Day: June 29, 2022

News On Ukraine

I know the news from Ukraine is not that important right now to Americans….we are dealing with the collapse of our system…..but yet there are some things coming out of Ukraine that we Americans should be concerned over.

First the most important news…..once again the US president is sending more taxpayer cash to Ukraine….yes more!

President Biden authorized a new $450 million weapons package for Ukraine that includes more High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), patrol boats, and tactical vehicles.

The Biden administration first sent HIMARS to Ukraine as part of a previous arms package that was announced on June 1, which represented a significant escalation in US military aid to Kyiv. Ukrainian officials said Thursday that they had received the first HIMARS delivery.

According to the Pentagon, the $450 million weapons package includes:

  • Four HIMARS
  • 36,000 rounds of 105 mm ammunition
  • 18 tactical vehicles to tow 155 mm artillery
  • 1,200 grenade launchers,
  • 2,000 machine guns,
  • 18 coastal and riverine patrol boats
  • Spare parts and other equipment.

The new bundle of weapons was funded by the $40 billion Ukraine aid bill that Biden signed into law back in May. The $450 million was authorized using presidential drawdown authority, which allows Biden to send weapons to Ukraine from the US military’s stockpiles.

Including the initial $13.6 billion aid bill for Ukraine, the US has authorized about $54 billion to spend on the war in Ukraine. The funds are meant to last through the 2022 fiscal year, which ends on September 30 for the federal government.

The majority of the funds are going toward military spending, whether through weapons packages for Ukraine or for the Pentagon to replenish its weapons stock and pay for troop deployments in Eastern Europe.

(antiwar.com)

I ask just what does the US get in return for all this cash?  I mean kindness is one thing but fool-hardiness is just stupid.

US is once again doing what it always does in these situations…..throw good money after bad!

It seems the mouth of Ukraine has a new strategy…insult those that are aiding his war…..

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba appears to have launched a new strategy in his country’s war against Russia. Insult Kyiv’s closest supporters by calling them Russian pawns.

He penned an article in Foreign Affairs, what amounts to the venerable newsletter of the Blob, the internationalist establishment. The US and Europe are not doing enough for Ukraine in his opinion. Indeed, he believes that the allies, despite sanctioning Russia and providing weapons to his country, are effectively going over to the dark side.

Kuleba wrote: “calls for dangerous deals are getting louder. As fatigue grows and attention wanders, more and more Kremlin-leaning commentators are proposing to sell out Ukraine for the sake of peace and economic stability in their own countries. Although they may pose as pacifists or realists, they are better understood as enablers of Russian imperialism and war crimes.”

A student of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People Kuleba is not. Denouncing the very governments he expects to help is a dubious tactic. Telling them to ignore the interests of their own nations won’t work. That is a step too far even for Kyiv’s friends.

Kuleba’s frustration is understandable. His nation has been invaded, a crime and tragedy. The human and material costs are horrendous. Despite early setbacks, the Russian military retains significant advantages, such as artillery dominance, which has led to steady if slow gains in the east. And despite Kuleba’s optimistic assertion that Ukraine can win, Moscow can escalate through full mobilization and resort to WMDs, something Kyiv cannot match. So he wants more, ever more assistance from the US and Europe.

This is understandable, even expected. However, if Kuleba and his government are counting on Western aid to save Ukraine, they are likely to be disappointed. Although the invasion has dominated media attention and driven the allies to take unusually tough and swift action against Russia, the conflict is not their, and certainly not their people’s, top concern.

First, this is Ukraine’s war, not the West’s crusade. There have been many conflicts since World War II, and even the US, the most militaristic power since the end of the Cold War, has avoided participating in most of them. When intervening militarily, Washington has always set limits, eventually deciding, with good reason, that it should stop pouring good lives and resources after bad into them – Afghanistan and Vietnam most dramatically. No other country will care as much about the outcome in Ukraine as Ukraine.

Indeed, Kuleba admitted: “It is only natural that people and governments lose interest in conflicts as they drag on. It’s a process that has played out many times throughout history. The world stopped paying attention to the war in Libya after former leader Muammar al-Qaddafi was toppled from power, in 2011. It disengaged from Syria, Yemen, and other ongoing conflicts that once generated front-page news. And as I know well, the rest of the world lost interest in Ukraine after 2015, even as we continued to fight Russian forces for control over the eastern part of the country.” Everyone is more concerned about their families and friends, as well as their communities and nations, than about “the world.”

Second, Kyiv’s fight is not for Europe, the West, or any other country. Ukrainians are fighting for Ukraine. Kuleba claimed: “If we lose, there will not just be no more Ukraine; there will be no prosperity or security in Europe.” Yet no one in NATO, except perhaps the Baltic States, which would do little of the fighting – NATO always has stood for North America and the Others – has ever considered Ukraine to be a vital interest worth fighting for. The alliance failed to act on a succession of promises to induct Kyiv and did not directly intervene after Russia’s 2014 territorial seizures. Today allied governments are acting in the very ways that so upset Kuleba because they believe it is vital to avoid being dragged into the conflict.

Has Ukraine Adopted a New Strategy of Insulting the Allies?

It is not anything new!  Zelensky and his sycophants have been insulting and embarrassing the Allies from the beginning….a tactic that has proved very lucrative from the beginning….cash has flown into the country at an alarming rate.

How goes the war?

Not as well as the powers would have us believe…..

According to a report from CNN, White House officials are losing confidence that Ukraine will be able to retake all the territory Russia has captured since it invaded on February 24 as Russian forces continue to make gains in the eastern Donbas region.

Unnamed US officials told CNN that President Biden’s advisors have started debating if and how the US should start convincing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should change his definition of what “victory” will look like.

Zelensky has repeatedly stated that Ukraine’s goal is to drive Russia out of all territory it has captured since it invaded. He also has said he wants to expel Russian forces from Crimea, a territory Moscow has controlled since 2014.

But even as the US and NATO are sending more and more heavy weapons to Kyiv, the prospect of Ukraine being able to launch a sufficient counter-offensive does not seem realistic. Ukraine is taking heavy casualties, with officials admitting they are losing between 100 and 200 troops each day.

(antiwar.com)

Finally, it looks like NATO could get a few new members…..Turkey is dropping its objection……

Turkey agreed on Tuesday to lift its objection to Sweden and Finland joining NATO, paving the way for the two Nordic countries to begin their application process at this week’s NATO summit in Madrid.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto released a statement that said that he and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Madrid that were facilitated by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

The three leaders signed a joint memorandum that said Turkey would support the Nordic nations’ NATO bid at the upcoming summit. Niinisto said the memorandum outlined that Turkey, Finland, and Sweden agreed to “extend their full support against threats to each other’s security.”

Turkey initially objected to Sweden and Finland’s application due to their alleged ties to the PKK, a Kurdish militant group the US, the EU, and Turkey consider a terrorist organization. Erdogan also wanted the Nordic nations to lift export controls on weapons they placed on Turkey in response to a Turkish assault on northeast Syria in 2019.

(antiwar.com)

And the war continues….and taxpayer money is wasted….as usual.

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Answers To Inflation

As the country is in the grip of runaway inflation especially on gas and food all our politicians are scrambling to look for answers ahead of the upcoming elections….and there are many solutions none of which will do much for us mere mortals.

The GOP has some big ideas…..

House Republicans gathered this week for an off-site hearing denouncing the Biden administration’s economic and energy agenda, blaming the president for record-high inflation and gas prices while proposing solutions that largely focused on reining in government spending and expanding domestic energy manufacturing.

Led by Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), members of Congress heard from a panel of witnesses including former Trump administration Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Club for Growth co-founder Stephen Moore at an event held Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation.

For an hour and a half, Republicans considered proposals ranging from dramatically cutting taxes and government spending, enacting work requirements for social welfare programs, and abolishing “renewable energy mandates” that restrict the production of oil and other fossil fuels.

Although some policy disagreements among them were evident, the event’s attendees were unified in their harsh criticisms of President Joe Biden, fixing the blame squarely on his administration for the country’s economic woes.

“With gasoline at $5 per gallon and inflation at nearly 9% year over year, we need to hold the Biden administration accountable,” Biggs argued. “With Democrats in charge of the House, Senate, and the White House, they are the ones who produced this problem.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/house-republicans-biden-inflation-gas-prices-heritage-biggs

As pertaining to a ‘gas holiday’….this seems to be popular with both parties….apparently the American voter is so stupid that paying $3 a gallon for gas will make them somehow comfortable….to me this is just a feel good solution that will do little to ease the economic pain of us peasants.

Bidenism in a nutshell: After blasting oil companies for price gouging, Biden announced a suspension of the federal gas tax for three months, a move which will do almost nothing to reduce prices at the pump but will almost certainly provide an even bigger boost to oil company profits.

The site fivethirtyeight.com takes a closer look at the idea of a gas holiday……

Earlier this week President Biden asked Congress to temporarily suspend collection of federal gas and diesel taxes for three months as a way to relieve pressure on Americans as national gas prices rise to $5 a gallon. If the price keeps going up, it could top highs not seen since the summer of 2008. High gas prices are also helping to drive overall inflation, which reached 8.6 percent as of May. 

It’s no surprise, then, that Biden is responding to pressure to do something — anything — about gas prices. As plenty of people have pointed out, the cost per gallon is displayed on giant signs everyone can see. Transportation and groceries are necessities that are purchased weekly or even daily, which means Americans feel these changes in a visible, visceral way. It also gets at why they’re so important politically, especially as surveys show that Americans are adjusting their budgets. 

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say they’ve altered their spending habits to save money because of inflation, according to a Morning Consult poll released this week. More than half, 53 percent, say they’ve changed their eating and drinking habits. Families are eating out less often, cutting back on meat and forgoing alcohol and organic produce.

A similar poll from last month found that middle-income households were spending slightly less on groceries overall and shifting to less expensive options, like store brands instead of name brands. (Higher-income families were just spending more.) 

A Gas Holiday Might Be Popular, But It’s Unlikely To Do Much To Lower Inflation

So far none of the solutions being offered by either party will do the trick at easing our economic pain…..at least that is my opinion.

There are answers but they would flying in the face of the oligarchs that have bought a Congress and that will NEVER happen in my lifetime…..the Congress gets paid too well to actually work for the people that send them to DC.

As I have stated inflation is eating away at the fiber of this country….its people…..and we should learn all we can about this deadly situation….

The focus of the US media and economists for the past several months has been increasingly on inflation.  In recent weeks, however, US policymakers awoke as well to the realization that inflation is chronic, firmly embedded, and growing threat to the immediate future of the US economy.

A qualitative ‘threshold of awareness’ was reached this past week when the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, accelerated its pace of rate hikes by 75 basis points—purportedly to bring the rate of price hikes under control. Whether the Fed can succeed in taming inflation and do so without precipitating a recession remains to be seen but is highly unlikely. Taming inflation without provoking a recession is thus the central economic question for the remainder of 2022.

Clearly some think this is possible—i.e. that further rate hikes will moderate the pace of inflation without driving the real economy into recession and result in what is called a ‘soft landing’. Clearly the Fed and the Biden administration believe that will happen. But a growing chorus of even mainstream economists and bank research departments don’t think so.  Almost daily new forecasts by global banks and analysts appear indicating recession is more than 50-50 likely—and arriving sooner in late 2022 than in 2023.

The Anatomy of Inflation

Hard answers are needed……weak responses will be the norm.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”