gehringer_2

Heh-heh, who did that ever stop in Politics......

This is all very sound, but his caveats at the end are also spot on. Maybe the one quibble is that if Putin does continue to be misled by his minions about the Russian army's success level, the correct inference would be that he would remain less likely to think he has to up the ante. There is also one situation I have not heard much discussion about, which is what does Putin do with solders whose tours are ending? This could be pretty tricky. Does he keep them mobilized? That won't go over very well. But can he let them go home? Their knowledge of the truth would be a terribly infectious agent to re-admit into the population. Stalin (Putin's lodestar) sent thousands of Red Army vets who had been into Europe into the Gulag to prevent that very thing. The other bottom line is that it really is important for the Ukrainians be able to push the Russians back at least to the pre-Feb lines and that won't be easy without more effective air power.

Perfect world, I would have liked to see Faedo get in enough work at Toledo to get roughed up a little once and then come back with a better start just for him to have that process under his belt. But, can't be helped and it's not like he's 19 and wet behind the ears.

It was mostly committed Christians, and Jews, who went to the barricades with Blacks in the 50's and 60's. There's nothing wrong with Christianity that a different set of 'Christians' in control of it's narrative wouldn't help.

Nice to know there were no such scruples about affecting an election at the FBI in 2016. .....But her e-mails!!!!!!!!!!!

Ha, tell that to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. True, in the US money talks loud, but in the end if the Gov sneezes, even the top of the heap can catch pneumonia!

not likely to get any leadership out of UM until a new President is in place and even once that happens he/more likely she, is going to have to spend some period doing the happy dance with the regents to figure out what their land mines are going to be around sports. I mean it could be ironic but an Ilitch on the Regents might be motivated to push against the professionalization of another franchise in the area - it's the kind of weird wild card that could show up on the table...

they got to 2.5% in mid 2018 but we can see they had already cut again down to 1.5% by Dec 2019, which was before anyone knew COVID was coming. And then of course the drop to Zero is COVID in March 20. But even 2.4% is quite low by long term standards. Here is the actual Fed funds rate history. Now this is not the complete story because you'd have to see what they they were doing on QE over the same period as well. I think they has started doing some selling in 2017 of 2018. https://www.macrotrends.net/2015/fed-funds-rate-historical-chart

Thanks but No, I think I'll stand on my experience of the typical differences across Church USA.

that concept I was picking up on was that an organism needs to live in equilibrium with its environment. The last few lines of the speech do over run that, but it was a great scene. yeah - I only had a vague familiarity with Thanos beyond that he looks suspiciously like Josh Brolin in the promos, but I did look him up. Sure, he would apply as well!

no, that the Christians with whom you are likely to interact in urban US American like Chicago are not in the main the people who are speaking for Christianity politically in the US today or are in control of the regional political discourse as they would be many non urban centers. Are you fishing for a follow-up question about why you find them racist? I'll bite.

I'm not a big fan either the Marvel or DC worlds. The Agent Smith meme generates from the 1st Matrix film : Quoth agent Smith: "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."

I rest my case.

Maybe if you had been closer you'd appreciate the critique more. Besides, if you live and work a major metro, most the church work you come into contact with is likely to be old school Protestant and Social Service Catholic and none of of those people are the political voice of Christianity in the US today.

interestingly enough, when the board re-emerged the investing thread went right back into the politics header like it was on the old board. The intersection is pretty unavoidable I guess.

The picture being painted of Christians in this thread is the one that fits the US public/political Christians who have claimed the mantle of speaking for Christianity in the US today. There are still millions of Christians in America who look at the public face of Christianity in American and despair. But they are also largely people who believe in the separation of church and state, and so do their political advocacy largely through party and other secular means and without trying to claim divine revelation in their arguments.

I don't know if I would even call what happened in 2018 substantial, but be that as it may, I would guess you that when they started to tighten you had half the banksters who didn't want to hurt Trump's re-election and the other half cowed by any accusation that that is what they were trying to do. IIRC correctly Trump raised holy heII about the FED at the time. And then on the heals of that came COVID so they pumped even more.

but it's OK for us to assuage our consciences by leaving the poor and less resourced at the mercy of our hypocrisies while we buy our way out of the inconveniences, but sleep well in our surety we have made the world safer for the unborn. Sorry I'm not buying that version of moral rectitude.

yup. Morality for thee but not for me. Same as it ever was.

I hear a lot of denial, I don't see much evidence that would refute Chasf scenario. Most women getting abortions are poor (and the poor are disproportionate of color, so that inference doesn't need explicit statement even if the report avoids it) single, already have children they are trying to take care of and have become overmatched by their circumstances. You wouldn't have abortions to ban if these women had had the options they needed to gain better control over their lives. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/14/upshot/who-gets-abortions-in-america.html

a LOT of drum banging about Putin declaring war or try to go to a general mobilization. I have to wonder how much of this is Western Psyops aimed into Russia and how much is serious intel analysis. I guess we find out in ~6 days.

No there won't, there will be an adjustment and people will work longer so that the ratio of worker to retirees stabilizes. It's already happening in the US and we don't even have nearly the demo dislocation of other places. There will be no crises and no massive tax increases. The idea that you can be retired for 30 yrs after working for 30 will certainly go away for sure, but that was an unsustainable transient anomaly created by the oddity of the baby boom the first place. The truth is that any species that can't survive at stable population numbers can't survive at all, so at some point Homo Sapiens might as well get with the program the Universe has set for it because the Universe has a talent for snuffing out any organism that doesn't learn to play by the rules.

actually a good chunk if it is true. Who do you think it's going to be who is denied abortions? It's going to be poor girls, mostly of color, who are exactly going to have limited life prospects grow even more limited - will be cast onto a welfare system that those same white men who denied her an abortion are trying to throw her off of. What world are you seeing if you don't see this as the result?

the very model of the modern GOP - just pull something out of your asz, throw it out there, have the MAGA slurp it up.

I’m perfectly serious. It bullshit. Germany and Japan illustrate well that a nation can cope with declining as well as expanding population. China may have thrown themselves into a tougher adjustment problem than others but they will cope. The whole thing is based on a fallacy that fails to parse the difference between gross GDP and per capita GDP. The later is actually all that matters to social well being and it need not/will not fall even with contracting population.