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So Russia is losing the war so bad, Zelensky has offered a surrender if they promise to never join NATO.
Putin's response?
Unconditional surrender, and nothing else.
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@Stephen
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if in the future we learn that Biden had given Putin the nod and wink to invade the Ukraine while telling President Zelenskiy that the US would support him militarily.
He told him he could have a minor incursion on live TV.
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@Stephen
That Pikachu face on Zelensky when he was denied Air Support from Nato and Biden.
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Russia has 41095 live births a day. World population is so crazy right now, casualties mean nothing to the sustainability of a nation until its in the multi millions.
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@TheUnderdog
China will rule in 100 years.
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@FLRW
for working with Biden's son.
That claim is a lie straight from far right extremist Nazi fake news. Biden's son never worked with Ukraine as he was dead at the time.
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@whiteflame
about a relatively new news story
It's 5 days old. If most Americans didn't get it when it was breaking news, it's no longer newsworthy.
I'm willing to bet you didn't know about this 5 days ago.
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@whiteflame
I would guess maybe 20% of Americans tops know this story. Do you disagree?
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@ILikePie5
Here is an example from 2014 on how to spin the 5 billion spent on regime change,
Our ruling
Contrary to claims, the United States did not spend $5 billion to incite the rebellion in Ukraine.
That’s a distorted understanding of remarks given by a State Department official. She was referring to money spent on "democracy-building" programs in Ukraine since it broke off from the Soviet Union in 1991.
We rate the claim Pants on Fire.
Simply redirect all queries for "regime change" to the official strawman "inciting rebellion" and that's all the smoke needed to fool most Americans.
There's no basis at all to think similar spins can't happen for deals with Iran and Venezuela.
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@ILikePie5
The media has peddled worse and the people have believed worse. Remember when they said a Russian prostitute peed on Trump lol.
Never underestimate the gullibility of an American.
it didn't involve a massive investment on the part of the US government in a hostile foreign source of oil for no obvious reason.
Like investing 5 billion to install a Ukrainian president needed a reason to peddle to Americans.... Hint: It didn't.
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@whiteflame
a very large-scale purchase of oil... from Iran and Venezuela...
Easily. you saw how they spun purchasing a Ukrainian president for 5 billion. Super easy.
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@whiteflame
if the public found out.
They won't. In fact they could spin it as a humanitarian effort. Lord knows how much spin got traction with Obama's policies in Ukraine.
People still actually think we are defending "democracy" lol.
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Erm... this is without question the case.
Azov wants you to hold their beer.
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@whiteflame
If they had done this under the radar without consulting Congress, there would have been hell to pay over it, and I’m not convinced he could because this is economic policy. You can pursue an agreement only if the investment is clearly there to be spent. Congress holds the purse strings.
It's Biden's Congress to do as he pleases for one thing. For another thing, if there's a media Blackout on it, the Congress won't care.
As I layed out in my other thread, most people are shielded from the information about effects of Obama's foreign policy in Ukraine. It would have been totally doable.
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@whiteflame
Again, though, you’re talking about a strategy that would have very clearly weakened his political position in the US and abroad with no obvious reason for doing it. It’s unpopular now when we have an obvious benefit for doing it. I don’t know how he could possibly have rallied support for it several months ago with no obvious benefit in pursuing it.
The Biden administration could have pursued this under the radar with little to no media coverage on it. That's how most foreign policies are developed.
Just like there's a media blackout right now on how America destabilized Ukraine during the Obama years despite such a policy being unpopular with Americans.
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So what you’re really saying is that Biden should have initiated these talks well before there was any chance of an invasion, which I’m sure would have gone over like a lead balloon.
It would have been the stronger of 2 weak positions.
most countries could see the writing on the wall, so they would always have us over a barrel.
I see what you did there...
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@3RU7AL
suppose mexico decided to take back former mexican territory?
Suppose Russia paid 5 billion to overthrow the current Mexican president and installed a Pro-Russia president and call it "democracy." That's what happened in Ukraine, only America was the instigator.
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The US Wouldn’t Tolerate What Russia Is Expected to Accept
Much has been written about the Russian buildup on the Ukraine border. Reports of the buildup have been intensified by US intelligence officials’ warnings of an attack. Media often echo the claim of an inevitable invasion. The Washington Post editorial board wrote that “Putin can—and will—use any measures the United States and its NATO allies either take or refrain from taking as a pretext for aggression.”
But Putin has been clear about a path to de-escalation. His main demand has been for direct negotiations to end the expansion of the hostile military alliance to his borders. He announced, “We have made it clear that NATO’s move to the east is unacceptable,” and that “the United States is standing with missiles on our doorstep.” Putin asked, “How would the Americans react if missiles were placed at the border with Canada or Mexico?”
In corporate media coverage, no one bothers to ask this important question. Instead, the assumption is that Putin ought to tolerate a hostile military alliance directly across its border. The US, it seems, is the only country allowed to have a sphere of influence.
The New York Times asked: “Can the West Stop Russia From Invading Ukraine?” but shrugs at the US dismissal of Putin’s terms as “nonstarters.” The Washington Post reported: “Some analysts have expressed worry that the Russian leader is making demands that he knows Washington will reject, possibly as a pretext for military action once he is spurned.” The Post quoted one analyst, “I don’t see us giving them anything that would suffice relative to their demands, and what troubles me is they know that.”
Audiences have also been assured that Putin’s reaction to Western expansionism is actually a prelude to more aggressive actions. “Ukraine Is Only One Small Part of Putin’s Plans,” warned the New York Times. The Times later described Putin’s Ukraine policy as an attempt at “restoring what he views as Russia’s rightful place among the world’s great powers,” rather than an attempt to avoid having the US military directly on its border. USA Today warned readers that “Putin ‘Won’t Stop’ with Ukraine.”
But taking this view is diplomatic malpractice. Anatol Lieven, an analyst at the Quincy Institute, wrote that US acquiescence to a neutral Ukraine would be a “golden bridge” that, in addition to reducing US/Russia tensions, could enable a political solution to Ukraine’s civil war. This restraint-oriented policy is considered fringe thinking in the Washington foreign policy establishment.
The past few weeks have seen several failed talks between the US and Russians, as the US refuses to alter its plans for Ukraine. The US Congress is rushing a “lethal aid” package to send more weapons to the troubled border. Perhaps if the public were better informed, there would be more domestic pressure on Biden to end the brinkmanship and seek a genuine solution to the problem. Hopefully, the exorbitant gas prices will drive home the price of this ignorance to most working class Americans.
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The US Wants to Expand NATO
In addition to integrating Ukraine into the US-dominated economic sphere, Western planners also want to integrate Ukraine militarily. For years, the US has sought the expansion of NATO, an explicitly anti-Russian military alliance. NATO was originally billed as a counterforce to the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, but after the demise of the Soviet Union, the US promised the new Russia that it would not expand NATO east of Germany. Despite this agreement, the US continued building out its military alliance, growing closer and closer to Russia’s borders and ignoring Russia’s objections.
This history is sometimes admitted but usually downplayed in corporate media. In an interview with the Washington Post, professor Mary Sarotte, author of Not One Inch: America, Russia and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, recounted that after the Soviet collapse, “Washington realized that it could not only win big, but win bigger. Not one inch of territory needed to be off-limits to full NATO membership.” The US “all-or-nothing approach to expansionism…maximized conflict with Moscow,” she noted. Unfortunately, one interview does little to cut through the drumbeat of pro-NATO talking points.
In 2008, NATO members pledged to extend membership to Ukraine. The removal of the pro-Russian government in 2014 was a giant leap towards the pledge becoming a reality. Recently, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg announced that the alliance stands by plans to integrate Ukraine into the alliance.
Bret Stephens in the New York Times maintained that if Ukraine wasn’t allowed to join the organization, it would “break the spine of NATO” and “end the Western alliance as we have known it since the Atlantic Charter.”
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There’s a Lot More to the Crimean Annexation
The facts above give more context to Russian actions following the coup, and ought to counter the caricature of a Russian Empire bent on expansion. From Russia’s point of view, a longtime adversary (USA) had successfully overthrown a neighboring government using violent far-right extremists.
The Crimean peninsula, which was part of Russia until it was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954, is home to one of two Russian naval bases with access to the Black and Mediterranean seas, one of history’s most important maritime theaters. A Crimea controlled by a US-backed Ukrainian government was a major threat to Russian naval access.
The peninsula—82% of whose households speak Russian, and only 2% mainly Ukrainian—held a plebiscite in March 2014 on whether or not they should join Russia, or remain under the new Ukrainian government. The Pro-Russia camp won with 95% of the vote. The UN General Assembly, led by the US, voted to ignore the referendum results on the grounds that it was contrary to Ukraine’s constitution. This same constitution had been set aside to oust anti-EU President Yanukovych a month earlier.
All of this is dropped from Western coverage.
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The official line goes something like this: Russia is challenging NATO and the “international rules-based order” by invading Ukraine, and the Biden administration needs to deter Russia by providing more security guarantees to the Zelensky government. The official account seizes on Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula as a starting point for US/Russian relations, and as evidence of Putin’s goals of rebuilding Russia’s long-lost empire.
Russia’s demand that NATO cease its expansion to Russia’s borders is viewed as such an obviously impossible demand that it can only be understood as a pretext to invade Ukraine. Therefore, the US should send weapons and troops to Ukraine, and guarantee its security with military threats to Russia.
The article goes on to describe how the IMF encouraged international corporations to invest in Ukraine, leading to massive amounts of Bribery, Extortion, and Corruption wholly against the interests of the Ukrainian people. Most of this is well understood in western media.
What is left out of most coverage is how the USA played puppet-master towards selecting the pro-American government under the pretext of "democracy" ironically.
On February 6, 2014, as the anti-government protests were intensifying, an anonymous party (assumed by many to be Russia) leaked a call between Assistant Secretary of State Nuland and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The two officials discussed which opposition officials would staff a prospective new government, agreeing that Arseniy Yatsenyuk—Nuland referred to him by the nickname “Yats”—should be in charge. It was also agreed that someone “high profile” be brought in to push things along. That someone was Joe Biden.
Weeks later, on February 22, after a massacre by suspicious snipers brought tensions to a head, the Ukrainian parliament quickly removed Yanukovych from office in a constitutionally questionable maneuver. Yanukovych then fled the country, calling the overthrow a coup. On February 27, Yatsenyuk became prime minister.
At the time the call leaked, media were quick to pounce on Nuland’s saying “Fuck the EU.” The comment dominated the headlines while the evidence of US regime change efforts was downplayed. With the headline “Russia Claims US Is Meddling Over Ukraine,” the New York Times put the facts of US involvement in the mouth of an official enemy, blunting their impact on the audience. The Times later described the two officials as benignly “talking about the political crisis in Kiev” and sharing “their views of how it might be resolved.”
The Washington Post acknowledged that the call showed “a deep degree of US involvement in affairs that Washington officially says are Ukraine’s to resolve,” but that fact rarely factored into future coverage of the US/Ukraine/Russia relationship.
The Washington-backed opposition that toppled the government was fueled by far-right and openly Nazi elements like the Right Sector. One far-right group that grew out of the protests was the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary militia of neo-Nazi extremists. Their leaders made up the vanguard of the anti-Yanukovych protests, and even spoke at opposition events in the Maidan alongside US regime change advocates like McCain and Nuland.
After the violent coup, these groups were later incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces—the same armed forces that the US has now given $2.5 billion. Though Congress technically restricted money from flowing to the Azov Battalion in 2018, trainers on the ground say there’s no mechanism to actually enforce the provision. Since the coup, the Ukrainian nationalist forces have been responsible for a wide variety of atrocities in the counterinsurgency war.
Far-right influence has increased across Ukraine as a result of Washington’s actions. A recent UN Human Rights council has noted that “fundamental freedoms in Ukraine have been squeezed” since 2014, further weakening the argument that the US is involved in the country on behalf of liberal values.
Among American neo-Nazis, there’s even a movement aimed at encouraging right-wing extremists to join the Battalion in order to “gain actual combat experience” in preparation for a potential civil war in the US.
In a recent UN vote on “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism,” the US and Ukraine were the only two countries to vote no.
The New York Times ran 228 articles that refer to Ukraine, but none of them reference the pro-Nazi elements in Ukraine’s politics or government. The same can be said of the Washington Post’s 201 articles on the topic.
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we should just cut back and relieve some of the burden of foreign entanglements.
I suppose the 2022 elections will decide how Americans feel about that idea.
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@whiteflame
Alright, at least this is a clear stance on what the US should do. Given that producing more oil domestically would obviously come with delays in the process of ramping up production (usually in the timeline of at least several months), this isn't really a short term solution to the problem of limited resources. It indicates that he should have pushed for more drilling early in his administration, which I'll grant you would have been beneficial, but it's not a solution to rising gas prices now. I have my issues with trying to get oil from Iran or Venezuela as well, though at this point, addressing the short-term pain of limited oil supplies while keeping up the ban on Russian oil requires either getting it from another country or waiting out the delay. I see problems with both, though refusing to ban Russian oil would have incurred its own problems.
Even if you acknowledge that the only available source of replacement oil would be from bad actors, the wiser move would be to secure deals with Venezuela and Iran BEFORE we cut Russia off. We are now dealing from a position of extreme weakness where both Maduro and Iran can extract the most favorable deals that won't benefit American interests at all, essentially creating new threats to replace old supposed threats.
If the overarching goal of foreign policy is to secure American interests, this surely isn't it.
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when more reliable sources offer first-hand accounts with the advantage of fact-checking?
You have made over 5 delusional posts over this now. The clip was of a WH press conference. That is a 1st hand account. A recording of what happened with no commentary.
Any sort of "fact-checking" would mean the source was not a 1st hand account, and rather a propaganda source.
Your delusion has gone way off the rails when not only do you see a recording of a WH briefing as "Russian propaganda" but you also equate "fact-checking" to first hand accounts. Beyond the realm of crazy.
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@whiteflame
Deterring action requires a response.
A fundamental misunderstanding. Deterrence is the threat of retribution. Sanctions are retributions.
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I said that you went to Putin as your primary source on a WH press conference and now you are bitching about people believing foreign propaganda when nobody is more guilty of that sin than you.
Again, it was footage of a WH press conference. Nothing was edited, no propaganda other than what was coming out of Psaki's mouth was on that clip
I suppose your next move will be to claim Psaki is a Russian puppet. The delusion is off the charts here.
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@whiteflame
Your response is that the US should never act, regardless of what the EU does...
Then you don't understand what I am saying, and maybe that's my fault.
My point is that EU seems to care little about the Hatfield and McCoy relationship between the USA and Russia, so when Russia seeks to absorb a buffer nation like Ukraine, it's not going to respond with the same vigor as Biden will. And objectively if you look at the actions of the EU and discard the rhetoric, this seems plain and obvious. NATO doesn't share the same security interests of America. If they seem to do, their actions sure do not support it.
but it’s also entirely untenable as a course for US foreign policy right now.
I disagree. We can defend ourselves from provocative cyber attacks without getting into a cold war with Russia. Deterrence and providence is a better and wiser foreign policy than retribution and punishment. If Russia was an actual threat to the EU leadership, they certainly don't act like it, so I call bullshit that this is the case.
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Putin's personal "Russia Today" for information about a Jen Psaki WH press conf.
ROFL. the delusion required to believe Russia fabricated that press conference. I was right to avoid you since you seem to have cognitive issues.
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@whiteflame
I asked when we, as in the US, should act.
My response still stands. When Europe fails to defend itself despite having nearly the same GDP as the USA, then it falls to America.
What is going on in Ukraine is arguably more the fault of EU leaders than Putin.
I would really like your honest opinion on this:
Do you believe Biden cares more about what is going on in Ukraine than the collective EU leadership?
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@whiteflame
That’s a nonsensical answer.
No it isn't. This isn't Khrushchev's Russia and Europe isn't some battered child rebuilding from WW2 anymore.
Europe has 15 times the GDP of Russia. They absolutely don't need the USA to fund their turf wars anymore. Europe allowed all of this to happen, so why should Americans pay for that? That is what is nonsensical. Europe has nukes too, America is no more needed there to contain Russia than we need Europe to contain Mexico.. (Mexico having about the same GDP as Russia)
The idea that we need to continue being the dominant military power for a 17 trillion GDP Europe is like a fat lazy trust fund baby asking his dad to fight his battles for him.
It's time to kick Europe out of the basement.
It's a real problem for America only because Biden has chosen to care more about Russia than Europe has.
Like Ahab chasing his Whale in Moby Dick.
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FRACKING HAS PROVED DETRIMENTAL TO THE ENVIRONMENT.
Russian missiles and Iranian nukes are also detrimental. The climate war is over. China and Russia won the war.
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@whiteflame
When does that become our problem?
When it stopped becoming Europe's problem.
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@whiteflame
That it’s fine to buddy Putin so long as doing so is cost effective for the US?
Not simply that it's cost effective, but that it's objectively cost prohibitive to get bogged down in yet another war we have no hope of winning. It's beyond the concept of the cure simply being worse than the virus since the virus has essentially already won here. Again, there is only one thing a leader needs to focus on and that is his people first.
I take it you got the Moby Dick reference?
your position was and hopefully still is that helping Putin is bad.
Where did you ever get that idea? Why is it all of a sudden convenient to declare Biden's actions bad only now and not a year ago when he was making policies to enrich Russia and increase our dependence on him to maintain affordable oil? Seems to me that if the premise of "helping Putin" was bad on it's face, People would have been outraged a year ago. Clearly most of Biden's supporters were not. The point of this thread was to force people to see that glaring oversight since most of them were caught up in the propaganda that Biden was objectively "not-Trump" and that "Trump was Putin's buddy"
None of that propaganda was true a year ago. If Putin had never invaded Ukraine, that propaganda would be established dogma today instead of thoroughly and objectively debunked. That's a major problem right now in America. That Americans can be so easily fooled by foreign propaganda as long as it's convenient for maintaining political power until it bites them in the ass. Now every American is suffering, not just Biden supporters.
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Now you're talking about improving what Biden actually did, not the idea you presented.
Not really. I pointed out an actual plan and a strategy instead of reacting to Putin in an unproductive manner with no plan.
Literally anything can be construed as an "improvement" over a reactive action with no plan
Not sure what your point is here.
Doing it now, as a means of punishing Russia for its actions and ensuring that they can't continue to fund their war efforts and subsequent occupation long-term, is a different story.
Foreign policy doesn't work in a vacuum. There are definite undesirable direct consequences to this action that can hurt America far more than we can "punish" Putin. A wise leader cares about his people first and foremost before going Ahab after his Whale.
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@whiteflame
Or is your argument that there is no way to prevent Putin from winning out in the end, so we should just buddy him as much as possible to get out of this mess?
Diplomacy is a fickle thing. There are degrees to "buddying" since we got caught with our pants down, the only practical choice we had was to find an alternative supplier to replace Russia BEFORE we cut Russia off.
Doing it now is 100 percent an empty symbolic gesture.
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@whiteflame
It doesn't seem like your goal here was to set the record straight on what Biden should have done.
I directly said what he should have done and you ignored it. That smacks of bad faith discussion.
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@whiteflame
then why are you condemning a choice you decided would be bad regardless of what it was?
What beef do you have with someone condemning a person who, with his actions, directly led to this no-win scenario?
I'm really curious.
Who would you blame for the current no-win situation? Don't let me guess.
You're not wrong.
Nevermind, It's clear you're just looking to troll. Not interested in what you think anymore.
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@whiteflame
Biden backed himself into a no-win situation a year ago. We are just seeing the results in real time now.
Americans are now paying for a war they didn't start at the pump, whether they agreed to it or not.
What is the correct course of action in your estimation?
Pull another Afghanistan. Withdraw from Ukraine and cede the indefensible territory. We made this outcome inevitable with bad decisions a year ago just like we did with Afghanistan.
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@ILikePie5
It’s a big gamble for Biden. Gas prices go up = tax. Remember when Trump said gas would be 6,7,8,9 dollars under Biden. Well here we are.
If this doesn't drive people to the voting booth, nothing will. Can't believe Biden fell for the trap card.
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The IPCC says we have 7 years to cut global greenhouse emissions in half to avoid +1.5C increase by 2050.
IPCC says a lot of unfounded predictions. Profiteering on prophecies is as old as the Bible.
If we learned anything from the fall of Ukraine, the future of the planet rests with nations willing to answer the question whether it's worth reducing the standard of living of a nation in the hopes of magical unseen solutions or is it better to rule a 1 degree warmer world and just deal with it with existing technology.
Clearly, China and Russia have chosen the latter. Since we can't win a war with either of them, mostly due to our willing regression into an impractical luddite lifestyle, the climate war is also over as well.
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@ILikePie5
We gonna sanction them and literally shoot our selves in the foot?
I can't wait for the circus spin the next 3 years explaining to America why it's so important to have 10 dollar gasoline to save Ukraine and the planet.
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Biden promised on his first day in office that any attempt to invade Taiwan would mean war.
He promised a lot of things TBH.
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@n8nrgmi
True inflation is where everyone gets their wage increased...
Sadly, raising wages doesn't restore consumer or investor confidence. Bare shelves mean whatever is left is unaffordable due to scarcity, regardless of how much you have. Maybe we can print money out of thin air, but we still have yet to figure out how to create goods out of thin air.
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@n8nrgmi
but not so high it's un afford able
Well, I guess if people think it's too high, they can vote the Democrats out of power.
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@n8nrgmi
Sadly, other countries don't like America enough to allow exploitation anymore.
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