test and proved the baby was his.
Hunter Biden is the sort of guy you expect to see on Maury or the Dr. Phil Show. He didn't get that board position because of his business acumen. People all over the world aren't "investing" money with him because they think he's smart. He's not smart. He left his laptop with all of his e-mails (and pictures of himself smoking crack) on it at a computer repair store and forgot about it.
The most plausible reason why people give money to Hunter Biden is because they want favors from his dad. Nobody invests their money with a crackhead. Hunter is his daddy's little the bag man. If you want to bribe Joe, you go through Hunter.
"Corruption is the most likely explanation why a Ukrainian oligarch would give Hunter Biden $50,000 per month position on the board of Burisma."
I'm not sure if it is corruption, but it is true that people do believe that supporting relations and friends of those in power will increase their influence and it appears that this is precisely the case here. So, I do agree that "[t]he most plausible reason why people give money to Hunter Biden is because they want favors from his dad."
However, that doesn't support "If you want to bribe Joe, you go through Hunter." because hiring Hunter is intended by the employer to increase his influence. The employer did this to avoid a direct bribe, which he knows is illegal, but President Biden doesn't personally benefit from his son being hired and so it was a risk that didn't seem to work all that well as Hunter is not competent nor has much influence himself.
I wonder why you refuse to see Biden in a realistic light since so much evidence says the man is corrupt and a total opportunist. He even had to drop out of his 1987 run for president because stealing other people's speeches, like JFK and his bro. He believed in integration but no busing, a joke back then, and even his vice president during her presidential run called him a racist. Lied too about how his wife was killed, and blamed it on the man who ran into her after she entered his lane of traffic ignoring a stop sign. He used his wife's death to grab people's sympathy which would have had less impact if she were at fault. He marched during the civil rights movement, no. What about that lap top?
On April 28, 2014 British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky.
On May 12, 2014 Burisma put Hunter Biden on their board of directors.
On January 23, 2015 British officials give Zlochevsky the $23 million back.
Before Zlochevsky hired Hunter Biden, he was widely seen as a corrupt and was being targeted for sanctions by various Western Governments, including ours. So yeah, I'd say Zlochevsky got something out of the deal.
He pays Hunter Biden $3 million in "salary" over 5 years, he gets his $23 million back, and the corruption investigations stop. It's a good deal for him.
Your naivete is rather amazing, like gee lets give Biden's son a 50 thousand dollar a month job on the board of Burisma even though he's totally unqualified, and gee his papa doesn't have to know. Why? Not to mention this is not the only scandal involving Hunter and Joe Biden. I'm not going to respond to you anymore because your naivete is, well, unsettling. Even Glen Greewald left the Intercept because it refused him the right to publish information on the laptop, no doubt to secure a Biden win. That's why he's at substack. I'm not going to tell you to deal with reality because it's obvious you have no capacity to do so.
To force the issue that making shit up does nothing to improve the situation. Keep to the known facts. Saying "both sides" is bullshit, get specific and post evidence.
Oh, your the one who claimed until baby has a a mind he is an object. You should really rethink whose commentary is fucked up. Your thinking is very concrete on issues, and maybe that's why you don't see issues in a broader perspective.
Yes, because objects have no capacity for mind and until the fetus develops such capacity, it is an object and the woman is a being. Therefore her will is the only consideration as an object has no capacity for will, feeling, experience, etc.
Think about it. While corruption is systemic not every official is corrupt.
Keep to the evidence because it focuses on reality that can be dealt with. If Biden is not individually corrupt, then focusing on that "conspiracy theory" misses all those that are. If you think that the system is broken, then focus on very real proposed solutions, such as ending all human involved redistricting to be replaced by algorithms that use only population or not allowing any stock trades while in office, making it illegal for an ex-official to ever lobby for any compensation, making it illegal to accept any speech fees for more than the average, etc.
The real problem is human nature. Joe Biden's son Hunter and brother James apparently thought that they could use their relationship to the president as the way to fortune and this idea takes hold with every slouch who has a relative or close friend in office. This is endemic in any political system, including ours such as McConnell's wife and her family, Trump using his being in office to make money from his properties, Clinton's et al being paid enormous sums for speeches as payback, etc.
My girlfriend read "Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends" by Peter Schweizer and she said it was maddening. When discussing these topics, we should keep to facts and there are enough to not warrant making shit up.
Hunter Biden is living proof that Joe Biden is corrupt.
Taking someone from Raytheon's board of directors and putting them in charge of the Pentagon is also corrupt. Making an executive from the pharmaceutical industry the FDA director is corrupt too.
There are conflicts of interest all over the Biden Administration. This isn't unique to the Biden Administration. Other Administrations have been corrupt too, but Hunter Biden being such an idiot makes Joe Biden's corruption a lot more obvious.
Hunter Biden is a totally useless person. If his dad wasn't the president, he'd be living in a tent under a freeway somewhere. The only reason anyone gives him money is to get favors form his dad.
What, you got a problem with that? You need to live in Chicago for a while.
Seriously, it really angers me when Americans complain about corruption in other countries. Corruption is the norm in civilization, and the U.S. is as corrupt as anywhere.
Might be a billion-dollar typo: "less than three months is close to the Russia's total military budget for the entire year ($65.9 million)
If you would have told me ten years ago that Tucker Carlson and I would be in agreement I would have laughed. Yet here we are. I'm really at a loss for words on this Ukraine fiasco. Our government is corrupt beyond measure. And the banality of evil. Is there a country in the world the US government's "assistance" hasn't become death? Rev 6:8 via Johnny Cash comes to mind.
I agree with you albeit from the opposite side. Had someone told me five years ago I would be agreeing with people who supported Sanders for president, I'd have said I must have had a catastrophic brain injury. Yet here we are as reality inverts itself.
That's the thing - if 'we'* could ever get our act together, we would represent a clear and powerful majority.
*we: the disaffected from both sides of the political aisle who have come to find common ground on issues of sensible reason - opposing insane gender ideology, racist CRT, dangerous wars or hysterical public health policies...
But just think of how much better off the average Ukrainian was while the US ran over two dozen biolabs all across the country, and knowledgeable experts like Hunter Biden and Devon archer were able to help develop their energy industry.
That the US built said biolabs is a product of the right-wing media complex; there's zero evidence to support it. And there IS (admittedly old) evidence to support they're left over labs from the Soviet era. Sure, funding. But that's NOT the same as building....
Ahem… there is plenty of evidence most damning of which came straight from the horse’s mouth in a sworn congressional testimony. That horses name was Victoria Nuland who since 2014 has poured more gas on the Ukraine dumpster fire than anyone else on the planet. Glenn covered all that in depth not too long ago. Look it up
OK, I checked it out. ...It apparently doesn't say what you think it says, OR you missed the point I was trying to make. That video and what I asserted are not at odds in the slightest. MY point wasn't about that such labs exist, it was only about who CREATED them. Ukraine asserts they were left over from the Soviet Era and that's entirely plausible and nothing in that video refutes it in the slightest.
I NEVER SAID there were no biolabs, I was ONLY talking about WHO CREATED THEM. There's evidence the ones in Ukraine were left-overs from the Soviet era, refurbished for modern times.
Did you watch the testimony with nuland admitting details about the labs? It’s a disaster waiting to happen that we should not be involved with.
I’m sure no need to worry though, the government fixed all the problems that led to wuhan gain of function research and covid-19. Another right wing conspiracy theory.
Frustrating to be sure, but everyone needs to get smart and recognize (as did Hamilton, Madison, and Jay) that the source of the corruption is human nature, and that the solution is contained in carefully written laws that account for that fact. The average price tag for a congressional seat is now floating around 2 million dollars—every two years! That means that there is an incentive for congressmen to do the bidding of large donors in order to survive. The defense industry takes advantage of this fact by placing their commercial interests and activities in nearly every congressional district in the country and by generously sponsoring the respective congressional seats. Likewise, many jobs in each district depend on defense procurements such as the latest abomination with Ukraine. Okay, so everyone knows this, now what do we do to fix it? I propose that we amend the Constitution to change the wording of Article I, Section 2, clause 3 from “The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand,…” to read: “The number of Representatives shall *be at least*, but not exceed one for every thirty Thousand,…” In doing so, the people’s house would swell to over 10,000 members and be returned to its original function as an institution reflecting the will of each individual citizen (to the greatest extent practicable). Congressional seats would become much, much less susceptible to the influence of big money from the defense industry or any powerful faction, for that matter. Today’s technological advances in communications makes it possible to logistically organize such large numbers of representatives, thus overcoming the rationale that forced Congress to (shortsightedly, IMO) statutorily cap members at 435 around a century ago. Everyone needs to remember that politics, like competitive sports, is a struggle to contain the darker tendencies of our nature with smartly designed rules of play. Now, if we could just get the NBA to start enforcing the traveling rule, maybe they too can save themselves from their own darker tendencies.
Our taxes don't fund but the tinniest shard of our federal budget.
This is what fiat money - getting off the gold (and silver) standard(s) was all about when the Federal Reserve (which is neither Federal - they're entirely private - nor manage any "reserve") was created back in 1913... This is how the bankers rob us all blind!
$33 billion (let alone 40B) is more than Nasa's entire annual budget. It's approximately what we spent to bail out the failed auto makers GM and Chrysler. (GM never paid it back, either.) It's peanuts compared to the overall federal budget, but in absolute terms, it's still a crazy amount of money. A lot of countries spend literally that much on their annual defense budget. Russia's is listed as $60 billion (perhaps is understated). China's not much more (definitely is understated, but still).
For the U.S. to send that kind of aid to Ukraine is to turn us into a direct participant in the war. It's now a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia. How long before the Russians start arming Mexican drug cartels with surface-to-air missiles and other advanced weaponry, in retaliation? What will we say to that?
All while inflation continues to soar (yeah, 9% and change my ass). This is what happens when you let people with dementia run the country. Crazy ol Uncle Joe, pelosi, difi, mcconnell, and the whole fucking pack of em should have been retired decades ago!
Go back and listen to Ike's last SOTU speech where he calls out the Military Industrial (LEGISLATIVE) Complex. Sought or unsought, indeed!
Note also that the Legislative part was in his speech right up until the very last draft when he removed it with a note in the margins that he felt it was perhaps unseemly to call out congress during a speech he'd be giving in "their chambers." However, he forgot that they are OUR chambers. -ugh-
The trite and hackneyed "blame the military" tune isn't really at play here. This is about people who just can't stop spending money that simply doesn't exist. With some $6Trillion in the last 2 years ago for "covid" (and how much more now that China is seeing numbers rise again) Trillions with the Trump deficits, $10Trillion more (give or take) during each of obie's and w's reigns of plunder this is about a fiscal behavior that only a kid in a candy store, a teen in a whore house, or a demented old congressperson / senator could justify.
This sentence illustrates you don't actually know what the MILC actually is:
"The trite and hackneyed "blame the military" tune isn't really at play here."
I never said the military was. This is about the INDUSTRY that supplies them.
As for the military, they bear SOME culpability. For a good, non-partisan lesson on that, read the (now available free online) book "War Is A Racket" by one Smedley Butler, a rather famous general who refused to participate in a genuine insurrection attempt WAY back when!
Firstly, I'm quite aware of both Gen Butler's speech, and of Ike's speech. You're barking up the wrong tree - or I suspect intentionally distracting up the wrong tree.
My comment stands that feeble old leaders have no business making fiscal decisions.
Of any kind.
Whether the hemorrhaging of money that doesn't exist is to the MIC or to Silicon Valley or to Netflix and Comcast or Amazon and Tesla or United Health Care an Kaiser Health or Andrew Cuomo and Harvey Weinstein - they need to just. stop. doing it.!
I'm sure Butler gave many speeches; I was referring his BOOK. It's worth reading.
BTW, you here make comments you didn't state in the comment I replied to. OK, I'm not arguing, I actually have no comment about the rest of what you said - that stands (or not as various people may perceive) on its own.
Biden is not running anything. It was obvious during the campaign that a vote for him was a vote for his handlers, all of whom are world-class grifters and sociopaths. Blue voters happily voted early and often.
Blue apparatchiks took roll call at senior centers and homeless shelters, and booked the vote. Watch what happens in Arizona and Nevada when both Red and Blue apparatchiks try to book the senior center votes at the same Shady Acres communities at the same time... some seniors may vote 3 times this year.
And for 65 years I've heard the CIA reports of how advanced and powerful the Russian military was. All to sell those new arms. And now they're telling us how advanced the Chinese are.
They are all living in the past. At least Biden has a medical excuse. Though he was a nitwit his entire career so I am not letting him off the hook. The first Gulf War showed the Soviet/Russian stuff was crap.
I think you mean the Soviet failure in Afganistan, which was already a tiny, unpowerful country - and they lost. (So did we, BTW, which was not only entirely predictable, many of us, like ME, _did_ predict it!)
Heh, maybe Russia saw us pull out like amateurs and thought, "We've seen this before... it was followed by a collapse har har har." and decide it was time to remove all of those weapons caches and biolabs on their border.
BTW, your comment, if true, provides all the more reason to worry about Russia being "backed into a corner" and using a small one and initiating the end of certainly industrialized civilization, and very possibly the extinction of the vast majority of surface life on this planet.
I remember reading that about the bunkers. Here we would be fed 1960s vintage advertising featuring "duck and cover." I miss the ones of companies that were peddling bomb shelters you could bury in your back yard. But our sociopaths in office won't even give us that.
Nah, we won in Afghanistan. However, we got tired of fighting and ALLOWED the Taliban to retake the rural parts. During the Obama era, there were reports that many Taliban fighters were weary of war, and actually wanted to just go back to raising families. There was no way they could defeat the Americans. I believe had we stayed there and stayed the course, we could have eventually won the peace. Would it have been worth the human cost and the trillions spent? It's hard to say; maybe not.
Regarding us winning in Afghanistan; hardly! IF we had exited the minute Bin Laden was taken care of (known to be in Pakistan) - THEN we'd have "won," perhaps.
Meanwhile China's navy is operating by WWII line-of-sight style naval warfare.
We're using subs and ships that can send a missile north for ten miles, then turn 90 degrees and run for another 10 to hit someone who never even saw it.
People think the US MIC is God Almighty and such a power that can bring down even Russia and China if it wanted too.
LOL! WRONG!
Our MIC is in such a STATE that half our fleet of F-35 are not flight worthy. We have bern in desperate need of upgrade and innovation for YEARS
Meanwhile, on a much slimmer MIC budget Russia now has hypersonic nukes..And we DO NOT. Russia has the best air defense in the world that can thwart off a US NUKE. WE DO NOT .
The US is now GENERATIONS behind Russia/China upgrade and innovation.
There is a reason the MIC/DofD can never be audited
The Death Star is still fully operational, though you're right that information about Russia and China's capabilities has been grossly downplayed.
Yeah, Russia has hypersonic nukes.
That's insane.
But, most of the ballistic weapons most nuclear powers have are essentially impossible to defend against.
It's been that way since ballistic nukes have existed. Once they stop firing and go ballistic, they can't be tracked and hit their targets. That's an open secret of the US situation, but I imagine any ballistic weapon fired by anyone who has one can hit their targets without intervention possible.
you don't need hypersonic. Just shoot a bunch of MIRVs and even if 99 of them are shot down (which they won't be) the 100th one will hit the target and the country is effectively destroyed.
Russia' economy is smaller than California's. China now spends much more on its military than Russia, though neither even come close to U.S. military spending, and neither have hundreds of foreign military bases all over the world.
After the end of the first cold war, documents revealed that the CIA never really believed that the U.S.S.R. posed any military threat to the U.S. It was all propaganda to get support for the military/intelligence/industrial complex, and to keep Americans scared so that they do whatever they're told.
Borrowing money to save Germany, France and the UK from Putin without any requirement they pay the lions share. More stupidity and incompetence from our leaders who we will re elect in 6 months, insane. What could go wrong?
On top of that, the West's sanctions are actually helping China and, to some extent, India. When this is all over with, the U.S. will be a shrunken, irrelevant husk of a country.
Yes. The ruble is now 12% more valuable than when the (completely justified) attack from Russia- and sanctions began. Their economy is commodities based, and the ruble is GOLD BACKED. We are the only ones suffering ( and that's intentional, by the way).
LOL. It was a minor inconvenience - and has already been overcome. Putin has destabilized all of Western Europe and the U.S. economy - not his own. The world needs gas, oil, wheat, fertilizer, etc. They don't need U.S. dollars. At all.
They're not even bothering to hide their looting anymore. I'd wager that, just like the "pandemic" stimuli, half that money is getting siphoned right back into the beltway. They are all crooks in that town.
Absolutely true, that money isn't just loaded onto pallets and shipped to Kiev; it's being used to purchase U.S. gear, food, etc. Maybe also some European stuff. The amount of kickbacks and sweetheart deals this is going to spawn is mindboggling. Trump opposed ALL of this; little wonder they tried so hard to take him down.
The US started this war in 2014, when Zionist Vicki Nuland and her team of neolibs and neocons managed to overthrow the gov of Ukraine and put Neonazi militias on Russia's border, that have killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in E. Ukraine..
There is no democracy in Ukraine. It is literally a dictatorship backed by the US. Oh! Did I mention that Biden was appointed to orchestrate that regime change? And that Hunter became employed at corrupt BURISMA energy 3 weeks after regime change took place? Hunter's company Metabiota is also involved in the bio weapons labs there too..
The MASSIVE money laundering and corrupt STENCH from Ukraine wreaks all the way to the US. US taxpayer foreign aid is just a way to launder money to US politicians, with 10% going to the big guy!
There is never CONTEXT about this war when MSM does discuss it. Most Americans think it started when Russia invaded Ukraine. While Im a big follower of Independent News, I do watch Tucker because he is at least bringing this war and the money thrown at it to Americans attention.
The weapons being sent to Ukraine ARE NOT REACHING NAZI FIGHTERS!
Russia has all but destroyed Ukrainian air force, Navy and army. It BOMBS any convoys with weapons and has bombed railways and roads that lead out of Ukraine to places like Poland.
THIS WAR IS ALMOST OVER..
So WHERE is that money REALLY going while Americans suffer?
When WILL Americans wake up and see the massive GRIFT this really is?
These politicians are STEALING YOUR MONEY....
A very good analysis of the war can be found at Moon of Alabama blog
What do you think the U.S.’s reaction to Mexico allowing a Russian base would provoke here. Kissinger told them where the line was in the 90’s. This is about money. For them.
Unbelievable. WE CANNOT AFFORD THIS WAR right now. Inflation is skyrocketing. The stock market is flat or declining. The national debt is up 10 TRILLION DOLLARS IN THE LAST 10 YEARS AND IT IS ONLY GETTING WORSE. And people are surprised about inflation, like it's something that just happens for no reason!
The Ukraine was a corrupt money laundering hell hole before the war and it's even more so now. You'll notice we haven't heard a word from Blinken about peace talks and it's all been about "supporting the war effort". None of this money will be audited and I blame the GOP more than the war mongering wag the dog democrats.
It makes me wonder what the hell Biden is so scared of falling into the hands of the Russians that he will continue shoveling money into the country.
Oh, and typically when you're running a proxy war you don't brag about sharing the intelligence that destroys a ship. It sort of defeats the whole 'proxy' part of the war.
This is because the war in Ukraine is intended as an existential threat to Russia and Putin is treating it as such.
This is why, to give a few examples, Russia did not threaten nuclear weapons over Afghanistan (as this was never an existential threat to Russia) and the United States did nothing concrete about the Prague Spring of 1968.
The highest form of patriotism and loyalty should these sociopaths start WWIII would be to stop any nukes from going off and using whatever force is required to do so against anyone pushing for setting off the said nukes.
Note: Due to this development, the line of "How much money will end up back in the pockets of politicians?" has been raised from $20 billion to $25 billion. Wager responsibly!
I'm maybe sorta kinda a little reluctant to be pushed into a war with the Russkies by the same MF who likely pocketed bribes from Ukraine and whose party very probably rigged his victory.
The DGB will be along shortly to correct your dangerous misinformation, citizen! It's for your own good!
In case you missed it today, the head of the FDA is blaming disinformation as the cause for the recent decline in life expectancy. So now the DGB really has the ammunition to eliminate whatever it sees fit. Were these people always buffoons and we just overlooked it?
The decline in life expectancy in the USA is due primarily to the continual, bi-partisan (NOT non-partisan!) outflow of jobs and hollowing out of the middle-class, initiated by Reagan and continued by every president since, Republican AND Democrat, along with a majority of both party's "congressional delegations."
There are notable hold-outs and non-participants, such as Ross Periot (sp?) and also a few who caucus with the Democrats and a TINY handful of Democrats. ... It's hard to think of a single Republican who fought against it in their voting behavior.
Reagan literally saved us from stagflation and economic ruin, by reinvigorating capitalism. His policies (whether he knew it or not) laid the foundations for the massive tech boom of the 1990s and the resulting trillion-dollar companies that have dominated the world economy since early 2000s.
Doesn't anyone remember that Japan in the early 1980s was poised to take over the world? Then Reaganomics and his huge military buildup and the coincidental microcomputer revolution all happened, Japan experienced its Lost Decade while the American economy boomed. Today, the dominant search, mapping, computing, and shopping apps in Japan are Google, Google, Apple, and Amazon respectively. They're also big into Instagram. Not a single Japanese company dominates any software field (though Softbank does have a large investment presence), and the top mobile devices are all made in Korea, China, and Southeast Asia... along with almost all appliances, parts, chips, etc., while Japan has retreated to some high end robotics, Toyota cars (none of which are made in Japan any longer), etc.
In other words, the U.S. actually dominates, because of Reagan, in my opinion.
As for Ross Perot, he is deceased, unfortunately.
Sorry Terry, IMO, this was when the American exceptionalism hoopla was kicked up several notches.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-recession-of-the-early-1990s.html
"The Federal Reserve Bank sought to counter these concerns by embracing a restrictive monetary policy, through which they hoped to curb inflation and stabilize prices. The result was a dramatic limit in economic growth and one of the major causes of a recession".
"President Ronald Reagan's economic policy, or Reaganomics, had a profound effect on the United States. By cutting taxes on the very wealthy, the policy resulted in both an economic boom and insufficient funding of expenditures. The policy eventually led to large deficits and played a role in 'Black Monday' and the Stock Market Crash of 1987."
"... the deregulation of the savings and loan industry in the early 1980s allowed these institutions to compete with money market accounts and guarantee loans without federal oversight. As the result of riskier investing and lending practices, many savings and loans institutions went bankrupt and were unable to issue refunds to depositors..."
The deregulation of S&Ls actually happened under Jimmy Carter, who foolishly signed legislation that, among other things, raised FDIC protection from $40K to $100K for no good reason. Senior economists at the time warned against the deregulation. Unfortunately, Reagan came in not really understanding the issues, and things blew up.
The economic boom of the '90s actually resulted in budget surpluses, though mainly because of massive Dot Com cap gains windfalls and not because of government spending cuts. Reagan was admittedly unable to cut government spending, GHW Bush was basically a moron who launched a pointless war against Iraq, and also signed a large tax HIKE which unfortunately caused a lot of problems. Among other things, they enacted Kennedy's "luxury tax" on items of $100K or more, including luxury yachts, RV's, expensive jewelry and so forth. Once Clinton came in, along with a Dem Congress, all spending restraints were off. After a recession began in '92, it was discovered that this huge (25%, as I recall) tax devastated the luxury yacht industry, the last boat-making sector in the U.S., which sold to wealthy Japanese businessmen among others, causing thousands of layoffs of working class craftsmen and builders, Congress quietly rescinded the tax, after the damage was done. Idiots.
But the 90s rebounded, with the help of Newt Gingrich's Republican majority in 1994. I believe Reagan's greatest failure was his inability to rein in government spending. He did enact a federal hiring freeze the day he took office, but his military buildup more than offset those savings, and all of those agencies persisted.
Trump was clever. Given time and a supportive Congress, he might have actually succeeded in shrinking government. He called a hiring freeze, and in addition he began relocating agencies out of D.C. to the hinterland. For example, the Bureau of Land Management was moved out west to Colorado to be nearer to the actual land it manages. A farming bureau was moved to Kansas, sparking the mass resignation of a couple of hundred bureaucrats who refused to move. Getting these groups out of the Beltway was a brilliant move, though; D.C. is a country unto itself.
Under Trump, government receipts skyrocketed, and it's likely that had he been allowed to continue with his program of repatriating manufacturing and corporate capital, the U.S. budget might have balanced or even went into surplus within 5 years or so. Sadly, he was taken down, and the next guy reversed every one of his EO's and put the U.S. right back on the track of stagnation and industrial failure, completely without blowback from the clueless voters.
Ummm, bully for Reagan, he saved capitalism. Here we are 40 years later. Explain to me again how this has benefitted the average American again because I'm not seeing how making Google, Apple, and Amazon the dominant companies in their respective industries has done a damn thing for them.
Well, Google and Amazon didn't even exist during Reagan's time. Personally I don't approve of the cancel culture, censorship, and general oligarchy-ness of these Millennial-dominated corporations, but my basic point was that America rebounded because of its software dominance fostered by a more pro-business atmosphere under Reagan, and continued/renewed under Gingrich (and Apple increasingly has dominated mobile and desktop hardware through its brilliant software and excellent hardware implementations). The Japanese by contrast have excellent hardware but are missing the secret sauce of software, always a weakness for them. Note by the way that Tesla's secret is not so much its hardware by itself, but rather its next-level integration of software and hardware, for example their ability to remote-update their fleet through software upgrades over the air. I think of Tesla as a software company; their factories are highly automated and software-driven and of course guided y a brilliant visionary leader (who has suddenly become Democrat enemy #1, so maybe he won't be much longer). The Japanese are quite capable of catching up, in my opinion, but first they have to absorb and integrate these ideas, which is something they're very good at. I'm surprised that Toyota hasn't already come up with an answer to the Tesla roadster, but it's quite likely they will in the near future. They're making money with their massively hybrid-ized lineup, though.
This is right wing propaganda, all of it:
"Reagan literally saved us from stagflation and economic ruin, by reinvigorating capitalism. His policies (whether he knew it or not) laid the foundations for the massive tech boom of the 1990s and the resulting trillion-dollar companies that have dominated the world economy since early 2000s."
Reaganomics - his own VP come Pres GHWB called it 'voodoo economics' - set the stage for the hollowing out of the USA's manufacturing infrastructure and with it the good jobs that built the USA's middle class. Far from building up the USA, his administration, the most corrupt in USA's history (to that point anyway) with the most indictments of any administration in history (and might still be top in that regard), he set the stage for the poverty and homelessness that plagues much of the USA today.
Of course, his administration didn't do it alone; every administration since has done disservice after disservice to the citizens of the USA by putting the interests of the ultra-rich ahead of the interests of The People. But Reagan's policies literally paved the way into the abyss - policies like attacking Unions, ending The Fairness Doctrine, loosening the restrictions on just about everything that was protecting The People, from pollution regulations to anti-trust, permitting consolidations that helped a few corps gain monopoly or near monopoly status in most markets, and I could go on and on and on.
This was also just propaganda, this time ordinary MSM propaganda:
"Doesn't anyone remember that Japan in the early 1980s was poised to take over the world?"
The booming USA you speak of in that paragraph was built upon the decay and hollowing out of American Workers and the middle-class, it was just hard to see at the time because we were still too close to it in time and the media stayed away from it - and still does as much as it can. While Wall Street soared through the gains of business from automation, millions of workers were put out of high paying jobs all together or forced into dramatically reduced pay. ... Apparently you think that's a good thing.
"In other words, the U.S. actually dominates, because of Reagan, in my opinion."
You're welcome to your own opinion, of course, and my opinion of yours is it's ill-considered, ill-informed, or both.
"As for Ross Perot, he is deceased, unfortunately."
Agreed.
Graham-Leach-Bliley was also key. It was passed on Clinton's watch and allowed Investment Banks to tank up at the Savings Banks pumps before heading to the stock market. Not being a paritsan jerk here, both parties, as you mention, screwed over the everyman for decades in between bouts of political finger pointing, but 'credit' where 'credit' is due.
Even taking your statement as given, the right solution at a given time in a given situation does not make that the right solution at all times and in all situations.
Quite the opposite.
"Know when to hold em
Know when to fold em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run..."
Those who seek a power higher than that of Kenny Rogers may wish to review the Book of Ecclesiastes.
No, Reagan did not save us. The economy runs on its own cycles and government has little to do with it. for example, the inflation, not stagflation, of the early-70s was fought with very high interest rates to a) protect savers and (b) make borrowing too expensive (https://www.macrotrends.net/2497/historical-inflation-rate-by-year).
Reagan's trickle-down economics that shifted wealth to the top and lower taxation on capital gains, that was originally intended to protect savers from inflation, increased the risk of speculative bubbles and increased the income gaps between lower earners and the top: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/02/349863761/40-years-of-income-inequality-in-america-in-graphs
Also, Reagan ended all drives to a sustainable economy as he and his libertarian supporters argued that the market should be left alone to pick winners, fossil fuels, and losers, wind and solar, that created the current global warming mess that we're in. We could have had fast reactors replace all fossil fuel fired power plants that would also provide hydrogen that would replace oil. We can thank libertarian market bullshit for all of our problems that could have been resolved with competent leadership.
Agreed that economic cycles are independent of who happens to be in power. Yet, Reagan in his first term came in with a GOP majority that cut corporate taxes drastically, including cap gains, giving a big boost. At the same time, of course, Volcker was tightening the monetary supply and jacking up interest rates to combat inflation, resulting in a steep recession in '81-82, but then the economy rebounded and really took off.
Whenever someone calls it "trickle-down", I tend to tune out. Sure Reagan's team did use that term. But I had friends running businesses at the time, one-man consultancies and such, that were absolutely not wealthy or uber-rich or 1%-ers, who benefited greatly from the tax cuts. It encouraged entrepreneurship. If that's trickle-down, then give me more of it.
Income gaps are a liberal foil. What's the income of the average rich person? A couple hundred thousand a year? A few million for a corporate executive officer? That's peanuts. The real wealth is in stock ownership.
While he was CEO of Amazon (not sure what his actual role is now), Jeff Bezos annual salary was about $200K, even though he owned $100B of Amazon stock. He founded the company, and has held onto his stocks for 20+ years, selling about $1B or $2B a year to fund his Blue Origin space company. By the way when he started out, he was helping pack books into boxes and ship them off. Is he income-gap-1-percenter-fucking-richie? That sounds like pure jealousy to me. Self-made man, the American dream, changed the world. He deserves every penny. Ditto Elon Musk.
Now if you want to say, Mary Barra of GM, who's paid $40m/year, is grossly overpaid, you may have a point, but that's really between her and the board. If the board is really that stupid... GM is circling the drain; no one buys anything they make, other than GMC trucks. Their quality sucks. They discontinued their EV program even though they claim they're electrifying the entire fleet. They were bailed out by the U.S. government, and have not paid it back. They're just a shriveled little husk of what they once were. So does she deserve that kind of pay? Of course not; she should get a million or so, plus stock options, and performance bonus based on multi-year results. The other $39m should be invested in several hundred bright young engineers to help them design & build the next generation of products.
As for "sustainable economy" what nonsense. Oil and gas confer vast wealth on the country, and that wealth is used to develop the green alternatives. Without wealth, we're living on a credit card. By basically shutting down oil and gas exploration, Biden just proved that beyond a doubt.
Reagan has nothing to do with it. If anything, you'd be a lot more correct saying Al Gore with him inventing the Internet is responsible.
Reagan, as Art states, had begun the journey to the ruin we are witnessing now.
Reagan did start us down this path of ruin and dysfunction with his trickle-down economics and government is bad bullshit. Gore won the election but the Republican SCOTUS stopped the Florida vote count and thus installed Bush. The Republican Party is the enemy.
Your reply brings up a lot, but I have to cook dinner now. Hopefully I'll have enough time tomorrow AM...
C'mon Art, dinner's got to be over by now. What say ye'?
"We've got one who can see!" - alien, They Live
I think that they were in hiding up until now. Whether out of TDS and going berserk as a result, arrogance or simply indifference, they made themselves visible, and their egos propel them forward at an alarmingly accelerating rate.
Exactly. The disinformation leading to lower life expectancy has always been the bullshit "food pyramid" approved by the FDA.
Amen...the food lobby has it's tentacles deep into the FDA.
Yes, and not everyone overlooked it...
I bet they have all kinds of footage of Hunter partying with hookers and doing G.G. Allin-sized amounts of substances.
Also, the establishment cunts are only good at doing ONE job: funneling the money-machine funds into the pockets of wealthy donors whose board members breeze into and out of the Pentagon, foreign relations committees, the presidents' cabinets...
They're at the helm of the Titanic and are kicking people away while they keep the throttle jammed at full speed ahead.
I don't think the mid-terms will accomplish anything and don't really expect we'll even SEE a 2024 presidential and general election. Some shit's gonna go down for sure, but who can guess what?
Too much to keep track of.
No amount of voting, no matter which side you're on, NOTHING will change until Americans overthrow their gov..
Nothing short of revolt will do it
It is simply too corrupt with too many psychopaths.
They've removed their masks but still too many in DENIAL
Chris Hedges seems to think there will be some kind of right-wing religious fascism that will spread and replace the right-wing secular fascism.
That is assuming we make it that far. *laughs weakly and stares into the distance
Right--because the U.S. has more to worry about from some church-goers than from the Alt-Left sociopaths currently in control of all major institutions, both houses of Congress, and the Presidency.
What a bunch of shit.
All those church goers were torching buildings and killing people in the summer of 2020 - don't you remember? <sarc>
I am aware of Chris Hedges' prediction. I respect him for telling the truth as he sees it without fear or favor, but to me it doesn't matter who has nominal control of the government so much as who controls the economy, which in turn determines the hegemonic class. Because the hegemonic class is hegemonic, their values are treated as normative.
Barring something really unforeseen, I don't see "right wing religious fascist" types supplanting the PMC as the hegemonic class.
Any orders from a "right wing religious fascist" would be seen as illegitimate, to the extent that they conflicted with PMC directives, and resistance to those orders would be seen as legitimate, to the extent resistance was in line with PMC directives.
Trump was hardly a "right wing religious fascist" but the resistance to Trump, both in and out of government, is most instructive. To give an example, military personnel were openly undermining the authority and flouting the orders of the C-in-C and they were effectively immune from punishment, because those orders did not align with PMC objectives. In fact, those same military personnel were treated as heroes, because they were responding the interests of the hegemonic class.
Chris Hedges is a very bright man and I respect his writing and opinions. That said, he seems to be fixated on right-wing religious fascists that are nowhere to be found. The Neocons (Max Boot, Kagan, Bolton, Bill Kristol) are hardly in this category and they're the ones who have ginned up this proxy war that has the potential to explode. As it turns out, fascism in America was not a cross wrapped in flag but a little blue bird being choked by censors with advanced degrees.
"As it turns out, fascism in America was not a cross wrapped in flag but a little blue bird being choked by censors with advanced degrees."
Marvelous writing, thanks!
That's an interesting prediction; I wonder if he's just saying it speculatively, or basing it on observable trends. Based on my reading, evangelical Christianity has been in decline in recent years. But, maybe it's a sleeping giant, about to reawaken.
By the way, interestingly, the most religious/observant branch of Judaism -- Orthodox -- also have the highest birth rates of almost any other group in the U.S., and in about 20-30 years is projected to balloon from 20% today to about 50% of all Jews in the U.S. by mid-century. In my personal opinion, these estimates are too conservative. Liberal/secular Jews are at the forefront of gender fluidity and all that crap, and you know, gender fluid types don't have children.
And by the way, Orthodox Jews are politically conservative; they mostly voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, for example. For that matter, assimilated/English-fluent Hispanics also tend to vote conservative; about 50% of them voted for Trump, compared to around 20% of all Hispanics on average. In other words, over time, Hispanics will be a potent Republican voting bloc. Already polls are suggesting that they're disenchanted with Democrat insanity and significant numbers are switching affiliation. 2022 should be an interesting election year.
Which Americans would overthrow it, though? Some 40-50% of Americans are fat and happy even as the ship sinks. Many on the right are starting to seriously predict civil war as the ultimate end result of the madness. We are so divided, so separated into bubbles, that it appears there is no chance of reconciliation in our lifetimes.
I myself am married to a liberal who listens to NPR all day and refuses to even consider the conservative ideas I am inundated with from my sources (though much more varied than hers). The tech oligarchy, the "mainstream" legacy news, and the liberal mindset have closed these people off from our version of reality, have indoctrinated them for 2-3 generations in K-12 and colleges, and now we are dealing with essentially an ideological divide that is beyond repair, except for a few "red pilled" former Democrats who are waking up. I wish I could red-pill my wife. I'm working on it.... At least my daughter hears both sides, and she's no liberal, at least right now in her late teens... we'll see what college does to her. (I'm encouraging her to consider $8K/year community college rather than the $70K/year liberal arts colleges my wife is pushing).
I think the immigrants will ultimately help. Assimilated Hispanics actually tend to vote conservative; although 70-80% of Hispanics vote Democrat overall, about 50% of fluent-English Hispanics said they voted for Trump in 2016, for example, and that number surely increased in '20. This year, remarkably, a record # of Hispanics are switching party affiliations and '22 is widely predicted to be a blow-out year for Republicans in that fast-growing community.
So, maybe there's a glimmer of hope!
re" "which Americans would..."? Speaking only for myself, that's possible, but highly unlikely, considering the very restrictive pre-conditions I would put on joining such an effort. First, there would need to be a reasonable prospect for success. Second, there would need to be a consensus on a rational form of government that would include freedom of expression, a right to effective self-defense, and economic liberty, all free from government interference, to follow that success. Gee, that all sounds vaguely familiar... Problem is that we did an extremely shitty job of "keeping it"... Regarding an uprising for its own sake, I regard that as a vain and ridiculous exercise in stupidity. I have no intention of risking my life to create a power vacuum that would be filled by despots likely even less principled and more evil (and almost certainly more petty) than those we already have.
I think the change will have to come electorally, state by state. Florida and Texas are leading the way, along with a few other reasonable places like Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Arkansas. Interestingly, these places are also growing in population, whereas the liberal paradises of New York, California, Mass., Conn., etc. are all just treading water or shrinking (except for massive influx of illegals to California).
Well, if we don't have a nuclear war, which is in the making, I think some hope remains.
The frightening thing is that the hope in question relies almost wholly with Putin's judgement.
I think that's true. Unfortunately the neocons have had such a strong hold on American politics in the 21st century, and politicians like Cheney was a primary signatory on The Project For A New American Century. Blinken is often referred to as a rising star among the neocons, who always push war seeking world wide domination. Also Nuland is there as well, and she played a significant role in the 2014 coup in Ukraine under Obama. She's married to Kagan, the biggest neocon of all.
Rising star??? Ye gods! Blinken's a blinking idiot.
A Blinken neocon idiot.
I fear the judgement of the senile jackass in the White House and his handlers even more than Putin's.
I feel the same way, and if you heard him today it was such a turn off. I never liked him, and know about his past political career, and he used his position in the Senate to push the war in Iraq. I will give Obama credit for this one, and he right on target, "Biden has an “ability to f**k things up." Really didn't endorse him for president because he knew how character flawed and opportunistic he is. Now suffering from some form of senility it's worse.
NSA has complete files on everyone in the power structure.
Blackmail is the name of the game.
IOW, "Who cares who wins the election if they can simply blackmail the winner?"
"If you haven't done anything wrong, you should have nothing to hide."
Putting aside the naivety of that statement, what if our elected representatives have done something wrong and want to hide it?
It's a banality to say that, "Everyone has something to hide."
In today's world it could be as simple as Barack Obama's chrome bookmarks.
Of course, as Mr. Lamo said, I have no actual evidence, only a cost benefit analysis and a vast history of powerful people enacting MIC and Deep State plans and dreams. For 'some' reason.
Comey tried to blackmail Trump when he 'warned' him about the so called "pee tape", but he failed.
Having said that, Trump spent a lot of time working with the *deep state.
*The Deep State that some people here have recently tried to tell me that doesn't even exist! lol
Saying that the deep state doesn't exist is denying reality. Whether you call it the deep state, the intelligence community, name the groups individually ( CIA, DIA, NSA, etc.), or whatever, it's not debatable whether it exists.
That's a plausible seeming but (by definition) unprovable assumption.
If Jeffrey Epstein was not a Mossad/CIA blackmail operation I will eat my hat! ;)
Can they do it?
"Yes"
Will they benefit from doing it?
"Yes"
So are they doing 'it'?
"For sure"
"What about the law, morality, and common human decency?"
No effect.
Check out “Ukraine on Fire”, it’ll open your eyes. Banned on YouTube, which is a high recommendation indeed.
Yes, made by Oliver Stone in 2016. It is spot on historically. Very prescient. It is on YouTube now with a disclaimer that it may upset some. Oh really?
On Rumble.
INDEED!
Have you watched 2000 mules yet?
I've not yet, but I do know it was rigged. Just like they did in the 2016 and 2020 primary
I changed to Independent in 2016 after voting D for 35 years..
Never again
Watch every minute of it. It's irrefutable evidence that this election was stolen using emergency covid election rule changes and drop boxes with unverifiable mail in ballots. They used cell phone data to track the mules and then corroborated it with video of the mules visiting the drop boxes at odd hours during the night. If the GOP shies away from this and doesn't push the media to address it, we know the deep state is not repairable.
I too was a registered democrat and became an independent after 4 years of listening to the dems try to oust an elected president with lies. Now in office they certainly have not rehabilitated their image, but only damaged it further.
All I see is a bunch of Republican lackeys sheltering in the shade of the Democrats’ disfavor. They ain’t doin’ shit to help this country. No one in Washington is. Gore Vidal was right.
Okay,
I left the D's in 2008...no regrets....and after what they did to Trump 2016-2020 - with their Russia hoax and two faux impeachments complicit with the Security state (FBI, CIA, Clapper, Brennan, Comey, Strok, Page, etc). The probably corrupted 2020 election was really creepy. Add in the even creepier shakedown & violence of t BLM and cancel culture movements. The corruption is deep and disturbing. Never again will I vote for a Democrat candidate even if Jesus declared!
I left the Dems behind in 1976 (I'm very old). I always voted third party or independent until the Iraq invasion. I am ashamed to say I was so horrified that I actually voted for John Kerry and Obama in 2008! I quickly realized what a puppet he was and will NEVER vote D again. Even if Bernie Sanders were to somehow be the candidate because he has exposed himself as a phony tool as well.
Glad you woke up!
I saw it. It's incontrovertible - and dovetails exactly with the 25-30 hours of State Senate testimony I watched right after the election in: Michigan, PA, Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin ( it all props up the 15 state primaries that were stolen from Sanders in 2016). The testimonies were all from election volunteers, and lower level election admins - and I didn't see one "politico" or liar in the entire 30 hours. These people were passionate, informed citizens ( especially in PA - they had tons of IT specialists and ex-military that were supervising local precinct elections).
If anyone wants to see it - let me know - I paid for a link and I can share it with up to 5 people.
If I'm not mistaken you're blaming Biden for the coup we perpetrated in 2014 during Obama's presidency. In Glen's articles he doesn't hold Obama accountable for a coup that was to oust a pro-Russian president and install someone of our choice. A coup willing to work with neo-nazi's which ultimately led to what is going on now in Ukraine and may very well wind up going nuclear. Obama was president when Gaddafi was accused of committing a genocide instead of putting down a coup of his own, and the lie was used to kill him and destroy Libya. During Obama's administration a lot of weapons, many of them from Libya, fed extremist groups to take down Assad. Obama gets a pass, and I wonder why? Yes, Chomsky in an interview says there is "One Western statesman of stature who is pushing for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine rather than looking for ways to fuel and prolong it . His name is Donald J. Trump." However, he gets to repeat his nonsense that Trump is the most dangerous person in all of history. Imagine after a nuclear war with Russia someone going through the rubble comes across a video clip that managed to survive and they here Chomsky call Trump the most dangerous man in all of history, but he is the only statesmen who could have stopped this nuclear war. Please don't get the impression I like Biden. I absolutely never did.
Yeah, the Obama denial is highly frustrating to see. I apologize if I was harsh in how I came across it before....it's just so illogical. Obama as you said started Libya and Syria. There was nothing special about him other than he could give a good speech.
If anything, Obama is worse than other POTUS while in office, as he shifted the concept of foreign wars to a centrist political position, which allowed everyone to 'safely' gather round the war mongering lobby. Now Biden, Obama's former VP, is starting another war. I'm honestly surprised he hasn't gone into Yemen yet.
During Obama's initial run for office I read an article in the Progressive. I can't remember the author's name , but he was a black man who worked with Obama in Chicago politics and he warned that Obama was no liberal. I thought he was being harsh and voted for him, only to realize the author of the article was telling the truth. I think Obama did some good things, like the Iran deal, but too many wars under his watch. Clinton was his secretary of state and many people don't know that she supported a military coup in Honduras which got rid of president Zalaya who tried to offer some help to the Honduran people. Clinton just turned the country over to elites and made it worse then it was before. I am not going to let Obama off the hook for that one either. Greenwald ignores every bad thing that happened under Obama's watch.
From https://greenwald.substack.com/p/war-propaganda-about-ukraine-becoming?s=r
“The ongoing validity of Obama's long-standing view of Ukraine (echoed by Trump), which persisted even after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 following a referendum, that Ukraine is of vital interest only to Russia and not the U.S., and the U.S. should never risk war with Russia over it;”
The worst thing Obama did was keep “Giggles” Clinton around…especially after her “we came, we saw, he died!” fiasco on “60 Minutes”.
Don’t forget the exploits of Victoria “Fuck the EU” Newland. We wouldn’t want to deny her chances for the political hack trophy, too.
I remember Obama's chants, but there were just too many wars, too much droning during his administration to not hold him accountable and just give him a pass. He was no liberal either when it came to US policies. I voted for him the first time, saw his cabinet picks and thought this doesn't look good, and for his eight years in office I never changed my mind.
Never forget the faction that wants war on Russia. They exist and they have never been more powerful.
Libya was Hillary's project, her, Rice and Power. Obama said he was "51/49" on doing Libya.
Obama called the complete lack of planning for a post-Gaddafi Libya the "biggest mistake of my Presidency".
Clearly though, post-war planning is not just something that a President, the MIC and State simply 'forget' about. So it was nothing like a mistake.
He did green light it though and so that entire atrocity is on him. And that rare thing, a female psychopath, Hillary Clinton. And Israel. A big part of American history has been America blundering around MENA slaying Israel's many enemies, whether real, imagined,or even potential.
Obama was even warned by people in the Pentagon if I remember correctly, and I agree with what you say, but Obama could have stopped it.
Yes, for sure, he bears complete moral and legal responsibility.
Female psychos aren’t all that rare…Madam Nhu of Vietnam, Madleine Albright, Gina Haspell of the CIA…
They rise high in the political world, an arena that self selects for narcissists, liars and the conscience free; so they are over-represented there.
Still though, Amber Heard aside, men still dominate the psychopathology race! :)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/articles/201906/why-female-psychopaths-are-different-breed#:~:text=Psychopaths%20exist%20across%20cultures%20and,0.3%E2%80%930.7%20percent%20for%20females.
Got a link to said video clip? I'm pretty sure that's a mis-read of what he said as I've heard him talking about this... Any statements of him about Trump to that regard are based on the stupidity of Trump in thinking we can use nuclear weapons. Here's an exact quote, "Why do we have them if we can't use them." The man was simply unaware, to stupid to get or pick your cause, to recognize that nuclear weapons have been a part of a (fairly reasonable perhaps) policy of "Mutually Assured Destruction if they WERE used (MAD - a great acronym as it accurately describes any idiot who wants to use them) - let us not forget that!
I DO GRANT that Trump has been the ONLY PRESIDENT to even TRY to end the war in / with Korea since the Armistice, but, well, most people forget that, and anyway, it's not lost on me he might well be against this war in Ukraine (not that I give a fuck about his thoughts as he's unlikely to ever hold office again) and he IS a buffoon - just one who tried to stop that particular conflict. So, while he has some positive attributes, he is, just like Biden, and EVERY president since, say, Carter, a WILDLY bad choice for POTUS... The GOOD choices RARELY even RUN. And that is one of our biggest problems today! That said Tulsi Gabbard would be a great choice, and even the not as good Bernie Sanders would be FAR better than anyone since Carter!
Carter? The most incompetent President in modern history (before Biden came along). Gas lines and the 16% mortgage I had on my first house. No thanks, I’ll take the mean tweets, low inflation and world peace, all day and all night.
People say democrats started their down hill turn during the Carter administration, but I dislike Bill Clinton who really shifted the democratic party to the right, not to mention he brought 3 countries into NATO. I really think if he hadn't begun to do that we wouldn't be facing the possibility of a nuclear war.
At least Carter didn't have an insane "open borders" agenda that is going to create innumerable hardships for far too many Americans going forward.
That Carter was incompetent is a right-wing trope that began during the campaign season for the 1980 election. However, he wasn't at all incompetent. Rather, he was sabotaged in the Senate by none other than Teddy Fucking Kennedy, who was trying to "primary" Carter. Now that the asshole is dead, the truth - and proof - has come out regarding at least some of that sabotage.
And, he did have the bad luck of a military blunder trying to rescue the hostages. And, he had the bad luck that the Republicans cheated very badly in that election, namely by Reagan's people promissing the Ayatollah Khomeini of military weapons for its occasional wars with Iraq in exchange for holding the hostages until after the 1980 POTUS elections (November '79). ...That this happened came out at the time but was disbelieved only to later be understood as true (by the alert) in a similar way to what happened with Hunter Biden's laptop. And, the victors write the history and so now it's a trope that Carter was incompetent.
SURE would be nice if people could see through the propaganda.
A few more years of this administration and we'll begging to have Carter.
I thought I heard it on this tape, almost positive, but not now. I don't make things up as I go. Chomsky has often referred to Trump as the most dangerous criminal in all of history, google it. I don't hold the same highly prejudicial position on Trump that you do, but I am equally unhappy with many in political life and with some more then others. The democratic party took a nose dive and veered right under Clinton and it seems it's been downhill ever since. I certainly don't think that the first president in the 21st century which didn't have us in a war was thinking of going nuclear. No doubt more BS from the left. Now, it is disconcerting that Obama supplied Poland and Romania with a nuclear defense system claiming just in case Iran ran amok which really upset Russia, since they claimed it undermined Moscow's nuclear deterrent. Trump didn't do that. I see you support Tulsi Gabbard and I agree, but she doesn't clobber Trump either, and puts the blame for what is going on in Ukraine squarely on our continued NATO expansion. I heard her on Tucker Carlson discuss that in great detail. That expansion got underway with Bill Clinton. I supported Bernie, with hundreds of dollars during his 2016 campaign, but found him a total turn off after his loss as i listened to him extolling the virtues of a lying, war monger, Hilary Clinton.
I want to object to this notion that American imperialism and foolish foreign covert wars is "veering right". It's not left or right -- it's just wrong. It isn't obvious who calls the shots in this country but it clearly isn't the voters.
Okay.
We mostly agree.
that quote was from Madeleine Albright. It's so easy for things to get convoluted.
Albright's quote referred to the military: "What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about, if we can’t use it?"
Trump's statements on nuclear weapons were always confusing and inconsistent. But he did ask why we were making them, which is a good question.
Trump also wondered about what good nuclear weapons are if he could not use them.
"Donald Trump asked a foreign policy expert advising him why the U.S. can’t use nuclear weapons, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said on the air Wednesday, citing an unnamed source who claimed he had spoken with the GOP presidential nominee.
“Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can’t we use them,” Scarborough said on his “Morning Joe” program.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-nukes-msnbcs-joe-scarborough-reports.html
Yeah, I saw that when I was looking for exactly what Trump did say, but a third-hand account from Joe Scarborough is too unreliable to quote. The only thing I found on record was this:
MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.
TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?
What quote?
In case I wasn't clear, I was talking about what CHOMSKY said!
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/05/01/noam_chomsky_says_trump_is_the_one_western_statesman_pushing_for_diplomacy_to_end_war_in_ukraine.html
OK, given what I already wrote about Trump's attempt to end the Korean war, it's not that surprising to me Trump would propose something similar regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine. However, I was really talking about the assertion Chomsky had commented Trump was worse or comparable to Hitler.
According to a link in that article, he did say it. In my view, that's the most misguided thing I've ever heard from Chomsky who should know MUCH better than that. However, while I respect Chomsky immensely, he's been wrong a few times before - just like ALL of us!
Thanks Brad. ... Gotta cook now but I'll try and check it out in the AM tomorrow.
The Big Guy's 10% is all that matters.
War ON Russia.
ON, just like all your other wars.
I think this confrontation was seen as very plausible, if not desired when we helped to overthrow a pro-Russian president in the coup of 2014. Everything that was done in between was escalating the possibility of a confrontation with Russia and now the Biden White House is pushing for a long drawn out war and that is the reason we are so willing to feed Ukraine weapons. We are using them as human fodder to take down Russia. we did it once before in Afghanistan.
"WE" didn't do this; the Deep State did (and is).
What do you mean by we didn't do this? I know I didn't, you didn't, but I'm not going to accept the idea that a secret cabal, or governmental agency, or the military, set policy for what is happening now. They certainly influence policy, and I'm willing to give a lot of credit to the necons who were in Obama's State Department and are in Biden's now. So yes, our government and elected officials are responsible, and should be held accountable.
I suggest to you, my friend, that you as yet have an incomplete perception of who and what the so-called (and very real) "Deep State" is. However, if you prefer to think that "our government" did this, well, OK.
Yet, I request you then ponder the substantial numbers of times our OFFICIAL representatives have been stonewalled and not informed about things that We, The People are _supposed_ to have control over and decide for ourselves. Just look at the famous instance of James Clapper lying repeatedly to Congress UNDER OATH about illegal surveillance of the citizens of the USA. (At the time he got away with it but it was later PROVEN to be a stack of lies.) ... This is SO pervasive that to think our CongressCritters know what's going on is, well, in my view, abjectly naive. And if THEY don't know, they can't control it and so if OUR only means of being a part of "we" is them... how can you support "we did this?"
I acknowledge the deep state. I've read Blum's book and recognize the horrible things we have done since WWII. I've read Anthony Perkin's book as well. You should make your point to Wikepedia who blames Trump for this misinformation, "According to a discredited American political conspiracy theory promoted by Donald Trump and his supporters,[1][2][3] the deep state is a clandestine network of actors in the federal government, high-level finance, and high-level industry operating as a hidden government that exercises power alongside or within the elected United States government.[4][5]"
"Making a point" to Wikipedia is like trying to tell the NSA to stop spying on Americans; if you change something and actually put in the correct information regarding any defended topic, it'll just get changed right back again and do it enough times and you'll get banned from editing / adding material at Wikipedia.
Even the founder of Wikipedia has walked away from it and says it's not what he intended and the defending of certain political mountain-tops is both unethical and immoral and that if he had it to do over again he'd have put in place rules to prevent this sort of thing...
What is your point? That a Wikipedia article says that the "deep state" concept is discredited?
Well, I guess that solves the problem, then.
I would hardly call Trump "pro-Russian", unless using slightly less unhinged rhetoric some of the time is the standard for being "pro-Russian" these days.
I think that had Trump been in the WH now, what is happening in Ukraine may very well not be happening. I don't think I said he was pro-Russian, although he did say during his presidential run in 2016 "What's wrong with getting along with Russia." He was duly chastised for that. His diplomatic trip to Russia met up with a lot of Trump bashing, if remember.
I wouldn't be so sure. Once in office, Trump proved more recklessly aggressive towards Russia than Obama.
For that matter, Trump tried twice to pull out of Syria and he chucked out both times.
Sure, Trump was bullied, but he gave in, and that is all that matters.
I agree, and I think I give him more of a pass because there was so little respect for him, and his presidency which the democrats were determined to take down. The media was harsh and critical and attacked not only him, but his base. Look at Chomsky who feels he is the only Statesman who really could deal with the Ukrainian crisis which I think would never have happened if Trump had been president, yet he continues to claim he is the worst criminal in history. A few years ago I tuned into a TV program, and at that point everyone was leaving the meeting. I haven't a clue as to what they were discussing. Trump was the last to leave and said in an off handed way about all our needless wars, the millions of lives lost and all the money spent which would have been better spent else where. He seemed genuinely sad. I know that presidents can get pushed into a corner, and be forced to make choices they wouldn't have made if they had a free hand, but nonetheless no wars under Trump which cannot be said of Obama. Four years of no wars and Biden picked one up in Ukraine that was waiting to happen. The ground work was set during the Obama administration.
Let's *try* to inject some simple facts here: If there was a US-backed 'coup' in 2014, *when* was Yanakovych actually removed and how?
He was ousted by CIA agents disguised as Maidan protesters, right, who stormed the capitol and dragged him off? Err... no, not really. Protesters didn't take over until after Yanokovych's government left and the buildings were already empty. And then these allegedly CIA-backed extremists (the Maidan protesters were mostly just middle class folks, actually, and 10s or 100s of thousands of them who had stood in freezing weather for months) had regular elections to select a *moderate* replacement. Well, the US at least pushed the Maidan protesters to remove him from office so they could force elections? Nope. The US and Germany (at least) openly pressured the Ukrainians to KEEP Yanokovych until the next scheduled election and got the opposition leaders to AGREE.
So how did Yanokovych actually end up out of office on 22 February? He left, after the agreement was made to NOT remove him on 21 February. Yanokovych was president. Ukraine also had a Prime Minister appointed by their Parliament. Yanokovych with his bloody crackdowns on the Maidan protests frittered away his coalition majority, triggering the election of a new prime minister. Yanokovych was *supposed* to then address Parliament as President on the 21st and instead fled first to Crimea and then to Russia with a great deal of cash.
Why? Ukraine was out of money. Yanokovych and his cronies had embezzled all of it. The sudden change in Prime Minister made the depth of the corruption impossible to hide. Piles of documents Yanokovych attempted to burn and shred were left behind, many floating in the river. Stunning amounts of cash and gold were also immediately found at the homes of Yanokovych cronies, in addition to what they tried to hide in off-shore banks or carried with them.
Yanokovych was provably not removed from office until AFTER he left Ukraine and effectively abdicated. He could not be 'impeached' through the regular process because he was not there, creating a constitutional crisis. Even so, Ukraine instituted early elections, elected a *moderate* who pledged to try to reconcile with Russia, and the parliament-appointed temporary government peacefully handed off power.
There was no 'coup', not CIA-backed or otherwise. Yanokovych LEFT because he knew he would end up proscuted for crimes he could no longer effectively hide.
Kidding right? Did you really think I would fall for this BS? Yanokovych was corrupt, no surprise. Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe and certainly does not negate the reality of a coup in 2014 in which we were totally complicit. It's not me who needs to be informed. Never heard of the conversation you can even hear on line between Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the ambassador to Ukraine at the time, and Nuland in Obama's state department? If you have, you heard them deciding who is going to take over the reigns of government in that country with Yanokovych gone. Do you think Hunter Biden got a job in an oil company, Barisma, where he had no expertise, but pulled in 50 thousand a month, because, just because? Don't you read? Did you see the documentary by Oliver Stone. Did you ever read Max Blumenthal on the coup, or Parry. No? Well, before you inject yourself as an expert, do some research.
Next, ask "if there was a US-backed 'coup' in Iran in 1953, *when* was Mohammed Mossadegh removed, and how?" You must either be completely ignorant of the operations methods of the US "national security" apparatus, or a deliberate shill for the Deep State.
If that were the only CIA sponsored coup....
Hell, the CIA denied it for decades before being forced to admit that, yeah, it sort of was them.
So you are saying that the coup was really just an incredibly tenacious and (self-) organized 1/6, complete with fawning media coverage that in no way reflected US priorities, and that all the CIA and neocon luminaries just were in Kiev at the time because of the tourist attractions.
And Victoria $5,000,000,000 Nuland just was doing the coup plotters a favor when she appointed the new Ukrainian cabinet.
And when he was a candidate, Poroshenko promised a negotiated end to the war on Donbass "within 48 hours" but then he forgot and launched another disastrous attack, which led to Minsk-2, which the US really really really wanted him to uphold, but it had no way of pressuring him to do so, because Ukraine is just so sovereign and independent.
Go on, pull the other one.
So you are saying that many thousands of Ukrainians stood outside in freezing weather for months, even after vicious beatings and fatalities because... what? A bunch of CIA people told them to? Why would they listen? How many CIA agents do you think that would take and how much money? And how *competent* has the CIA been with coup attempts over the years?
As for US officials being there, why not ask the same question about Germany? Or *Russia*? MANY countries had officials there at the moment, for darn obvious reasons. The Western ones openly worked to keep Yanokovych in place, not out of love for him, I'm sure, but consistent with the policy we have followed with both Russia and Ukraine for years: "keep the devil you know". That was a BAD policy from my view, but I don't think you can make a convincing argument that it was not our policy.
I have no love for Nuland, but what did she say? She said "F the EU", reiterating that, no, the US really did NOT care about the larger issue. She suggested that an individual appointment would not sit well with the US and that another would be better. The 'advice' was followed. Do I like that or think there was no pressure behind it? Not really no, but that is a far cry from an externally-fomented 'coup' which conflicts with ground reality on MANY levels. How much Russian 'advice' did Yanukovych follow? Where did he seek refuge?
That Yanukovych dutifully caved to Russian demands is what incensed people to stand out there in the cold-- and the Ukrainians themselves said that. The actually issue of the EU trade agreement quickly got sidelined in the protests. ("Euro Maidan" quickly became just "Maidan"). It was not a pro-EU movement, let alone a pro-US one, but a pro-sovereignty/nationalist movement and resistance to Russian hegemony. They only made closer ties with EU/US because we weren't Putin and the choices were rather limited.
OK, now we know that the CIA cannot carry out a coup if the weather is bad. Got it. (If you ever lived in Ukraine, you would know that you can raise a crowd of paid protesters, regardless of weather.)
Not only that, but the coups in Honduras, Bolivia and Egypt, to give a few recent examples, didn't happen. And the CIA ever always only conducts regime change operations to specifically install an openly pro-US puppet. They never ever would do a bait and switch. That would be unethical.
Also, Victoria Nuland said a few things other than "fuck the EU".. She also referenced a sum of money, five billion dollars spent on regime change to be specific. Not only that, she named the post-coup Ukrainian cabinet. That the people she named were in fact appointed is surely mere coincidence. And that is just one phone call.
Professor Adam Tooze wrote extensively on why the deal proposed by the EU was bad for Ukraine. Here is an example: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-68-putins-challenge-to?s=r
Both sides in Washington like the idea of a war in which no American troops are involved. After Ukraine, the next step in Putin‘s program of reconstituting the Soviet Union would necessarily be to attack NATO, which would put American forces directly into combat.
After the fiasco in Afghanistan, the Biden administration must be glad that, for once, the US has an ally that doesn’t have to be bribed and cajoled into fighting.
Good god, you people are just too far gone for any discussion. Really? Biden took bribes from Ukraine? You pricks just make shit up and then, well, there you are, yet another stupid, baseless allegation to add to all of the rest. You people are just too fucked up.
Corruption is the most likely explanation why a Ukrainian oligarch would give Hunter Biden $50,000 per month position on the board of Burisma.
Hunter Biden doesn't speak Ukrainian and has no relevant experience in the oil and gas industry. He's a crackhead who fucked his dead brother's wife and then cheated on her with a stripper that he impregnated and tried to cheat out of child support until she got a DNA test and proved the baby was his.
Hunter Biden is the sort of guy you expect to see on Maury or the Dr. Phil Show. He didn't get that board position because of his business acumen. People all over the world aren't "investing" money with him because they think he's smart. He's not smart. He left his laptop with all of his e-mails (and pictures of himself smoking crack) on it at a computer repair store and forgot about it.
The most plausible reason why people give money to Hunter Biden is because they want favors from his dad. Nobody invests their money with a crackhead. Hunter is his daddy's little the bag man. If you want to bribe Joe, you go through Hunter.
Now that was really well said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Corruption is the most likely explanation why a Ukrainian oligarch would give Hunter Biden $50,000 per month position on the board of Burisma."
I'm not sure if it is corruption, but it is true that people do believe that supporting relations and friends of those in power will increase their influence and it appears that this is precisely the case here. So, I do agree that "[t]he most plausible reason why people give money to Hunter Biden is because they want favors from his dad."
However, that doesn't support "If you want to bribe Joe, you go through Hunter." because hiring Hunter is intended by the employer to increase his influence. The employer did this to avoid a direct bribe, which he knows is illegal, but President Biden doesn't personally benefit from his son being hired and so it was a risk that didn't seem to work all that well as Hunter is not competent nor has much influence himself.
I wonder why you refuse to see Biden in a realistic light since so much evidence says the man is corrupt and a total opportunist. He even had to drop out of his 1987 run for president because stealing other people's speeches, like JFK and his bro. He believed in integration but no busing, a joke back then, and even his vice president during her presidential run called him a racist. Lied too about how his wife was killed, and blamed it on the man who ran into her after she entered his lane of traffic ignoring a stop sign. He used his wife's death to grab people's sympathy which would have had less impact if she were at fault. He marched during the civil rights movement, no. What about that lap top?
Did Joe Biden receive anything of value from his son's hire? Did he offer anything of value in return for anyone to hire his son?
Deal with reality already. The law is explicit on this, your beliefs are irrational.
On April 28, 2014 British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky.
On May 12, 2014 Burisma put Hunter Biden on their board of directors.
On January 23, 2015 British officials give Zlochevsky the $23 million back.
Before Zlochevsky hired Hunter Biden, he was widely seen as a corrupt and was being targeted for sanctions by various Western Governments, including ours. So yeah, I'd say Zlochevsky got something out of the deal.
He pays Hunter Biden $3 million in "salary" over 5 years, he gets his $23 million back, and the corruption investigations stop. It's a good deal for him.
Your naivete is rather amazing, like gee lets give Biden's son a 50 thousand dollar a month job on the board of Burisma even though he's totally unqualified, and gee his papa doesn't have to know. Why? Not to mention this is not the only scandal involving Hunter and Joe Biden. I'm not going to respond to you anymore because your naivete is, well, unsettling. Even Glen Greewald left the Intercept because it refused him the right to publish information on the laptop, no doubt to secure a Biden win. That's why he's at substack. I'm not going to tell you to deal with reality because it's obvious you have no capacity to do so.
10% for the big guy.
And remember that 10% was already in addition to 10% for Jim Biden and 20% for Hunter Biden. 40% for the Bidens.
If we're fucked up, why are you here?
To force the issue that making shit up does nothing to improve the situation. Keep to the known facts. Saying "both sides" is bullshit, get specific and post evidence.
Oh, your the one who claimed until baby has a a mind he is an object. You should really rethink whose commentary is fucked up. Your thinking is very concrete on issues, and maybe that's why you don't see issues in a broader perspective.
Yes, because objects have no capacity for mind and until the fetus develops such capacity, it is an object and the woman is a being. Therefore her will is the only consideration as an object has no capacity for will, feeling, experience, etc.
Mindless commentary.
Tell us more how corruption in politics is systemic, and yet, Biden taking bribes is totally baseless and we’re all fucked up.
You must like the abuse.
Think about it. While corruption is systemic not every official is corrupt.
Keep to the evidence because it focuses on reality that can be dealt with. If Biden is not individually corrupt, then focusing on that "conspiracy theory" misses all those that are. If you think that the system is broken, then focus on very real proposed solutions, such as ending all human involved redistricting to be replaced by algorithms that use only population or not allowing any stock trades while in office, making it illegal for an ex-official to ever lobby for any compensation, making it illegal to accept any speech fees for more than the average, etc.
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
You conveniently forget about those deals the Bidens did with that Ukrainian oil company and Hunter's cushy sinecure that paid him tens of millions
LOL! What is the hard evidence of anything that you allege? You have nothing, yet you post.
Read https://www.snopes.com/collections/debunker-10-09-2019/, where snopes claims that Bethania Palma reported on it. I then searched snopes for her report…nothing.
The real problem is human nature. Joe Biden's son Hunter and brother James apparently thought that they could use their relationship to the president as the way to fortune and this idea takes hold with every slouch who has a relative or close friend in office. This is endemic in any political system, including ours such as McConnell's wife and her family, Trump using his being in office to make money from his properties, Clinton's et al being paid enormous sums for speeches as payback, etc.
My girlfriend read "Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends" by Peter Schweizer and she said it was maddening. When discussing these topics, we should keep to facts and there are enough to not warrant making shit up.
You fucking goddamn retard.
You literally just explained why it’s not unreasonable to conclude Biden is corrupt.
Human nature.
Go fucking learn to think before you criticize people here wholesale.
Fucking hell dude.
You fucking goddamn retard. You are too stupid for words. Where is your proof that Joe Biden is corrupt? Post that you fucking incel.
Hunter Biden is living proof that Joe Biden is corrupt.
Taking someone from Raytheon's board of directors and putting them in charge of the Pentagon is also corrupt. Making an executive from the pharmaceutical industry the FDA director is corrupt too.
There are conflicts of interest all over the Biden Administration. This isn't unique to the Biden Administration. Other Administrations have been corrupt too, but Hunter Biden being such an idiot makes Joe Biden's corruption a lot more obvious.
Hunter Biden is a totally useless person. If his dad wasn't the president, he'd be living in a tent under a freeway somewhere. The only reason anyone gives him money is to get favors form his dad.
Brilliant!
What, you got a problem with that? You need to live in Chicago for a while.
Seriously, it really angers me when Americans complain about corruption in other countries. Corruption is the norm in civilization, and the U.S. is as corrupt as anywhere.
I'm from Detroit. Relax, killer.
And we have a conservative SCOTUS ready to take women's rights away because they don't believe in rights anyway.
But—correct me if I’m wrong—you maybe kinda sorta probably voted for Biden anyway.
...I did not vote for Biden. I'm not sure where this assumption comes from.
"But—correct me if I’m wrong—you maybe kinda sorta probably voted for Biden anyway."
Anyway? What does that mean?
Might be a billion-dollar typo: "less than three months is close to the Russia's total military budget for the entire year ($65.9 million)
If you would have told me ten years ago that Tucker Carlson and I would be in agreement I would have laughed. Yet here we are. I'm really at a loss for words on this Ukraine fiasco. Our government is corrupt beyond measure. And the banality of evil. Is there a country in the world the US government's "assistance" hasn't become death? Rev 6:8 via Johnny Cash comes to mind.
Guess I wasn't at a loss for words, after all.
I agree with you albeit from the opposite side. Had someone told me five years ago I would be agreeing with people who supported Sanders for president, I'd have said I must have had a catastrophic brain injury. Yet here we are as reality inverts itself.
That's the thing - if 'we'* could ever get our act together, we would represent a clear and powerful majority.
*we: the disaffected from both sides of the political aisle who have come to find common ground on issues of sensible reason - opposing insane gender ideology, racist CRT, dangerous wars or hysterical public health policies...
But just think of how much better off the average Ukrainian was while the US ran over two dozen biolabs all across the country, and knowledgeable experts like Hunter Biden and Devon archer were able to help develop their energy industry.
The swamp rats make me think of something I heard on Forensic Files:
"These people are as organized as the Mafia and not nearly as lovable."
-ahem-
That the US built said biolabs is a product of the right-wing media complex; there's zero evidence to support it. And there IS (admittedly old) evidence to support they're left over labs from the Soviet era. Sure, funding. But that's NOT the same as building....
Ahem… there is plenty of evidence most damning of which came straight from the horse’s mouth in a sworn congressional testimony. That horses name was Victoria Nuland who since 2014 has poured more gas on the Ukraine dumpster fire than anyone else on the planet. Glenn covered all that in depth not too long ago. Look it up
Link(s) please. YES, I missed it. (I don't bother with main stream media.)
3/9/2022. There u go: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/victoria-nuland-ukraine-has-biological?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxOTk1OTkyMywicG9zdF9pZCI6NDk5NzE4MTYsIl8iOiJ4NTI2ZiIsImlhdCI6MTY1MjIzNzY3MCwiZXhwIjoxNjUyMjQxMjcwLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTI4NjYyIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.RAHbk6kUVigqWsOltCObTuMU4Cowu2gelC1CVqzuF50&s=r
Thanks, Alex. I'll look in the AM - I have to cook dinner now!
OK, I checked it out. ...It apparently doesn't say what you think it says, OR you missed the point I was trying to make. That video and what I asserted are not at odds in the slightest. MY point wasn't about that such labs exist, it was only about who CREATED them. Ukraine asserts they were left over from the Soviet Era and that's entirely plausible and nothing in that video refutes it in the slightest.
You sure as fuck did miss it. Flatly stating that there are zero biolabs, and then claiming you didn't know what you were talking about is rich...
I NEVER SAID there were no biolabs, I was ONLY talking about WHO CREATED THEM. There's evidence the ones in Ukraine were left-overs from the Soviet era, refurbished for modern times.
Did you watch the testimony with nuland admitting details about the labs? It’s a disaster waiting to happen that we should not be involved with.
I’m sure no need to worry though, the government fixed all the problems that led to wuhan gain of function research and covid-19. Another right wing conspiracy theory.
Glad you weren't, because your statement about sums it up.
It's that, and a pile of other stuff that I could never have believed possible. Yet... here we are.
Stay safe and keep your head on a swivel.
About the same situation, when Noam Chomsky praises Donald Trump for being the only statesman who is competent to deal with this situation.
Cats and Dogs living together.
If they can afford to ship that much (more) out to them…….. We are being wayyyyyyy over taxed.
Never money for Americans, always money for war!
Hey, there are plenty of American executives and lobbyists (and politicians) getting rich by this grift. Just quietly.
Frustrating to be sure, but everyone needs to get smart and recognize (as did Hamilton, Madison, and Jay) that the source of the corruption is human nature, and that the solution is contained in carefully written laws that account for that fact. The average price tag for a congressional seat is now floating around 2 million dollars—every two years! That means that there is an incentive for congressmen to do the bidding of large donors in order to survive. The defense industry takes advantage of this fact by placing their commercial interests and activities in nearly every congressional district in the country and by generously sponsoring the respective congressional seats. Likewise, many jobs in each district depend on defense procurements such as the latest abomination with Ukraine. Okay, so everyone knows this, now what do we do to fix it? I propose that we amend the Constitution to change the wording of Article I, Section 2, clause 3 from “The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand,…” to read: “The number of Representatives shall *be at least*, but not exceed one for every thirty Thousand,…” In doing so, the people’s house would swell to over 10,000 members and be returned to its original function as an institution reflecting the will of each individual citizen (to the greatest extent practicable). Congressional seats would become much, much less susceptible to the influence of big money from the defense industry or any powerful faction, for that matter. Today’s technological advances in communications makes it possible to logistically organize such large numbers of representatives, thus overcoming the rationale that forced Congress to (shortsightedly, IMO) statutorily cap members at 435 around a century ago. Everyone needs to remember that politics, like competitive sports, is a struggle to contain the darker tendencies of our nature with smartly designed rules of play. Now, if we could just get the NBA to start enforcing the traveling rule, maybe they too can save themselves from their own darker tendencies.
Yes!
Taxes have nothing to do with it.
Our taxes don't fund but the tinniest shard of our federal budget.
This is what fiat money - getting off the gold (and silver) standard(s) was all about when the Federal Reserve (which is neither Federal - they're entirely private - nor manage any "reserve") was created back in 1913... This is how the bankers rob us all blind!
The Fed Reserve Act was the true regime change
Trump and Congress also passed FASB 56 in the dead of night .
This bill makes it so that the Fed does not have to tell you where ANY Fed money is used
Why would they bother to "tax" people when they can just borrow it from the Fed?
To make the already struggling population broke, of course! Note how much the RICH pay! (close to or actually zero.)
$33 billion (let alone 40B) is more than Nasa's entire annual budget. It's approximately what we spent to bail out the failed auto makers GM and Chrysler. (GM never paid it back, either.) It's peanuts compared to the overall federal budget, but in absolute terms, it's still a crazy amount of money. A lot of countries spend literally that much on their annual defense budget. Russia's is listed as $60 billion (perhaps is understated). China's not much more (definitely is understated, but still).
For the U.S. to send that kind of aid to Ukraine is to turn us into a direct participant in the war. It's now a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia. How long before the Russians start arming Mexican drug cartels with surface-to-air missiles and other advanced weaponry, in retaliation? What will we say to that?
All while inflation continues to soar (yeah, 9% and change my ass). This is what happens when you let people with dementia run the country. Crazy ol Uncle Joe, pelosi, difi, mcconnell, and the whole fucking pack of em should have been retired decades ago!
If you think Joe did this then YOU have dementia!
Go back and listen to Ike's last SOTU speech where he calls out the Military Industrial (LEGISLATIVE) Complex. Sought or unsought, indeed!
Note also that the Legislative part was in his speech right up until the very last draft when he removed it with a note in the margins that he felt it was perhaps unseemly to call out congress during a speech he'd be giving in "their chambers." However, he forgot that they are OUR chambers. -ugh-
The trite and hackneyed "blame the military" tune isn't really at play here. This is about people who just can't stop spending money that simply doesn't exist. With some $6Trillion in the last 2 years ago for "covid" (and how much more now that China is seeing numbers rise again) Trillions with the Trump deficits, $10Trillion more (give or take) during each of obie's and w's reigns of plunder this is about a fiscal behavior that only a kid in a candy store, a teen in a whore house, or a demented old congressperson / senator could justify.
This sentence illustrates you don't actually know what the MILC actually is:
"The trite and hackneyed "blame the military" tune isn't really at play here."
I never said the military was. This is about the INDUSTRY that supplies them.
As for the military, they bear SOME culpability. For a good, non-partisan lesson on that, read the (now available free online) book "War Is A Racket" by one Smedley Butler, a rather famous general who refused to participate in a genuine insurrection attempt WAY back when!
Firstly, I'm quite aware of both Gen Butler's speech, and of Ike's speech. You're barking up the wrong tree - or I suspect intentionally distracting up the wrong tree.
My comment stands that feeble old leaders have no business making fiscal decisions.
Of any kind.
Whether the hemorrhaging of money that doesn't exist is to the MIC or to Silicon Valley or to Netflix and Comcast or Amazon and Tesla or United Health Care an Kaiser Health or Andrew Cuomo and Harvey Weinstein - they need to just. stop. doing it.!
I'm sure Butler gave many speeches; I was referring his BOOK. It's worth reading.
BTW, you here make comments you didn't state in the comment I replied to. OK, I'm not arguing, I actually have no comment about the rest of what you said - that stands (or not as various people may perceive) on its own.
Biden is not running anything. It was obvious during the campaign that a vote for him was a vote for his handlers, all of whom are world-class grifters and sociopaths. Blue voters happily voted early and often.
Blue apparatchiks took roll call at senior centers and homeless shelters, and booked the vote. Watch what happens in Arizona and Nevada when both Red and Blue apparatchiks try to book the senior center votes at the same Shady Acres communities at the same time... some seniors may vote 3 times this year.
It's not about age, it's about which class of people they serve. Follow the money.
I am heartbroken over the country we have become. Greedy, corrupt, warmongers. It is so sad
Not to mention 'Woke' and censored...
And mostly oblivious to it all.
What “become”?
Word.
And for 65 years I've heard the CIA reports of how advanced and powerful the Russian military was. All to sell those new arms. And now they're telling us how advanced the Chinese are.
They are all living in the past. At least Biden has a medical excuse. Though he was a nitwit his entire career so I am not letting him off the hook. The first Gulf War showed the Soviet/Russian stuff was crap.
I think you mean the Soviet failure in Afganistan, which was already a tiny, unpowerful country - and they lost. (So did we, BTW, which was not only entirely predictable, many of us, like ME, _did_ predict it!)
Heh, maybe Russia saw us pull out like amateurs and thought, "We've seen this before... it was followed by a collapse har har har." and decide it was time to remove all of those weapons caches and biolabs on their border.
Russia MIC is waaaaay more advanced then the US..
Fun fact, in the event of a nuke war, Russian citizens have bunkers to go too and have done gov directed drills to get their population to safety
When was the last time the US did this for its citizens?
That's what happens when your leadership are EUGENICIST psychopaths who work hand in hand with the WEF globalist billionaires.
No bunkers will save them (nor us).
BTW, your comment, if true, provides all the more reason to worry about Russia being "backed into a corner" and using a small one and initiating the end of certainly industrialized civilization, and very possibly the extinction of the vast majority of surface life on this planet.
... Musk has a point!
Amen.
The Empire is crumbling
Watch Atomic Cafe. Great documentary
I remember reading that about the bunkers. Here we would be fed 1960s vintage advertising featuring "duck and cover." I miss the ones of companies that were peddling bomb shelters you could bury in your back yard. But our sociopaths in office won't even give us that.
Nah, we won in Afghanistan. However, we got tired of fighting and ALLOWED the Taliban to retake the rural parts. During the Obama era, there were reports that many Taliban fighters were weary of war, and actually wanted to just go back to raising families. There was no way they could defeat the Americans. I believe had we stayed there and stayed the course, we could have eventually won the peace. Would it have been worth the human cost and the trillions spent? It's hard to say; maybe not.
The defeated us the way all people fighting for their homes do.
They wait while bleeding the invader.
Stayed the course?! Won the peace?! Are you still listening to George W. Bush speeches?!
Regarding us winning in Afghanistan; hardly! IF we had exited the minute Bin Laden was taken care of (known to be in Pakistan) - THEN we'd have "won," perhaps.
BTW, "we" let him go at Torra Bora, don't forget.
Terry, no question...then Joe. the disorder in chief, took over...nothing to add
Meanwhile China's navy is operating by WWII line-of-sight style naval warfare.
We're using subs and ships that can send a missile north for ten miles, then turn 90 degrees and run for another 10 to hit someone who never even saw it.
Nuked. All hands lost.
People think the US MIC is God Almighty and such a power that can bring down even Russia and China if it wanted too.
LOL! WRONG!
Our MIC is in such a STATE that half our fleet of F-35 are not flight worthy. We have bern in desperate need of upgrade and innovation for YEARS
Meanwhile, on a much slimmer MIC budget Russia now has hypersonic nukes..And we DO NOT. Russia has the best air defense in the world that can thwart off a US NUKE. WE DO NOT .
The US is now GENERATIONS behind Russia/China upgrade and innovation.
There is a reason the MIC/DofD can never be audited
We don't need to upgrade the MIC. We need to eliminate it and quit warmongering around the planet.
The Death Star is still fully operational, though you're right that information about Russia and China's capabilities has been grossly downplayed.
Yeah, Russia has hypersonic nukes.
That's insane.
But, most of the ballistic weapons most nuclear powers have are essentially impossible to defend against.
It's been that way since ballistic nukes have existed. Once they stop firing and go ballistic, they can't be tracked and hit their targets. That's an open secret of the US situation, but I imagine any ballistic weapon fired by anyone who has one can hit their targets without intervention possible.
you don't need hypersonic. Just shoot a bunch of MIRVs and even if 99 of them are shot down (which they won't be) the 100th one will hit the target and the country is effectively destroyed.
China has hypersonic missiles. So does Russia. We do not.
Um, yes we do, and we don't advertise out tech. It just shows up when needed, surprising the shit out of the enemy.
Sure, with 3rd world nations. Not with Russia and or China.
Russia' economy is smaller than California's. China now spends much more on its military than Russia, though neither even come close to U.S. military spending, and neither have hundreds of foreign military bases all over the world.
After the end of the first cold war, documents revealed that the CIA never really believed that the U.S.S.R. posed any military threat to the U.S. It was all propaganda to get support for the military/intelligence/industrial complex, and to keep Americans scared so that they do whatever they're told.
Borrowing money to save Germany, France and the UK from Putin without any requirement they pay the lions share. More stupidity and incompetence from our leaders who we will re elect in 6 months, insane. What could go wrong?
The sanctions on Russia are not hurting Russia.
They are hurting the EU and US most
On top of that, the West's sanctions are actually helping China and, to some extent, India. When this is all over with, the U.S. will be a shrunken, irrelevant husk of a country.
That’s the goal.
Yes. The ruble is now 12% more valuable than when the (completely justified) attack from Russia- and sanctions began. Their economy is commodities based, and the ruble is GOLD BACKED. We are the only ones suffering ( and that's intentional, by the way).
This part is surely false:
"The sanctions on Russia are not hurting Russia."
If it were true, Putin wouldn't be bitching (have bitched) about them.
LOL. It was a minor inconvenience - and has already been overcome. Putin has destabilized all of Western Europe and the U.S. economy - not his own. The world needs gas, oil, wheat, fertilizer, etc. They don't need U.S. dollars. At all.
They're not even bothering to hide their looting anymore. I'd wager that, just like the "pandemic" stimuli, half that money is getting siphoned right back into the beltway. They are all crooks in that town.
Absolutely true, that money isn't just loaded onto pallets and shipped to Kiev; it's being used to purchase U.S. gear, food, etc. Maybe also some European stuff. The amount of kickbacks and sweetheart deals this is going to spawn is mindboggling. Trump opposed ALL of this; little wonder they tried so hard to take him down.
The US started this war in 2014, when Zionist Vicki Nuland and her team of neolibs and neocons managed to overthrow the gov of Ukraine and put Neonazi militias on Russia's border, that have killed 14,000 ethnic Russians in E. Ukraine..
There is no democracy in Ukraine. It is literally a dictatorship backed by the US. Oh! Did I mention that Biden was appointed to orchestrate that regime change? And that Hunter became employed at corrupt BURISMA energy 3 weeks after regime change took place? Hunter's company Metabiota is also involved in the bio weapons labs there too..
The MASSIVE money laundering and corrupt STENCH from Ukraine wreaks all the way to the US. US taxpayer foreign aid is just a way to launder money to US politicians, with 10% going to the big guy!
There is never CONTEXT about this war when MSM does discuss it. Most Americans think it started when Russia invaded Ukraine. While Im a big follower of Independent News, I do watch Tucker because he is at least bringing this war and the money thrown at it to Americans attention.
The weapons being sent to Ukraine ARE NOT REACHING NAZI FIGHTERS!
Russia has all but destroyed Ukrainian air force, Navy and army. It BOMBS any convoys with weapons and has bombed railways and roads that lead out of Ukraine to places like Poland.
THIS WAR IS ALMOST OVER..
So WHERE is that money REALLY going while Americans suffer?
When WILL Americans wake up and see the massive GRIFT this really is?
These politicians are STEALING YOUR MONEY....
A very good analysis of the war can be found at Moon of Alabama blog
I wonder how long before "something happens" to Tucker. Also to Elon and Thiel and a handful of others.
What do you think the U.S.’s reaction to Mexico allowing a Russian base would provoke here. Kissinger told them where the line was in the 90’s. This is about money. For them.
I'm pretty sure I know exactly how we would react.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
The "we" you speak of was a much stronger and more unified America of 60 years ago.
60 years ago we were checked by the USSR.
What you are seeing today is a hyperpower with no real competitor, a spoiled monarch that nobody can say "no" to or it's "off with his head!".
Baby food is scarce, yet we send billions more $$$to Ukraine?? That is a crime.
But Pelosi said we have to save world democracy.
Unbelievable. WE CANNOT AFFORD THIS WAR right now. Inflation is skyrocketing. The stock market is flat or declining. The national debt is up 10 TRILLION DOLLARS IN THE LAST 10 YEARS AND IT IS ONLY GETTING WORSE. And people are surprised about inflation, like it's something that just happens for no reason!
This is fucking madness.
And we are 30 TRILLION in debt with 122 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities.
When this house comes down Americans won't like the outcome
I am terrified for my children and grandchildren..
The Ukraine was a corrupt money laundering hell hole before the war and it's even more so now. You'll notice we haven't heard a word from Blinken about peace talks and it's all been about "supporting the war effort". None of this money will be audited and I blame the GOP more than the war mongering wag the dog democrats.
War is expensive.
Okay, I get that.
Also, we are not at war. That is "misinformation".
It makes me wonder what the hell Biden is so scared of falling into the hands of the Russians that he will continue shoveling money into the country.
Oh, and typically when you're running a proxy war you don't brag about sharing the intelligence that destroys a ship. It sort of defeats the whole 'proxy' part of the war.
They're revealing that on purpose.
It's to goad Russia into direct conflict with US or NATO forces.
These cunts WANT WWIII. We are powerless at the moment.
They do.
But thank God Putin is SANE, despite the massive propaganda that says otherwise.
Just one more reason they hate him among many
Those weapons are NOT making it to the Ukie Nazis
Russia has DESTROYED the Ukrainian Army Navy and Air Force
Any weapons that exist are bombed out of existence before they get anywhere near the front line.
There isn't much of a Ukie military left and this war will end soon.
What is dangerous is what will the US to when it realizes this, or it may not even matter
Ask yourself where that money is REALLY going as the weapons sent are all destroyed
I can't imagine that the US psychopaths don't know this
They will not allow Zelensky to sue for PEACE
"thank God Putin is SANE"
Don't be so sure.
He is now threatening that, and here I paraphraise but it's accurate, "the west is pushing the risk of nuclear war and they are ignoring it!"
I can post links to Russia Today (RT.com), if I took the time.
YES, it's propaganda and political but he might just try a "small nuke" and initiate disaster.
Thermonuclear war is EXTREMELY simple to tip off - all it takes is ONE to initiate the end.
This is because the war in Ukraine is intended as an existential threat to Russia and Putin is treating it as such.
This is why, to give a few examples, Russia did not threaten nuclear weapons over Afghanistan (as this was never an existential threat to Russia) and the United States did nothing concrete about the Prague Spring of 1968.
The highest form of patriotism and loyalty should these sociopaths start WWIII would be to stop any nukes from going off and using whatever force is required to do so against anyone pushing for setting off the said nukes.
Very scary. Our leaders love war, and the grift it brings
I would second that.
Sunk ships, loose lips.
WWII obsessed Brits!
The pigs are at the trough. The American people get nothing.
Note: Due to this development, the line of "How much money will end up back in the pockets of politicians?" has been raised from $20 billion to $25 billion. Wager responsibly!
They know the jig is up. Time to run the table. I want the corruption to stop or I want a piece of the action….like their kids…..
That's what I think as well. They are in 'grab everything before the whole thing collapses' mode.
EXACTLY..
Right before our very eyes.
Then they will run. because we will want them hanging from lamp posts