Ukraine And Herschel Walker Open Thread
By Mitch Berg
It seems some people found my inadvertent posting early in the day – something that I was originally banked for the week before the election.
That may make out of their appearance yet.
But since people seem to feel the need to threadjack, I figured I would give them a space to romp and play.
October 21st, 2022 at 7:38 am
Well, no one can accuse me of being a pollyanna.
October 21st, 2022 at 10:04 am
McCarthy and what he represents is a disgrace to America. He and his wing of the GOP must not be allowed to have power.
Re: McCarthy’s comments
I suspect American aid to Ukraine will continue even with Republican majorities in the House and Senate. There is massive popular support for Ukraine in America. When gridlock sets in, Republicans will be pressed to have something to show for. Throwing a couple billion to say they are helping take down an evil empire is a low hanging fruit.
October 21st, 2022 at 10:44 am
I’ve been accused, but my position here is the same as my middle school wrestling coach noted; watch your opponent’s hips, because he doesn’t go anywhere without them. He can do a head fake, but not a hip fake.
Applied here, you watch what he’s done (Syria, Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, East Germany), and not as much what he says, and as I noted months ago,it’s basic abusive husband behavior. “You will submit to me no matter how awful I am, and if you decide to leave, I’ll make it so no one will be able to have you.” That’s why there are so many attacks on civilian targets, why there isn’t a safe zone around the Zaporizhia nuclear plant, why they’re taking out electric power and water nationwide, and why they’re threatening the dam of the Dnipro. That’s what Putina’s writings about regaining the USSR and Tsarist Russia are all about. He says one thing when talking to his supporters, another when he’s talking to the world. Don’t get the two confused.
And that sort of thing doesn’t stop until the abuser is stopped. That’s why I’m saying that we can’t just pull back from Ukraine and have the prospect of peace. The borders of aggression simply move. It’s like Neville Chamberlain claiming “peace in our time” while he ignored Schicklgruber’s writings about Lebensraum in Mein Kampf.
October 21st, 2022 at 11:32 am
There’s no value in the negotiating table. Everyone knows Putin doesn’t honor agreements.
October 21st, 2022 at 1:52 pm
Good for McConnell. McCarthy is an idiot but, unfortunately, also a weathervane. I have no issue with a republican government but the GOP need to realize that if they lose the war in Ukraine the credibility of the US and its ability to influence on the global stage will be shot.
The damage done by the Trump administration can, at this stage, be passed off as just a one-off aberration but if the US now walks away from keeping Russia in check the damage will be permanent. Not only will it walk a number of countries right into the arms of China but it could probably be seen as the tipping point on which country really is the global super power..
GOP leaders McConnell, McCarthy headed for collision on Ukraine aid
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3696451-gop-leaders-mcconnell-mccarthy-headed-for-collision-on-ukraine-aid/
October 21st, 2022 at 5:54 pm
Aug 18, 2022
14 min read
Saudi Arabia’s once marginal relationship with China has grown into a comprehensive strategic partnership
https://merics.org/en/saudi-arabias-once-marginal-relationship-china-has-grown-comprehensive-strategic-partnership
I’d love to play poker with you, Emery.
Bring Krugerands.
October 21st, 2022 at 6:44 pm
^^ The frame of this analysis is incorrect (though undoubtedly widely spoken of in Washington DC; one can hear the glasses clink).
It is not China versus the US, the old Cold War frame. Rather it is China against all of the advanced democracies, which comprise 62 percent of the globe’s nominal GDP. The US makes up about one-third of the OECD GDP ( the 37 nations of the OECD) while China tallies in at less than a fourth. The other advanced democracies make up the other two-thirds, which is an awesome total that goes too often unspoken (Europe, Japan, South Korea et al area powerhouse in their own right).
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has unified the OECD nations like nothing since the Berlin Airlift or the Berlin crises of the early 1960s. Everyone now grasps concretely the disruptive threat that personality-based autocracies pose to the working of the global economic order. An invasion of Taiwan would be a globally self-isolating event for China, a default decision to go towards autarky. The Chinese growth model would be over for a generation.
The advanced democracies are moving away from interacting with China based on an open and free-trade model since the behavior is not reciprocated. The OECD countries will move towards managed trade based on a transactional basis. Almost all the other countries of the world already deal with China on something approaching a transactional basis.
What President Xi of China has done with his numerous and sequential violations of norms has been to devalue the transactional value of Chinese trade relations. Other countries are now looking for the counterfeit coins in Chinese trade and commercial relations. This is a huge devaluation which doesn’t show up in the daily financial quotes but is nonetheless quite real. (The convention in Beijing looks like all the world for a replay of the Nuremberg rallies in the 1930s on steroids; the Chinese are more than a little bit un-self-aware.
China got to the point of having its current degree of leverage because the administration of George W. Bush needed trillions of dollars of Chinese credit to finance his failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and massive tax cuts for the mega-wealthy. The US authored its own self-harm. Is anyone going to hold the Republican party responsible for this malfeasance of global magnitude? Probably not. But reasonable people know who the culprits are.
Biden has three major tasks to accomplish:
• Settle the Ukraine war favorably to the long-term interests of a stable Europe.
• Contain Chinese predatory trade practices and keep Taiwan autonomous from Chinese hegemony and part of the nexus of advanced economy democracies. This is a movement by the advanced democracies from open trade with China to managed trade which already well underway. Keep the trend going.
• Strengthen rule of law in the US with a view towards securing free and fair elections in and across the United States in the future by a vigorous and comprehensive set of prosecutions by the Department of Justice of the various crimes the 2020 elections and its long aftermath have uncovered. We’ll know whether nor not this is happening by Thanksgiving.
Once accomplished or substantially underway, Biden should announce his retirement in time that a free and open set of primaries can surface the best available Democratic candidate for the 2024 election. The future demands nothing less than the Democratic party presenting a younger and tested candidate to the American public. We are not rerunning the 2020 election in 2024; we are doing something different. Let’s leave the Republicans in the past tense, running reruns of old Cold War movies.
October 21st, 2022 at 9:31 pm
No krugerands?
Can’t say I am disappointed, everyone knows that the moniker “Emery” means 100% bullshit.
October 22nd, 2022 at 9:45 am
The reason you can’t learn this skill is that it does not really exist. It’s a comforting illusion. The benefit of hindsight at the age of 58 suggests that serendipity rules . Excessive belief in personal agency is mostly a vanity.
October 22nd, 2022 at 9:49 am
MBerg— Akismet needs an update . By using common English *words* there is a penalty to be paid according to Akismet…
October 22nd, 2022 at 11:26 am
If I am reading your 10:44 correctly, Bikebubba, you believe that NATO should refuse to negotiate with Putin because he can’t be trusted to negotiate in good faith.
Which is just a nutty position (if that is indeed your position). It’s nutty because it is a call for a war to the end between the two nations with the world’s largest nuclear arsenals. Can’t you see how crazy that is? Even if you are correct about Putin not stopping until he is beaten or deposed, that is still a war that we would be better off fighting in five years than now.
October 22nd, 2022 at 12:44 pm
Woolly was a big fan of Brexit if memory serves me correctly.
I love the way brexiteers are blaming Liz Truss when all she did was attempt to realize their loony wet dream. She enacted everything Tories wanted. Now they want to pretend she was some sort of rogue agent. They can’t pretend that Truss came up with all of the loony bin material in a vacuum.
The Tories need at least 15 years in the political wilderness. They gave UK the calamity of Brexit and the worse possible implementation of this nonsense of a nightmare. They’ve also collapsed unto themselves as a result.
You could argue that this whole sorry state of affairs started with Cameron’s Brexit referendum.
October 22nd, 2022 at 1:36 pm
Just throwing more facts against the wall.
tl;dr twaddle to follow because you know, bots get paid by the letter.
https://meaninginhistory.substack.com/p/stunning-thread-warnings-re-ukraine?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=473679&post_id=80005058&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
October 22nd, 2022 at 3:17 pm
rAT got off his daughter long enough to offer: “It’s fairly obvious you, Woolly and Swift are part of the MAGA wing of the Republican Party…”
I know rAT just finished with his daughter, “nurse rAT”, because their sessions always leave him dizzy, and unable to plagiarize properly until he’s had a G&T.
I’m so far from the Republican party, my position is unknown to Starlink satellites.
October 22nd, 2022 at 3:19 pm
More rAT wisdom:
“I love the way brexiteers are blaming Liz Truss…”
“Blaming”? They threw her, and her White man free staff into the gutter, rAT. It was rather brutal, to be honest.
October 22nd, 2022 at 3:25 pm
Do you think rAT whispers global political strategy to his daughter, “nurse rAT” during post coitus snuggling?
I think it’s highly probable.
October 22nd, 2022 at 3:26 pm
A doom chart:
Germany Natural Gas Border Price
3.86 USD/MMBtu for Sep 2022
55.18 USD/MMBtu for Sep 2022
https://ycharts.com/indicators/germany_natural_gas_border_price
And here in the US:
Henry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price
1.83 USD/MMBtu for Oct 18 2022
6.16 USD/MMBtu for Oct 18 2022
https://ycharts.com/indicators/henry_hub_natural_gas_spot_price
How long can the Germans hold out? It’s not a matter of the German government holding firm, Germany is a democracy.
October 22nd, 2022 at 3:31 pm
Brexiteer Toby Young is blaming the IMF for Truss’s resignation. The IMF tells Britons who may and may not be British PM, says Young. The IMF says you can spend money you don’t have on aid to Ukraine, but not on tax cuts.
The Europeans are really in a bind. They are facing an almost perfect storm of economic “challenges.” It’s going to be a long, cold winter in the EU.
October 22nd, 2022 at 3:53 pm
Oops! Should be:
Germany Natural Gas Border Price
3.86 USD/MMBtu for Sep 2020
55.18 USD/MMBtu for Sep 2022
And here in the US:
Henry Hub Natural Gas Spot Price
1.83 USD/MMBtu for Oct 18 2020
6.16 USD/MMBtu for Oct 18 2022
October 22nd, 2022 at 6:18 pm
BTW, US per capita GDP is just below $70k/year.
EU per capita GDP is about $38k/year.
Per capita GDP for the Russian Federation is about $12k/year, and is projected to decline about 3% in 2022.
Per capita GDP for Ukraine is a bit less than $5k/year ans is expected to decline this year by 30% as a result of Putin’s invasion.
So count yourself lucky if you live in America, and consider your position of relative wealth when you cast moral judgments on the people of other nations.
October 22nd, 2022 at 6:31 pm
Patriots, obviously the Russian plan is to drain the EU of petro dollars, and the US of Pedo dollars.
Thankfully, we have Admiral Levine and Comrade General Milley at the tip of our spear.
#MAGA
October 23rd, 2022 at 9:04 am
“The Neocons and the Woke Left Are Joining Hands and Leading Us to Woke War III | Opinion
DAVID SACKS ”
When Newsweek slags the Woke Left, you know you’re in trouble, Patriots.
October 23rd, 2022 at 9:25 am
I am still not finding a coherent strategy to save Ukraine, not just on this thread, but at NATO:
Not even at NATO: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_37750.htm
This guy has come up with a strategy made of rainbow farts: https://cepa.org/author/kurt-volker/
What do I mean by rainbow farts?
He says NATO must supply Ukraine with long range munitions that will allow them take out targets deep in Russian occupied Ukraine. NATO shouldn’t worry about the Ukrainians using them to strike targets on recognized Russian territory because the Ukrainians have already done this with their own equipment, so no big deal.
But it IS a big deal. Putin’s propaganda is that Ukraine is the proxy NATO is using to wage war on Russia. How do you think Putin would react to Ukraine using NATO rockets and cruise missiles to attack targets inside Russia? Call off the war and give up?
October 23rd, 2022 at 11:42 am
That’s a spicy take there woolly…
Prices should be coming down when this supply is combined with demand reduction strategies being undertaken by consumers and volume users of gas. They also need to reconsider their nuclear energy position.
Russia seems to believe that severing gas links will force Europe to force Ukraine to negotiate away swathes of territory that include gas and oil reserves plus the biggest sources of lithium and rare earths in Europe. Yet another misjudgment by the nationalists in Moscow.
October 24th, 2022 at 12:20 pm
European gas slumps below €100 for first time since Russia cut supplies
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/european-gas-slumps-100-mild-090432632.html
This is game changing for European economies and therefore for the war in Ukraine, the price has been plunging for weeks.
October 26th, 2022 at 3:43 pm
Herschel Walker could open an abortion clinic and he wouldn’t lose any of his core pro-life supporters.
October 27th, 2022 at 12:38 pm
The Jolt: GOP rallies behind Herschel Walker amid new abortion allegation
https://www.ajc.com/politics/politics-blog/the-jolt-gop-rallies-behind-herschel-walker-amid-new-abortion-allegation/XWW62C6L6ZGRTKNN7QSIYQIL5A/
One more abortion and Walker secures the GOP presidential nomination.