We live in a world of “pretend.” The Regime pretends they have real Navies, that Russian is a menace to the world, that elections are fair, that we must kill democracy to save democracy, that COVID shots really work and don’t cause death and injury, that the bird flu really is a pandemic, that men can deliver babies, that children have the judgment to choose their gender, that Liz Chaney deserves a medal, that J6 was an insurrection, that Biden was a sharp as a tack for 4 years, that Kamala was a viable presidential candidate, that climate change is man-made, etc… most of those pretenses have serious real-world consequences. But the Regime will pretend they don’t.
Ughhhh….are you kidding!!?? I saw the list of celebrity athletes/non U.S. citizens like Lionel Messi received medals from Biden - which didn’t make
a lot of sense - but had no info that he awarded scientific innovation medals to Pfizer and Moderna. Shame on “Joe Biden” and his entire administration since he’s only a figure head anyway!
Surely Hunter deserves one for his work in Ukraine, another for his book, a third for his paintings, and a fourth for the example he's set battling his addictions.
A more specific metaphor is Jimmy saying “I didn’t eat the cookies,” despite his hand being in the jar, crumbs sprinkled on his shirt, and him being on video stuffing his face.
Europe & US in real trouble. Familiar with Sarah Adams? Watch this discussion with Shawn Ryan, especially from the 1 hr. mark. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T50pRCNaQCA
We live in a post-rule of law world. Here in Canada, we're at the stage where the PM gets up on stage and announces new policies without any of them getting Royal Assent of having gone through Committee for public input and consultations. It's governance by decree.
Two examples if you can permit me. One, was the government wanting to increase the capital gains tax from 50% to 66%? This caused quite the uproar and actually never became law. What does CRA (our IRS) do? It announces it will instruct auditors to treat this proposal as if it were law. Can you say ROGUE AGENCY?
Another is where the government agreed to extend charitable donations for charities because of the postal strike. Apparently, they still rely on checks. Which makes me wonder what demographic is doing most of the donating these days. Anyway. charities complained and wanted an extension because their operations were financially constrained.
One problem. We effectively HAVE NO GOVERNMENT. Parliament doesn't get back into session until January 27th. And even then, because of the Conservatives motion that was granted by the Speaker SUSPENDING all business of Parliament until the Liberals hand over UNREDACTED documents pertaining to the STDC scandal (a massive green grift that threatens to be the biggest in Canadian history) over to the RCMP for criminal investigation, nothing gets done. No bills. No nothing.
Yet, Trudeau says 'Sure, why not? Extensions!"
And you want to tell me he's not a faux-tin for despot because?
Citizens are unnecessary. Law is unnecessary. The Regime will do your thinking for you. Government is too important for the consent of the governed. Trust the Regime… they’re the experts.
I’ve got a 25 yr long friend in Calgary (I’m in Tennessee). Over the last 5 yrs, we’ve concluded that the parliamentary system is predicated on honorable (or honourable 😊) men dedicated to the law. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized that men are venal and fallen, and that words on paper will not constrain them. What can is “separation of powers,” whereby the competing vices of different groups of politicians will lead to them constraining each other.
100%. I also argued this in school. The way I framed it was our 'Charter' (and boy there's a history behind the evolution of our 'Charter') ensured the government had final say. By contrast, the U.S. Constitution it was the opposite where the people have final say. Completely different - and more enlightened and realist - experience giving way to an invention unique to America. They understood the default position of man was tyranny. It was the difference between a subject and a citizen. Separation of powers is key.
But these differences never mattered before because, you nailed it. In Canada, the Parliamentary system is hinged on the Honour/Honourable system. A lot of trust is built into it. Trudeau blew this up. He did us a favor to the extent he exposed the naivety of it. The Liberals are completely shameless in their endless carousel of scandals and ethics violations. The country - well, colony. I won't get into it here - enjoyed quite a stable free ride for decades as for the most part, despite being corrupt, our leaders had some level of decorum and honour. If they got caught, they assumed responsibility some of whom handing in resignations.
Not even close with this bunch. Up until 2015, Canada was in pretty damn good shape all things considered. Spare me the Covid line. It wasn't Covid that wrecked it. It was the policies of Trudeau and the Liberals and their obsession with identity politics. It's even worse than that, Trudeau acted like a King. If his Ministers did something he didn't like he either interfered or simply didn't follow their decisions. He was toxic on many levels.
Poilievre not only has to set the country back on track functionally but he has to once and for all attempt to get Canadians to understand we can't sit on our laurels and assume our leaders will do the right thing. He has a HUGE challenge ahead. Trudeau stacked the Senate with far leftists - 90 of 105. The judiciary is 9 woke Justices. The bureaucracy is woke red. He's going to need the population behind him to confront the problems exposed.
Ironically, I’m watching the recent Poilievre/Peterson podcast right now, and your comments track EXACTLY with their conversation. It’s like I was reading their script (😂) e.g., Poilievre commented that many provincial, and almost all municipal governments are Liberal and will require consistent public (voter) pressure to cooperate with the coming federal policy changes.
Both our countries are in for an interesting next few years.
One other point: there’s no copyright on the U.S. Constitution; its unique to the U.S. only because other countries have been disinclined to adopt it, I suspect because it grants enormous freedom to the People and limits government.
I'm about to watch it now actually. It goes without saying we need get involved at the local level. Conservatives/Libertarians have been terrible at this. Even in Tennessee it can be challenging. i follow North America CLOSELY. It helps that David Knight is based in Tennessee so he covers stories from there. I hope to return one day. Had a great time when I was in Nashville.
Yeh, it's stuff many have observed over the years. I've was appalled at how weak and useless the Charter has proven to be during Covid.
“…appalled at how weak and useless the Charter has proven to be during Covid.”
I remarked some years ago to my CDN friend (maybe during Trudeau’s jihad against the truckers), “What GUARANTEE do Canadians have against government excess, given that the Charter is an Act of Parliament?” And he said something like “Oh no, it’s a CHARTER. They would never go against the Charter.” I think he’s revised his opinion on the regard governments have of paper restrictions on their power.
I remember watching a policeman on horseback ride into the peaceful crowd on the sidewalk and knock an older woman ass over tea kettle, and thinking “This is something out of Tiananmen Square.” That continues to offend me because he could have solved the situation by commandeering all heavy tow trucks in Ottawa for the day and towing the 200 trucks to storage yards for illegal parking. It’s not like Ottawans were on the brink of storming Parliament.
And to be clear, the Canadian system does NOT have the checks and balances that come from the separation of powers. The Senate is an unelected rubber stamp on Parliament.
The late Antonin Scalia appeared before Congress at one point and explained that the Soviet constitution was much longer than the U.S.’s and enumerated a far longer list of fundamental rights for each its citizens. He then explained that those rights weren’t worth the paper they were written on because there was no separation of powers built in to to restrain the government’s excesses. In essence, I’m giving Scalia credit for my “separation of powers” point above.
Up until Trudeau, we were in between Europe and USA. We're decently armed - especially out West. We could get hand guns - through it was a process. Then Trudeau came along. This really pissed me off. But the conservatives have promised to repeal the bans. Even the police have voiced opposition to it if you can believe it. If Trudeau were to get another mandate he'd ban hunting rifles. NO QUESTION ABOUT IT.
A truism: When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
And another: The men who wrote the 2nd Amendment had not just returned from a hunting trip. They’d just fought a revolution against the strongest military on the face of the Earth.
And when our Navy is compared to an actual threat, China, it’s way, way more depressing. Our hubris is built on winning battles against middle eastern sand farmers. The problem is I don’t think military leaders realize this. I think they believe “we’re America and that means it’s baked in that we win.”
It’s not obvious we can do anything about China taking Taiwan back. If there’s not some serious work between now and 2027, and I mean from a leadership perspective (which is the only thing that can drive real systems change), we’re gonna have an aircraft carrier at the bottom of the ocean if we try to stop them.
Ineffectual people vote for ineffectual leadership.
Ineffectual leadership focuses on DEI, kowtows to 'civil' discourse and plays along with diplomacy between feckless pretenders whose only real qualifications include the ability to steal breathable oxygen and smile while doing so.
Trouble is, we are a mostly ineffectual society, brought up in easy times, with every convenience, contrivance and pleasure at our fingertips. Unfortunately, we must go through a long period of harsh conditioning to forge the quality and strength of character in our midst that is needed to turn things around. But, you know, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Rooskies? Nah, they're just afraid of having a NATO missile base in their backyard just as we were of having one in Cuba. (cue Bay of Pigs narrative...) Now China on the other hand will probably take over Thailand again and we'll just bluster and condemn like we always have, but we'll be so thin and stretched playing footsie with Iran's list of proxies that China will be able to do what it wants in 2025.
Hard times produce hardened people. Good times produce what we have today.
Well, it is a good thing all of the NATO leaders are communists (allegedly), so when we fall to Russia, they'll fit right in!!!
[I wonder if the Brits will try to jail me now?]
[Gavin Newsom, if this upsets you and the interns you have spying on American patriot posts, please remember, you could only clean up SF for one person, the Chinese Priemer. Kinda seems like you are a Commie]
They're all figuring that if things get too bad, the US will bail them out. We could easily take care of the Houthis if our military was unfettered and allowed to fight. You warn them and if they disregard the warning, you take them out. But that's not happening.
Not entirely true – Trump took the gloves off against ISIS. (BTW, our failures in Viet Nam, Iraq & Afghanistan were due to “nation building.” If God is merciful, our descendants will internalize that lesson.
Meanwhile the Russians and the Chinese have real fuckin’ guns, ships, planes, submarines and hypersonic nuclear missiles - seems like a fair fight to me.
And yet the Russians are “producing” tanks for use in Ukraine by scrounging parts from destroyed hulks. They’re fielding T-55’s from the late ‘50’s! (They don’t fare well in modern battle.) Their hypersonic missiles are not targeting well – essentially they’re super-fast “area bombardment” weapons. This is not the Red Army that defended Moscow and chased Hitler to Berlin.
Russia is producing about 200 or 300 new modern tanks a year and refurbishing and modernizing 1300 other tanks, like T-72s a year. Not just a handful of T-55. Now here’s the US M1 tank production plan: “The Army plans to produce 22 tanks in FY23, 80 fewer than previously planned; 30 in FY24, 71 fewer than planned, and 53 in FY25, 60 fewer vehicles.”
The Swedes (cited in the linked analysis) are not known as U.S. propagandists, and they are a good deal closer to the gunfire than either of us. The “refurbishing” you describe are the T-55s & T-62s being withdrawn from decades in “deep storage,” aka being left outside in the weather to rust.
Besides, if your numbers are (hypothetically) correct, what’s Putin doing with all those shiny new tanks? He’s certainly not committing them to Ukraine. Perhaps he’s retaking Berlin, to bring back Stalin’s glory days?
What they’re doing is attriting Ukraine. Tanks are mass consumption items. And we sent a parsimonious 31 tanks to Ukraine; a lot of them have been destroyed and/or captured.
3 of the articles deal respectively with the Russian Air Force, navy and infantry. None of those has played a strategic role so far. (The Russian Army, for all its size & matériel, has been fought to a standstill time & again by the Ukrainians.)
As to the last article, on arms production, I quote:
“Bekhan Ozdoev, industrial director of the armament complex at Rostec…did not detail the total volume of weapons produced.” As usual with the Russians, lots of puffery, no hard data.
China is the number one shipbuilding country in the world.
"The total tonnage of ships it built in 2023 hit 42.32 million deadweight tons (DWTs), an increase of 11.8 percent year on year. New orders and holding orders were 71.2 million DWTs"
The US built 6.5 million DWTs in 2024. The Navy built 1.5 million DWTS.
Ship building capacity meant much more in WWII than it does now. This is the age of missiles. As Patton remarked, “Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.” Unless we can find a way to hide them from radar, aircraft carriers are the modern “fixed fortifications.” They are great for projecting power and preventing war, but will not do well in fighting it.
(Edited) Agree, but reliance on subs conceptually reduces our threat capacity to “all or nothing.” I think the best approach might be more subs, plus the doctrine that taking out our aircraft carrier will cost you a city.
This is well stated. I also wonder if most of our investment should be in space, and not at sea. It feels to me like that is a place where we are quite vulnerable.
I don't promote or encourage fearfulness. If anything, I think the "everybody is weaker than they seem" problem will promote peace through inability. But TBD.
Chris: As usual, you are killing it! Keep up the great REAL journalism! // NATO = Keystone Cops!! Good thing Russia REALLY IS NOT a threat to Europe. NATO's, i.e. U.S.' proxy war in Ukraine is a tragedy that bespeaks, yet again, of evil and buffoonery from western "leaders". Alexander Mercouris yesterday termed it "nihilism elevated to statecraft." Western "diplomats" (there are none) have a penchant for "zero-sum" diplomacy which enables them to keep digging the hole deeper when all is lost. Yes, nihilism, on steroids. Putin and Lavrov have the big-picture, long-view to cut their losses, as Syria is the most recent example. BTW, speaking of Houthis, as I asked ten years ago (when I was a senior intel analyst), "who's talking to the Houthis?" Oh yeah, "we" don't engage adversaries in dialogue. These diplomatic morons will go down in flames, and take the rest of us with them! Ukraine = Biden's Vietnam with Ukrainian blood. Good show Joe. A great legacy along with your crime family.
I know this is a little off subject but.. George Soros???? R u fing kidding me?
A Jew that was raised by his father's Nazi friend and said" I never felt so powerful as when we went to their homes"( little George accompanied the Nazi officers while arresting Jews and taking all their belongings and sending then off to the camps). Never mind the destruction of America!
They don't even try to keep up the charade anymore🤬🤬
Soros’ response in the Steve Kroft interview on CBS as to why at 14 he inventoried the Jews’ property on those home “visits” was “Someone had to do it.” To call him 💩 would be to insult all fauna on Planet Earth.
Not only did Georgie Soros get himself a nifty medal from “Joe Biden,” madam HRC got herself a medal too, from the automaton. What she really needs is a preemptive presidential pardon.
Your use of “scum” (and mine above of 💩) got me thinking. Scum is defined as “1) A filmy or frothy layer of matter that forms on the surface of a liquid or body of water or on a hard surface, or 2) Refuse or worthless matter.”
It was #2 that helped me realize why these words/emojis and those like them are inadequate: they describe inanimate objects that have no thoughts or will, and are incapable of intent, whether evil or good. They are blameless for their condition that makes men abhor them.
Soros, OTOH, is loathed not for his physical being or his wealth, but for what he’s chosen to become as a person. He is SOLELY responsible for the evil he’s perpetrated throughout his life. I don’t think any language has an accurate single word for that. We use historical references as adjectives: e.g., Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Beria.
I think it speaks well of humanity that we have more adjectives about good than we do about evil.
We live in a world of “pretend.” The Regime pretends they have real Navies, that Russian is a menace to the world, that elections are fair, that we must kill democracy to save democracy, that COVID shots really work and don’t cause death and injury, that the bird flu really is a pandemic, that men can deliver babies, that children have the judgment to choose their gender, that Liz Chaney deserves a medal, that J6 was an insurrection, that Biden was a sharp as a tack for 4 years, that Kamala was a viable presidential candidate, that climate change is man-made, etc… most of those pretenses have serious real-world consequences. But the Regime will pretend they don’t.
Did you see that Biden also gave medals for scientific innovation to Moderna and Pfizer on the same day? It's all too perfect.
checks cut to his Presidential library-cum-slush fund in 3...2...1...
Ughhhh….are you kidding!!?? I saw the list of celebrity athletes/non U.S. citizens like Lionel Messi received medals from Biden - which didn’t make
a lot of sense - but had no info that he awarded scientific innovation medals to Pfizer and Moderna. Shame on “Joe Biden” and his entire administration since he’s only a figure head anyway!
https://nationalmedals.org/stories/the-white-house-awards-national-medals-of-science-and-national-medals-of-technology-and-innovation/
It's so hilariously shameless and repulsive.
Just imagine everybody without their clothes on.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
the shame is on the sci/med community for agreeing to "approve" a medication without Phase III controlled studies.
It's probably a $100k donation to his "Library" to play.
And to George Soros.
Hey, may as well give one to Himmler and Blackbeard at this point, amirite?
Surely Hunter deserves one for his work in Ukraine, another for his book, a third for his paintings, and a fourth for the example he's set battling his addictions.
LOL!
Bravo sir….bravo!
Why so limited? Let’s pull up the roster from the Nuremburg trials and starting minting the Medals…
Ugh, I just threw up in my mouth a little seeing that.
The medals are participation trophies.
I stopped listening when I heard Biden gave Lizard Cheney a major award. 🙄
As well as Soros…so many evil doers with medals. So very perfect.
Did getting the jab cause Biden to get all senile and stuff. Oh, never mind…
And Hilary Clinton. Don’t forget her medal.
Yucky
🤮🤮🤮
He gave one to Lionel Messi, for being the world's number one retard soccer player. In Brasil our entire national team is a bunch of retards!
Did getting the jab cause Biden to get all dopey and shit? Oh, wait. Never mind…
But not J&J or AstraZeneca?
We DESERVE better PSYOPS!
Yeah, we could employ a bunch of six year olds to shuffle their feet, look down, and declaim, "I din do it. Johnnie did."
A scenario much more believable than the performances of our current lords and masters.
A more specific metaphor is Jimmy saying “I didn’t eat the cookies,” despite his hand being in the jar, crumbs sprinkled on his shirt, and him being on video stuffing his face.
True
Exactly. Lolol, Andy!
Just think of the further damage “Joe Biden” will do in the next two weeks. I hate to sound cruel, but “Joe Biden” needs to join Jimmy Carter soon.
Europe & US in real trouble. Familiar with Sarah Adams? Watch this discussion with Shawn Ryan, especially from the 1 hr. mark. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T50pRCNaQCA
Seriously! It really is incredibly insulting.
We live in a post-rule of law world. Here in Canada, we're at the stage where the PM gets up on stage and announces new policies without any of them getting Royal Assent of having gone through Committee for public input and consultations. It's governance by decree.
Two examples if you can permit me. One, was the government wanting to increase the capital gains tax from 50% to 66%? This caused quite the uproar and actually never became law. What does CRA (our IRS) do? It announces it will instruct auditors to treat this proposal as if it were law. Can you say ROGUE AGENCY?
Another is where the government agreed to extend charitable donations for charities because of the postal strike. Apparently, they still rely on checks. Which makes me wonder what demographic is doing most of the donating these days. Anyway. charities complained and wanted an extension because their operations were financially constrained.
One problem. We effectively HAVE NO GOVERNMENT. Parliament doesn't get back into session until January 27th. And even then, because of the Conservatives motion that was granted by the Speaker SUSPENDING all business of Parliament until the Liberals hand over UNREDACTED documents pertaining to the STDC scandal (a massive green grift that threatens to be the biggest in Canadian history) over to the RCMP for criminal investigation, nothing gets done. No bills. No nothing.
Yet, Trudeau says 'Sure, why not? Extensions!"
And you want to tell me he's not a faux-tin for despot because?
Citizens are unnecessary. Law is unnecessary. The Regime will do your thinking for you. Government is too important for the consent of the governed. Trust the Regime… they’re the experts.
"Experts say...."
I’ve got a 25 yr long friend in Calgary (I’m in Tennessee). Over the last 5 yrs, we’ve concluded that the parliamentary system is predicated on honorable (or honourable 😊) men dedicated to the law. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized that men are venal and fallen, and that words on paper will not constrain them. What can is “separation of powers,” whereby the competing vices of different groups of politicians will lead to them constraining each other.
100%. I also argued this in school. The way I framed it was our 'Charter' (and boy there's a history behind the evolution of our 'Charter') ensured the government had final say. By contrast, the U.S. Constitution it was the opposite where the people have final say. Completely different - and more enlightened and realist - experience giving way to an invention unique to America. They understood the default position of man was tyranny. It was the difference between a subject and a citizen. Separation of powers is key.
But these differences never mattered before because, you nailed it. In Canada, the Parliamentary system is hinged on the Honour/Honourable system. A lot of trust is built into it. Trudeau blew this up. He did us a favor to the extent he exposed the naivety of it. The Liberals are completely shameless in their endless carousel of scandals and ethics violations. The country - well, colony. I won't get into it here - enjoyed quite a stable free ride for decades as for the most part, despite being corrupt, our leaders had some level of decorum and honour. If they got caught, they assumed responsibility some of whom handing in resignations.
Not even close with this bunch. Up until 2015, Canada was in pretty damn good shape all things considered. Spare me the Covid line. It wasn't Covid that wrecked it. It was the policies of Trudeau and the Liberals and their obsession with identity politics. It's even worse than that, Trudeau acted like a King. If his Ministers did something he didn't like he either interfered or simply didn't follow their decisions. He was toxic on many levels.
Poilievre not only has to set the country back on track functionally but he has to once and for all attempt to get Canadians to understand we can't sit on our laurels and assume our leaders will do the right thing. He has a HUGE challenge ahead. Trudeau stacked the Senate with far leftists - 90 of 105. The judiciary is 9 woke Justices. The bureaucracy is woke red. He's going to need the population behind him to confront the problems exposed.
Ironically, I’m watching the recent Poilievre/Peterson podcast right now, and your comments track EXACTLY with their conversation. It’s like I was reading their script (😂) e.g., Poilievre commented that many provincial, and almost all municipal governments are Liberal and will require consistent public (voter) pressure to cooperate with the coming federal policy changes.
Both our countries are in for an interesting next few years.
One other point: there’s no copyright on the U.S. Constitution; its unique to the U.S. only because other countries have been disinclined to adopt it, I suspect because it grants enormous freedom to the People and limits government.
I'm about to watch it now actually. It goes without saying we need get involved at the local level. Conservatives/Libertarians have been terrible at this. Even in Tennessee it can be challenging. i follow North America CLOSELY. It helps that David Knight is based in Tennessee so he covers stories from there. I hope to return one day. Had a great time when I was in Nashville.
Yeh, it's stuff many have observed over the years. I've was appalled at how weak and useless the Charter has proven to be during Covid.
You guys may enjoy this guy:
https://x.com/JuliusRuechel/status/1873906889375047842
“…appalled at how weak and useless the Charter has proven to be during Covid.”
I remarked some years ago to my CDN friend (maybe during Trudeau’s jihad against the truckers), “What GUARANTEE do Canadians have against government excess, given that the Charter is an Act of Parliament?” And he said something like “Oh no, it’s a CHARTER. They would never go against the Charter.” I think he’s revised his opinion on the regard governments have of paper restrictions on their power.
I remember watching a policeman on horseback ride into the peaceful crowd on the sidewalk and knock an older woman ass over tea kettle, and thinking “This is something out of Tiananmen Square.” That continues to offend me because he could have solved the situation by commandeering all heavy tow trucks in Ottawa for the day and towing the 200 trucks to storage yards for illegal parking. It’s not like Ottawans were on the brink of storming Parliament.
And to be clear, the Canadian system does NOT have the checks and balances that come from the separation of powers. The Senate is an unelected rubber stamp on Parliament.
The late Antonin Scalia appeared before Congress at one point and explained that the Soviet constitution was much longer than the U.S.’s and enumerated a far longer list of fundamental rights for each its citizens. He then explained that those rights weren’t worth the paper they were written on because there was no separation of powers built in to to restrain the government’s excesses. In essence, I’m giving Scalia credit for my “separation of powers” point above.
Hence his untimely demise? 🤔
Scalia’s address to Congress was in Oct 2011. He died in Feb 2016. 4 yrs and 4 months is a little long to hold a grudge for a noncontroversial speech.
Shoulda kept your guns…..
Up until Trudeau, we were in between Europe and USA. We're decently armed - especially out West. We could get hand guns - through it was a process. Then Trudeau came along. This really pissed me off. But the conservatives have promised to repeal the bans. Even the police have voiced opposition to it if you can believe it. If Trudeau were to get another mandate he'd ban hunting rifles. NO QUESTION ABOUT IT.
A truism: When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
And another: The men who wrote the 2nd Amendment had not just returned from a hunting trip. They’d just fought a revolution against the strongest military on the face of the Earth.
Available at all major retailers, the Biden Senior Safety Tack with the sharpe pointe thinge in the centre removed.
It's alright, when Trump annexes Canada as our 51st state the Canadians can rent Greenland from us.
We can list it on Airbnb
I got nothing for that one...lolol
We’ll have to fight the Danish navy for Greenland.
Seward was called an idiot for buying Alaska from the Russians. Trump vying for Greenland ain’t all that dumb…
I think its a great idea!
Do the Danish navy ships still have dragon heads on the prows?
When Canada is absorbed that will be states 51 to 61.
But which way will they vote?!
It's the Domino Theory all over again..."As Ukraine goes, so goes the world!"
Yep, same BS fear tactics used to justify the Vietnam War, among others.
And when our Navy is compared to an actual threat, China, it’s way, way more depressing. Our hubris is built on winning battles against middle eastern sand farmers. The problem is I don’t think military leaders realize this. I think they believe “we’re America and that means it’s baked in that we win.”
It’s not obvious we can do anything about China taking Taiwan back. If there’s not some serious work between now and 2027, and I mean from a leadership perspective (which is the only thing that can drive real systems change), we’re gonna have an aircraft carrier at the bottom of the ocean if we try to stop them.
Our leaders are totally pretend.
Have we reached the point where we should start putting quotes around "leaders" - just like we do with "experts"?
Give the Taiwanese missiles similar to what the Houthis are using.
They need a Houthis military assistance program.
We won the battles but we lost the war.
Hmm, did we actually even win against middle easter sand farmers?? What did we win?
Ineffectual people vote for ineffectual leadership.
Ineffectual leadership focuses on DEI, kowtows to 'civil' discourse and plays along with diplomacy between feckless pretenders whose only real qualifications include the ability to steal breathable oxygen and smile while doing so.
Trouble is, we are a mostly ineffectual society, brought up in easy times, with every convenience, contrivance and pleasure at our fingertips. Unfortunately, we must go through a long period of harsh conditioning to forge the quality and strength of character in our midst that is needed to turn things around. But, you know, I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Rooskies? Nah, they're just afraid of having a NATO missile base in their backyard just as we were of having one in Cuba. (cue Bay of Pigs narrative...) Now China on the other hand will probably take over Thailand again and we'll just bluster and condemn like we always have, but we'll be so thin and stretched playing footsie with Iran's list of proxies that China will be able to do what it wants in 2025.
Hard times produce hardened people. Good times produce what we have today.
Thailand just called and said, "He means Taiwan, right?" But yes to the rest.
*Quickly edits, but then falls back asleep because naps...*
Lmao
That made me laugh!
The Chinese just can’t nail the coconut curry on their own
Well, it is a good thing all of the NATO leaders are communists (allegedly), so when we fall to Russia, they'll fit right in!!!
[I wonder if the Brits will try to jail me now?]
[Gavin Newsom, if this upsets you and the interns you have spying on American patriot posts, please remember, you could only clean up SF for one person, the Chinese Priemer. Kinda seems like you are a Commie]
"It’s true - because, it’s true."!
Can you add an "Are you shitting me?" button. Like doesn't express my reaction.
I always thought Ukraine was the stick we were poking into the bears eye. Nope. Turns out Ukraine is the wall between Europe and the White Walkers.
Time to max out the credit cards!
Why simp for the bear? The woman is halfway to choosing it over the man anyway.
They're all figuring that if things get too bad, the US will bail them out. We could easily take care of the Houthis if our military was unfettered and allowed to fight. You warn them and if they disregard the warning, you take them out. But that's not happening.
The military has not been allowed to fight since Korea.
And at the rate we're going ...
Not entirely true – Trump took the gloves off against ISIS. (BTW, our failures in Viet Nam, Iraq & Afghanistan were due to “nation building.” If God is merciful, our descendants will internalize that lesson.
Meanwhile the Russians and the Chinese have real fuckin’ guns, ships, planes, submarines and hypersonic nuclear missiles - seems like a fair fight to me.
And yet the Russians are “producing” tanks for use in Ukraine by scrounging parts from destroyed hulks. They’re fielding T-55’s from the late ‘50’s! (They don’t fare well in modern battle.) Their hypersonic missiles are not targeting well – essentially they’re super-fast “area bombardment” weapons. This is not the Red Army that defended Moscow and chased Hitler to Berlin.
Russia is producing about 200 or 300 new modern tanks a year and refurbishing and modernizing 1300 other tanks, like T-72s a year. Not just a handful of T-55. Now here’s the US M1 tank production plan: “The Army plans to produce 22 tanks in FY23, 80 fewer than previously planned; 30 in FY24, 71 fewer than planned, and 53 in FY25, 60 fewer vehicles.”
Don’t crow about propaganda.
The Swedes (cited in the linked analysis) are not known as U.S. propagandists, and they are a good deal closer to the gunfire than either of us. The “refurbishing” you describe are the T-55s & T-62s being withdrawn from decades in “deep storage,” aka being left outside in the weather to rust.
Besides, if your numbers are (hypothetically) correct, what’s Putin doing with all those shiny new tanks? He’s certainly not committing them to Ukraine. Perhaps he’s retaking Berlin, to bring back Stalin’s glory days?
https://en.defence-ua.com/industries/analyzing_russian_report_of_2100_tanks_produced_in_2023_and_wheres_the_catch_in_these_data-8511.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/26/politics/russia-forces-ukraine-war-cavoli/index.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/11/christopher-cavoli-russian-military-losses-00151718
https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/russia-weapons-production-increased-dramatically-rcna158883
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-ramps-up-output-some-military-hardware-by-more-than-tenfold-state-company-2023-09-19/
What they’re doing is attriting Ukraine. Tanks are mass consumption items. And we sent a parsimonious 31 tanks to Ukraine; a lot of them have been destroyed and/or captured.
3 of the articles deal respectively with the Russian Air Force, navy and infantry. None of those has played a strategic role so far. (The Russian Army, for all its size & matériel, has been fought to a standstill time & again by the Ukrainians.)
As to the last article, on arms production, I quote:
“Bekhan Ozdoev, industrial director of the armament complex at Rostec…did not detail the total volume of weapons produced.” As usual with the Russians, lots of puffery, no hard data.
The Russians have not been fought to a standstill, even though 32 countries have been assisting Ukraine with weapons, munitions, ISR, training.
They’re not our only concern. Watch this - especially from the 1 hr. mark. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T50pRCNaQCA
"Potemkin everything" made me snarf my drink.
I preferred when Potemkin was only building villages...
But Potemkin Inc.—thanks to the promise of globalization!—has turned into Acme Inc. like in the Roadrunner cartoons...
China is the number one shipbuilding country in the world.
"The total tonnage of ships it built in 2023 hit 42.32 million deadweight tons (DWTs), an increase of 11.8 percent year on year. New orders and holding orders were 71.2 million DWTs"
The US built 6.5 million DWTs in 2024. The Navy built 1.5 million DWTS.
Ship building capacity meant much more in WWII than it does now. This is the age of missiles. As Patton remarked, “Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.” Unless we can find a way to hide them from radar, aircraft carriers are the modern “fixed fortifications.” They are great for projecting power and preventing war, but will not do well in fighting it.
The capital ships of the line in the 21st century are submarines. The US needs to build more submarines. In a sense, nothing else matters.
(Edited) Agree, but reliance on subs conceptually reduces our threat capacity to “all or nothing.” I think the best approach might be more subs, plus the doctrine that taking out our aircraft carrier will cost you a city.
Right, we need more surface ships to project force in asymmetrical war. In total war, only the submarines matter
See my edited response above. (posted prematurely by fumble finger)
This is well stated. I also wonder if most of our investment should be in space, and not at sea. It feels to me like that is a place where we are quite vulnerable.
And I thought I was already feeling discouraged. Day-um!
Canada excels at mass dissimilar immigration, little else. It's headed to failed state status.
Because I’m genetically wired to think “it’s worse than that !” It’s difficult not to be terrified.
I don't promote or encourage fearfulness. If anything, I think the "everybody is weaker than they seem" problem will promote peace through inability. But TBD.
Thanks Chris. Mostly “terrified “ by mass incompetence and stupidity. I don’t know where it leads us ……
Chris: As usual, you are killing it! Keep up the great REAL journalism! // NATO = Keystone Cops!! Good thing Russia REALLY IS NOT a threat to Europe. NATO's, i.e. U.S.' proxy war in Ukraine is a tragedy that bespeaks, yet again, of evil and buffoonery from western "leaders". Alexander Mercouris yesterday termed it "nihilism elevated to statecraft." Western "diplomats" (there are none) have a penchant for "zero-sum" diplomacy which enables them to keep digging the hole deeper when all is lost. Yes, nihilism, on steroids. Putin and Lavrov have the big-picture, long-view to cut their losses, as Syria is the most recent example. BTW, speaking of Houthis, as I asked ten years ago (when I was a senior intel analyst), "who's talking to the Houthis?" Oh yeah, "we" don't engage adversaries in dialogue. These diplomatic morons will go down in flames, and take the rest of us with them! Ukraine = Biden's Vietnam with Ukrainian blood. Good show Joe. A great legacy along with your crime family.
Paragraphs would help.
I know this is a little off subject but.. George Soros???? R u fing kidding me?
A Jew that was raised by his father's Nazi friend and said" I never felt so powerful as when we went to their homes"( little George accompanied the Nazi officers while arresting Jews and taking all their belongings and sending then off to the camps). Never mind the destruction of America!
They don't even try to keep up the charade anymore🤬🤬
Soros’ response in the Steve Kroft interview on CBS as to why at 14 he inventoried the Jews’ property on those home “visits” was “Someone had to do it.” To call him 💩 would be to insult all fauna on Planet Earth.
Not only did Georgie Soros get himself a nifty medal from “Joe Biden,” madam HRC got herself a medal too, from the automaton. What she really needs is a preemptive presidential pardon.
He is scum.
He's below scum.
Stop equivocating! 🤣
Your use of “scum” (and mine above of 💩) got me thinking. Scum is defined as “1) A filmy or frothy layer of matter that forms on the surface of a liquid or body of water or on a hard surface, or 2) Refuse or worthless matter.”
It was #2 that helped me realize why these words/emojis and those like them are inadequate: they describe inanimate objects that have no thoughts or will, and are incapable of intent, whether evil or good. They are blameless for their condition that makes men abhor them.
Soros, OTOH, is loathed not for his physical being or his wealth, but for what he’s chosen to become as a person. He is SOLELY responsible for the evil he’s perpetrated throughout his life. I don’t think any language has an accurate single word for that. We use historical references as adjectives: e.g., Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Beria.
I think it speaks well of humanity that we have more adjectives about good than we do about evil.
“Apparently the real conflict is the war against seriousness.”
Spot on.