Politics

[fourfive8]

I have read that an EV has to be driven 60,000 miles to cover the carbon footprint cost to mine the batteries. The EV then has to be driven another 40,000 miles to hit the breakeven point against hydrocarbon vehicles. The problem is the battery life isn't 100,000 miles. As with any report there may be questions with the numbers but this may be a bit better than a wag.

Yep, and add that the EV becomes a very large hazmat issue at the end of it's useful life. Ever notice how Waste Management, aka Big Green, is all in for solar, wind and EV.... guess who benefits from huge contracts for the required clean up!

And, look carefully at Al Gore's original CO2 vs Temp "hockey stick" junk science. The cause and effect is all backwards... but the fallacy in the claim is hiding hiding in plain sight. The cause-effect graph is backwards! There are a few top scientists who have done some pretty good work on the reasons for long term climate change/temp swings and cycles on Earth. Some has to do with the nature of interconnected systems that are by definition always in somewhat of a dynamic equilibrium and continually influenced by cyclic changes in the sun itself.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

It's the age old engineering joke.

You can have it high quality, fast, and cheap. Pick 2.

Engineering economics demands trade offs for everything.

It’s just simply foolish to think there won’t be. Risk assessments should be part of the determination of the path we take.

 

[spike.t]

BBC News - Covid protests widen in China after Urumqi fire

China Covid: Protests continue in major cities across the country

Demonstrators gathered in the capital Beijing and the financial hub Shanghai, as well as Wuhan.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[BSO Dave]

I didn't miss anything. I think you have. I simply do not interpret what he said as a call for a preemptive strike using nuclear weapons.

Ah.. Key word there is "interpret" because there is no doubt about his actual words... Brandon requires a lot of interpretation as well..

Regardless of how his words are interpreted, the recklessness and irresponsibility of that kind of rhetoric is inexcusable in my view. Not something to be admired..

Zelensky doesn’t even matter. There are much larger geopolitical issues going on in this conflict. It’s too easy to get caught up in personalities like Zelensky, Trump, Biden, Putin, etc… I could care less what Zelensky says while trying to get all the help he can get. Look at the big picture, please.

So it's okay that the leader of Ukraine is using any inflammatory and provocative rhetoric he deems necessary to garner military support calling for escalation of Western involvement and flirting dangerously with the use of nuclear weapons and it doesn't matter? If what Zelensky does and says doesn't matter, who should be be listening to? You lost me on that one..

I am looking at the big picture.. Always have been.. Still waiting for somebody to tell me what the specific immediate benefits are for U.S involvement in Ukraine, and the difference between this existential threat to our national security versus all of the other current existential threats we face outside of Ukraine which can be specifically defined and listed? I would also like to hear more about the "as long as it takes" strategy that the U.S has apparently committed to in Ukraine.. If you can explain these things to me, maybe the big picture will be more clear to all of us..

 

[Major Bonkers]

Ok, BSO Dave, I'll have a go.

Firstly, it is generally better to get other people to fight your wars than to do so yourself. You save your own young men, and you spend less than actually engaging in the war yourself. The French ruefully referred to this policy as 'the cavalry of Saint George'. It is also a policy that the US has applied before, in particular during the First and Second World Wars.

The benefits, so far, to US interests have been enormous. The Baltic has become a NATO lake. The Swedes and Finns have applied to join NATO. Almost the entire world has expressed disapproval of the Russian attack and, hence, has fallen behind US leadership of the issue.

The Russian armed forces have been exposed as chronically incompetent and severely downgraded. As they are - were - a competitor to US interests, the Ukrainians have generously taken them off the board. Any idea, now, that the Russians can thwart US interests is absurd: can anyone honestly see them rolling through Central and Western Europe, which was the great Cold War fear? Similarly, the Chinese will have come to the dawning realisation that in Russia they have backed the wrong horse and that any attempt to take Taiwan by force, or engage in any more 'wolf warrior-ism', should be given some second thought.

Regarding the Black Sea, the Ukrainians have managed to sink the Russian's flagship; they and the Turks have prevented the grain blockade that Putin attempted to impose. The Black Sea is not yet a NATO lake, but the Russians are unable to impose dominance over it. Their fleet seems to be confined to harbour.

There is an additional benefit, so far as I can see, which is that - at no military cost to itself - the US can work out the benefits of its own equipment and tactics. It is obvious that air and sea drones are going to be of vital importance in any future conflict. I would be surprised if the Ukrainians haven't shipped back captured Russian equipment.

As I have written before, the US is paying the price for being the being the top dog. The benefits of that are a reserve currency, which gives the Americans lower interest rates and a generally stronger economy. It can arrange the pieces of the global jigsaw to its advantage. It is actually a small price for it to pay: the white man's burden.

There is one final observation. I have no doubt that the Ukraine is an emerging democracy, with dubious public morality - the full story of Hunter Biden and his business shenanigans is likely to be pretty unsavoury. In this, it would be like Poland, when I first visited some 30 years ago (it had mafia gangs, corrupt police, and all the rest of it.) But there are obviously decent people there who did - and do - not deserve an unprovoked war against them, with obvious war crimes and breaches of the Geneva Conventions against a civilian population. Americans ought to be proud of the role that they are playing in this conflict.

 

[Scott CWO]

Ah.. Key word there is "interpret" because there is no doubt about his actual words... Brandon requires a lot of interpretation as well..

Regardless of how his words are interpreted, the recklessness and irresponsibility of that kind of rhetoric is inexcusable in my view. Not something to be admired..



So it's okay that the leader of Ukraine is using any inflammatory and provocative rhetoric he deems necessary to garner military support calling for escalation of Western involvement and flirting dangerously with the use of nuclear weapons and it doesn't matter? If what Zelensky does and says doesn't matter, who should be be listening to? You lost me on that one..

I am looking at the big picture.. Always have been.. Still waiting for somebody to tell me what the specific immediate benefits are for U.S involvement in Ukraine, and the difference between this existential threat to our national security versus all of the other current existential threats we face outside of Ukraine which can be specifically defined and listed? I would also like to hear more about the "as long as it takes" strategy that the U.S has apparently committed to in Ukraine.. If you can explain these things to me, maybe the big picture will be more clear to all of us..

@BSO Dave it seems that @Major Bonkers has answered your questions and I will add my two cents.

While I don’t condone many of the things that Zelensky has said, it certainly doesn’t surprise me either. Have you seen the price the Ukrainians are paying? We haven’t seen bombed out cities like this since the carpet bombing days of WWII. The Russians are/were leveling the cities, power grid and even homes out in rural areas. We haven’t seen this in Europe or really anywhere else besides Syria in a long time on this scale. It’s certainly no surprise to me that Zelensky and his government are asking and begging for direct NATO/USA involvement!

You don’t see any direct benefits for the USA? Really? Do you not understand how the world economy works and how we are the biggest player? ECONOMICS & our SECURITY! Why do you think we have JSOC operators all over the world and regular military bases all over? Do you not understand what happened in WWII, the expense of the Cold War, our completely direct economic and security interests in a partnership with a largely democratic Europe? ECONOMICS & our SECURITY! Would it be in our direct interests to sit back and watch Putin reassemble the Soviet Bloc? Like it or not, you feel safe and insulated and have your ill-conceived notion that we can just sit back and let the rest of the world turn to shit BECAUSE of what our State Department and Defense Department do on a DAILY basis. Pardon my rudeness and incredulous response but, wake the f*#* up!

 

[Kevin Peacocke]

The world watches, and they take sides. Influence follows and geopolitical interests align based upon who they feel safer backing. Had Ukraine not stood up to Russia, and they could not have done so without the USA, you could certainly bank upon a Russia-China alliance having been formed by now that would be very difficult, if not impossible to roll back. The third world countries would have little choice but to fall in line. Does it matter? Yes hugely, they possess most of the mineral resources. As it is, without having fired a single shot itself, the USA has halted the global agressors right in their tracks. I grudgingly give credit to the Biden administration for that, but we all know that it is really the Pentagon that has called the shots, in close co-operation with the British MOD and some others. It has been very well managed. But make no mistake, the world, and the USA in particular owe the Ukranians a huge debt of gratitude.

 

[Red Leg]

Ok, BSO Dave, I'll have a go.

Firstly, it is generally better to get other people to fight your wars than to do so yourself. You save your own young men, and you spend less than actually engaging in the war yourself. The French ruefully referred to this policy as 'the cavalry of Saint George'. It is also a policy that the US has applied before, in particular during the First and Second World Wars.

The benefits, so far, to US interests have been enormous. The Baltic has become a NATO lake. The Swedes and Finns have applied to join NATO. Almost the entire world has expressed disapproval of the Russian attack and, hence, has fallen behind US leadership of the issue.

The Russian armed forces have been exposed as chronically incompetent and severely downgraded. As they are - were - a competitor to US interests, the Ukrainians have generously taken them off the board. Any idea, now, that the Russians can thwart US interests is absurd: can anyone honestly see them rolling through Central and Western Europe, which was the great Cold War fear? Similarly, the Chinese will have come to the dawning realisation that in Russia they have backed the wrong horse and that any attempt to take Taiwan by force, or engage in any more 'wolf warrior-ism', should be given some second thought.

Regarding the Black Sea, the Ukrainians have managed to sink the Russian's flagship; they and the Turks have prevented the grain blockade that Putin attempted to impose. The Black Sea is not yet a NATO lake, but the Russians are unable to impose dominance over it. Their fleet seems to be confined to harbour.

There is an additional benefit, so far as I can see, which is that - at no military cost to itself - the US can work out the benefits of its own equipment and tactics. It is obvious that air and sea drones are going to be of vital importance in any future conflict. I would be surprised if the Ukrainians haven't shipped back captured Russian equipment.

As I have written before, the US is paying the price for being the being the top dog. The benefits of that are a reserve currency, which gives the Americans lower interest rates and a generally stronger economy. It can arrange the pieces of the global jigsaw to its advantage. It is actually a small price for it to pay: the white man's burden.

There is one final observation. I have no doubt that the Ukraine is an emerging democracy, with dubious public morality - the full story of Hunter Biden and his business shenanigans is likely to be pretty unsavoury. In this, it would be like Poland, when I first visited some 30 years ago (it had mafia gangs, corrupt police, and all the rest of it.) But there are obviously decent people there who did - and do - not deserve an unprovoked war against them, with obvious war crimes and breaches of the Geneva Conventions against a civilian population. Americans ought to be proud of the role that they are playing in this conflict.

Well said.

There is a deep and abiding longing for isolationism in this country. In some ways, we are as regrettably xenophobic as the Russians except rather than feeling compelled to stamp out other cultures we want to draw the covers over our heads and lock the doors; a bit of geographic determinism driven by vast oceans in one case and equally vast but indefensible steppes and ice bound ports on the other. The same who long for that world seem determined not to understand that the conditions that would make it possible, at least in its current economically favorable form, are impossible to maintain without free access to all those uncomfortably foreign markets to which we are so deeply and inexorably dependent. Couple that with what is a singularly naïve, though often admittedly charming sense of ethnocentricity, and we have on several occasions been later to effectively protect those interests than we could have earlier with far less cost in lives and treasure.

You may be right that our late entry into the great wars of the last century was due to the exercise of realpolitik, but I do not think so. I am over simplifying, but Wilson was the stumbling block in the Great War. His idealism caused this country to drag its feet for three long years before committing to a Europe dominated by Britain and France rather than one dancing to a tune played in Berlin and Vienna. A woefully unprepared American expeditionary force was formed on the fly and deployed, arriving just in time to blunt, with horrific casualties, the German offensive of 1918 reinforced by all those divisions from the Eastern Front. It was a very near run thing.

In the run up to the Second World War, the country as a whole was deeply committed to an "America first" doctrine as thoroughly proud of its economic ignorance as anything we see today. I frankly do not believe any politician in Washington was even paying serious attention to the negotiations in Munich in September 1938. But FDR would have gladly involved us sooner than last days of '41 in defense of Great Britain, but he lacked the political strength to do so. It is worth remembering that after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war on Japan, four long days passed (from Churchill's point of view) before Hitler did Roosevelt the enormous favor of declaring war on the United States.

To point to only one aspect of the early war, I am confident that the course of the Battle of the Atlantic would have been far different if the US Navy had been fully committed in 1940 rather than 1942. One can also muse what Japan's actions may have been in 1941 if the Pacific fleet had been on a full war footing rather than somnolently at anchor that Sunday morning in December. But that is an alternative universe.

But in Ukraine - right now in this universe - before it is too late - we have the opportunity to snuff out Russian ambitions in central Europe. His modernized army which took two decades to build is being systematically destroyed. Three centuries of strategic maneuvering with respect to modern day Finland and Russia's ancient enemy Sweden have gone up in smoke. The implied threat which has loomed over Europe for a century - and to our national interests there - is being curbed for at least decades to come. The greater, I believe existential threat posed by an axis formed by a militarily triumphant Putin and and economically aggressive China is being destroyed in its infancy.

It saddens me people can't or won't see that with the same clarity.

 

[Scott CWO]

Yes, Putin has really screwed himself now and with Finland and Sweden joining NATO, the Baltic Sea and Baltic countries will be much easier to defend and Russia’s arctic ports to the north and northeast will be more vulnerable as well. He has escalated Russia’s security concerns, all while claiming he was trying to reduce them.

 

[Ray B]

It seems to me that Ukraine is in a race with the calendar, not for seasons but for changes in power within the USA. While both the Republicans and Democrats favor aid to Ukraine in its defense against Russia, once the Republicans start the exposing of just how much corruption has been happening between Ukraine and the Biden/Obama families, further support will be questionable.

Ukraine may be served if its leadership reviews the Russia Finland war. There were similarities- a large country seeking to overrun a smaller one. Finland had insufficient friendly nation support because Russia was an enemy of Germany and Germany was the enemy of the world which made Finland everyone's enemy. Despite this the tiny Finland army held the Russians to a virtual standoff causing huge losses to the Russians.

Finland had reasonable leaders who saw that continued war with Russia would cause great hardship for the Finnish people and loss of lives- so the leaders negotiated an end to the war. It may have appeared to the world that Russia won, but in reality the only thing of value that Russia got was to withdraw its troops and claim that it was victorious. Finland got an end to the war with minimal losses in life or to the Finnish economy.

Ukraine should review how Finland was able to accomplish such peace terms.

 

[rigbymauser]

According to a Professor at Colorado Univercity of economics the russian state can cease to excist within 60 years due to low fertility rate, low educational skills and generel knowledge, high deathrate(births) and now war where the that potential youth that should secure the russian population is killed.
Russia also has a high percentage of men that are either unskilled, lazy, alcoholic and criminals. Not many institutions works either. Everything rust, decay or fall to pieces and is left there.

Who wants to be a king for a shithole country except for a shithead?..

 

[RTG]

According to a Professor at Colorado Univercity of economics the russian state can cease to excist within 60 years due to low fertility rate, low educational skills and generel knowledge, high deathrate(births) and now war where the that potential youth that should secure the russian population is killed.
Russia also has a high percentage of men that are either unskilled, lazy, alcoholic and criminals. Not many institutions works either. Everything rust, decay or fall to pieces and is left there.

Who wants to be a king for a shithole country except for a shithead?..

There are some hot chicks over there. We should at least save them. A select few can stay with me. I'll tell my wife they are new cleaning people, um, who speak, weird Spanish. Ahh, albino mexicans, that will work. Have to save the Albino Mexicans.

 

[Scott CWO]

According to a Professor at Colorado Univercity of economics the russian state can cease to excist within 60 years due to low fertility rate, low educational skills and generel knowledge, high deathrate(births) and now war where the that potential youth that should secure the russian population is killed.
Russia also has a high percentage of men that are either unskilled, lazy, alcoholic and criminals. Not many institutions works either. Everything rust, decay or fall to pieces and is left there.

Who wants to be a king for a shithole country except for a shithead?..

Putin has stolen over $40 billion while the mean income is $1000 per year in Russia.

 

[PARA45]

 

[Wheels]

 

[Kevin Peacocke]

@Red Leg Russia continuing to shred Ukraine's power and water infrastructure with impunity seems very one sided and unfair. It would make them think twice if Ukraine developed it's own long range missiles and hit Moscow back. How much longer can Ukraine absorb this punishment? What is Russia's end game that they hipe to achieve by this? For sure they are hardening the world's hearts against them.

 

[Red Leg]

@Red Leg Russia continuing to shred Ukraine's power and water infrastructure with impunity seems very one sided and unfair. It would make them think twice if Ukraine developed it's own long range missiles and hit Moscow back. How much longer can Ukraine absorb this punishment? What is Russia's end game that they hipe to achieve by this? For sure they are hardening the world's hearts against them.

It has been the dream of first air power enthusiasts and then the missile community to provide the decisive striking power that would end wars by bringing an enemy population to its knees. History tells us rather clearly it doesn't work - at least with conventional arms. Neither Imperial German dirigibles and Gotha bombers over London in the Great War, nor the Luftwaffe with its Heinkels, Dorniers, and eventual V weapons had any real effect other than to harden the British people's will to fight on in WWII. Conversely, "Bomber" Harris was equally unsuccessful in his city destroying night bombing missions over Germany. The US had managed to kill as many as a quarter of a million Japanese civilians in its fire bombing raids with no apparent effect on the Japanese people's will to continue the war.

To date, according to both Ukrainian and US counts, Russia has launched approximately 16,000 missiles of one form or another against Ukraine. Currently, Ukraine is shooting down over half of them, but not so many earlier. Let's say generously that 10,000 have made it through to hit something. Looking across their inventory of cruise and battlefield missiles the average warhead capacity is around 500 pounds of explosives. That gives us around 2500 tons of explosives. On Berlin alone, the RAF and USAF dropped a total of 45,517 and 22,090 tons of explosives respectively. By the standards of the Second World War, Russia's strategic effort is puny.

This missile campaign is clearly aimed solely at civilian morale. Putin has been convinced that expending the vast majority of his remaining cruise and battlefield ballistic missiles on the civilian power infrastructure will cause the Ukrainian population to lose the will to fight and force the Zelensky government to the negotiating table under Russian conditions.

I think history tells us that is a pipe dream born through hubris or desperation.

 

[PARA45]

There are some hot chicks over there. We should at least save them. A select few can stay with me. I'll tell my wife they are new cleaning people, um, who speak, weird Spanish. Ahh, albino mexicans, that will work. Have to save the Albino Mexicans.

I could help you translate, for one or two of those Albino Mexicans.

 

[Wheels]

 

[Ray B]

I don't watch CNN, so wouldn't have seen it, but did the LeMon really say that?