While the United States is providing support to Ukraine as the Arsenal of Democracy, is a military planning and intel ally, and is the leader of NATO, there is a “realpolitik” element of this hot mess that requires airing out.
My favorite view of a Russian tank.
Vladimir Putin — a name that will live in the infamous company of Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Mussolini forever — declared martial law in the four faux provinces of Ukraine he annexed. In addition, eight surrounding areas are in a state of “economic mobilization.”
This is as much for Russian public consumption as anything else. He is softening up the Russian public for a sterner step — the declaration of a complete mobilization and an all out war.
He has cast off the fake coat of a “special military operation” and has mobilized his army for a protracted war whilst he continues to play at nuclear brinksmanship.
What does it all mean?
Disney movie baddie Putin struts his little self into a clown show imperial setting to pretend Russia’s economy is not 25% smaller than Italy’s.
The other day I used the above phrase — the canary in the coal mine — and a person said, “What does that mean?”
Canary in a cage with an oxygen bottle resuscitator. Real life thing.
Miners carried canaries in special cages into the depths of underground coal mines because the canary was more sensitive than humans to deadly gases like carbon monoxide.
If the canary died, then the miners hauled ass and, hopefully, revived the canary. Continue reading
I spent the last few days in Cashiers, North Carolina hiking the mountains and healing my soul. My favorite hike is around a chi chi girls’ camp on the shores of Fairfield Lake. It is simply the best.
The mountains were and are — for about the next two weeks — alive with color of such outrageous richness as to make one skeptical of their reality. It was a welcome respite from the storm.
This week OPEC+ at its 33rd OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting held in Vienna agreed to decrease crude oil production by 2,000,000 barrels a day which will have obvious implications — bad implications — for the rising price of oil, increasing inflation, and the global economy.
Taking 2,000,000 bbl/day out of the pipeline will:
1. Dramatically increase oil prices to the $125 – 150/bbl range.
2. Add another jolt to inflation worldwide, but in particular in the United States.
3. Enrich Putler’s war machine. Continue reading
Putin will order the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine before the the end of October. Allow me to lay out the case for why it happens.
The time line looks like this:
1. Putin began to move troops onto the border of Ukraine on 21 February 2021, less than a month after Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day. Putin said these soldiers, airborne troopers, were there to “conduct exercises.”
2. On 30 August 2021, the United States conducted its incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan exposing its feckless leadership and dwindling resolve.
Russia watched carefully and Putin rubbed his hands in glee sensing the Americans (and by association, NATO) were vulnerable. Continue reading
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