Where Do Things End With Vlad? (h/t romad1)

[romad1]

How many phone calls have you private citizens had with Russian dictators? 

Bob Woodward Reveals Calls Between Trump and Putin (mediaite.com)

is it 7? 

Quote

Trump and Putin Have Had ‘As Many as Seven’ Private Phone Calls Since Trump Left the White House, Per Bob Woodward’s New Book

 

[RatkoVarda]

same number of times he flew with Epstein. Coincidence?

[romad1]

4 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

same number of times he flew with Epstein. Coincidence?

Seven deadly sins. 

[CMRivdogs]

Worrisome

 

 

[romad1]

10 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Worrisome

 

 

China is a heck of an opponent.  The Russians are brutal fascist goofball Harkkonens with many, many enemies who are not afraid of their economic "might" after they have survived two+ winters without their natural gas. 

[CMRivdogs]

9 minutes ago, romad1 said:

China is a heck of an opponent.  The Russians are brutal fascist goofball Harkkonens with many, many enemies who are not afraid of their economic "might" after they have survived two+ winters without their natural gas. 

But who controls the Dragons?

[romad1]

7 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

But who controls the Dragons?

I think China is definitely steeling for a fight. All the signs are there.  They are whipping up hostility among the population toward foreigners.  The Japanese did that prior to WWII.   The PRC are losing their contacts with the outside world and that trend is not good for reasoning through conflict and crisis.   They are a little intimidated by the US and its allies and that will have some sway over their generals but maybe not their leaders.   

For all our sins and flaws we are still a very powerful country.  Whatever Tucker MF Carlson thinks about our armed forces being too woke to fight, he's both silly and wrong. 

[romad1]

 

[gehringer_2]

25 minutes ago, romad1 said:

I think China is definitely steeling for a fight. All the signs are there.  They are whipping up hostility among the population toward foreigners.  The Japanese did that prior to WWII.   The PRC are losing their contacts with the outside world and that trend is not good for reasoning through conflict and crisis.   They are a little intimidated by the US and its allies and that will have some sway over their generals but maybe not their leaders.   

For all our sins and flaws we are still a very powerful country.  Whatever Tucker MF Carlson thinks about our armed forces being too woke to fight, he's both silly and wrong. 

So when was the last time the PLA was in a live fire conflict with an enemy? IIRC the recent dust up with India was a sticks and clubs affair because they have some kind of weird dis-armament treaty at the border. 

Edited October 8 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

4 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

So when was the last time the PLA was in a live fire conflict with an enemy? IIRC the recent dust up with India was a sticks and clubs affair because they have some kind of weird dis-armament treaty at the border. 

This would be a driver of hesitation among the PLA leadership.  They know they lack experience in complex operations.  

The last real war that China was in was 1979 invasion of Vietnam.   They had a couple dustups with peacekeepers in Africa recently they did really poorly at. 

One thing the PRC knows though is that they have to fight a more complex war than the Russians are in Ukraine.  They know they need to figure out joint warfare and dynamic targeting.  They are investing in these things to a degree Russia wouldn't dream of through their pigheadedness.  

[ewsieg]

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

Worrisome

Also worrisome that our clearly better choice for POTUS thinks Iran is the biggest adversary.  

[romad1]

7 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

Also worrisome that our clearly better choice for POTUS thinks Iran is the biggest adversary.  

Well, that is just wrong and she will correct that

[romad1]

 

[Hongbit]

 

[pfife]

Best rep ever

[pfife]

Apparently poot confirmed the covid test thing but denied the 7 contacts.

[CMRivdogs]

1 hour ago, pfife said:

Apparently poot confirmed the covid test thing but denied the 7 contacts.

But he told us COVID was fake

[ewsieg]

On 10/8/2024 at 2:21 PM, romad1 said:

Well, that is just wrong and she will correct that

I liked a candidate that blanked at the word "Aleppo" and once he was given a hint of "Syria" he gave a legitimate answer, one better than anything you'd ever hear out of Kamala.  This very forum declared that alone made him unworthy to be POTUS.  (I still contend that prior to that media blitz against him, at least 50% of the people that mocked him would have paused on "Aleppo" as well).

I'm not saying she won't correct it, but it's inexcusable that a candidate doesn't know this and even worse she's our current VP.  

[gehringer_2]

On 10/8/2024 at 2:21 PM, romad1 said:

Well, that is just wrong and she will correct that

In the short term, Iran is probably the most likely place where a direct attack on US citizens will originate, particularly if the US and/or Israel finally end up attacking the nuke program. The total threat from Russia is more varied and ultimately more existential, but also less a matter of immediate security risks than of keeping up a steady build out of social/civic/IT/intelligence resistance to Russian operations.

Edited October 10 by gehringer_2

[romad1]

7 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

In the short term, Iran is probably the most likely place where a direct attack on US citizens will originate, particularly if the US and/or Israel finally end up attacking the nuke program. The total threat from Russia is more varied and ultimately more existential, but also less a matter of immediate security risks than of keeping up a steady build out of social/civic/IT/intelligence resistance to Russian operations.

Here is what concerned me greatly from yesterday.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2024/10/08/gm-drops-ultium-name-announces-new-battery-center-and-promises-ev-profits/75554403007/

Quote

Also, GM is working with its partners in China to take "bold steps" to ensure GM's business in China is profitable and sustainable. Barra has said in recent months that operations in China, which used to be a moneymaker for the company, are "unsustainable" without a restructuring. GM recorded a $104 million loss in the region during the second quarter.

"In China you’ll begin to see evidence of a turnaround yet this year with a significant reduction in dealer inventory and modest improvement in sales and share," Barra said. "The combination of these factors will allow GM to continue to generate and return signicant cash to shareholders after we reinvest in the business."

China going through economic chaos is good and bad.  You don't want them to be completely ascendant while they are also planning strategic land grabs of places critical to the World Economy and disruptive to the political order.   Bad, in that the chaos in China's economy might make a leader decide to take action to change the narrative like the Argentine junta did in 1982 by invading the Falkland Islands.

[pfife]

Havent Iran backed proxies killed Americans lately?

Lol at Gary Johnson comparisons. I personally didnt disqualify him for Aleppo, i disqualified him for being a lolatarian.

 

Edited October 10 by pfife

[romad1]

Is this bad for Russia?

i lack economics skills…even though i have been schooled it didn’t take.

 

[ewsieg]

1 hour ago, pfife said:

Havent Iran backed proxies killed Americans lately?

Lol at Gary Johnson comparisons. I personally didnt disqualify him for Aleppo, i disqualified him for being a lolatarian.

 

Iran is absolutely a concern and I wouldn't have had a problem with Kamala mentioning China, Russia, Iran, and NK as legitimate concerns to the US, but seriously, that is a seriously bad answer.  Iran is a regional threat, a region which we obviously care about, but also have tons of allies in that very region as well that fight against Iran too.  China has no comparison, Putin has tried to make Russia look just as tough by trying to strengthen ties with China, it's still a mockery to China to compare Russia to them.  

In this little media blitz Kamala has done, she really hasn't answered a single question straight on with the exception of this and she got it so horribly wrong.  That's alarming.

 

[pfife]

And false.

That said, its 1/1000 as alarming as thinking free markets self regulate.

[1776]

I hadn’t seen this before. Thoughts?

 

Mystery Drones Swarmed a U.S. Military Base for 17 Days. The Pentagon Is Stumped.

U.S. officials don’t know who is behind the drones that have flown unhindered over sensitive national-security sites—or how to stop them

 

A view of Langley Air Force Base at dusk from Gosnold’s Hope Park in Hampton, Va. KRISTEN ZEIS FOR WSJ

Oct. 12, 2024 at 9:00 pm 

U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly wasn’t sure what to make of reports that a suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft had been flying over Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline.

Kelly, a decorated senior commander at the base, got on a squadron rooftop to see for himself. He joined a handful of other officers responsible for a clutch of the nation’s most advanced jet fighters, including F-22 Raptors. 

For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the U.S. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told Kelly. 

The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.

 

The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port.

A view of the Langley base in Virginia. PHOTO: KRISTEN ZEIS FOR WSJ

Officials didn’t know if the drone fleet, which numbered as many as a dozen or more over the following nights, belonged to clever hobbyists or hostile forces. Some suspected that Russia or China deployed them to test the response of American forces.

Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn’t qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway.

Reports of the drones reached President Biden and set off two weeks of White House meetings after they first appeared in December last year. Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon’s UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond.