My favorite story of the day is California sending out inflation relief checks. I mean, I really couldn’t make that up.
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Good article today about how good news is bad and bad news is good. This applies to how markets are reacting. DJIAF on Sunday were up over 100 points. By Monday noon, the Dow was down about 60. The drop occurred shortly after the Commerce Department (link below) announced that new orders for U.S.-made capital goods and shipments increased solidly in May, pointing to sustained strength in business spending on equipment in the second quarter - normally good economic news that causes markets to rise. Not this time. .https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/u...ay-2022-06-27/
As Wiz remarks above, the economy needs to be cooled not stoked with free money for consumers to spend. This is the height of economic stupidity - not surprising at all from the left coast.Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. But the shine on the NC Trophy is embarrassingly wearing off. It's M B-Ball ..... or hockey or volley ball or name your college sport favorite time ...... until next year.
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The UN Security Council will meet tomorrow to discuss Russia's attacks on civilian targets today. That should help ......Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. But the shine on the NC Trophy is embarrassingly wearing off. It's M B-Ball ..... or hockey or volley ball or name your college sport favorite time ...... until next year.
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The Russians have claimed that the fire in the shopping mall was caused by the detonation of ammunition supplied by western nations in an adjoining warehouse. That was the intended target the cruise missiles struck, they say. Is their proof? The Russians are not likely to disclose it if there is but we may see what they claim is proof at the UN Security Council meeting today. Overhead satellite imagery would be one source. HUMINT is another.
Beyond these sources, the UN could send forensic investigators to prove or disprove the Kremlin's claims assuming Ukraine would allow it and they'd be hard pressed to deny investigators access to the ruins. Seems to me this is fairly easy to sort out. If western arms were stored near or in the mall itself, remains would be obvious. The source of shell casing fragments are easily identifiable.
We'll see how this plays out. IMO, the outcome is a big deal.Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. But the shine on the NC Trophy is embarrassingly wearing off. It's M B-Ball ..... or hockey or volley ball or name your college sport favorite time ...... until next year.
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Yesterday I made a post following the disclosure of a Russian cruise missile attack on a crowded shopping mall in Ukraine that the west needed to do something more that talk about it. That's not going to happen. Comments coming out of the G7 meeting and NATO Summit make it clear that Putin wants to widen the conflict in Ukraine to establish it as a conflict between NATO (the West) and Russia. Spokespersons, including Boris Johnson and Olaf Schulz asked about what is going to be done about the war in Ukraine made it clear that providing weapons and money to Ukraine is all that is going to happen. There will be no direct military involvement of NATO in Ukraine that could ignite a wider conflict with Russia. It's a war between Russia and Ukraine. Period. Keeping Putin from advancing the narrative that Russia is defending itself against western (NATO) aggression is a key consideration of G7 leaders and NATO military leadership.
I wrote a few days ago that the west may be condemning Ukraine to slow strangulation by Russia with this approach. I think most here would agree that may or may not happen given western aid and that the likelihood of Ukraine collapsing and being taken over by Russia is low. Furthermore counting on Ukraine surviving, gaining the upper hand on the battlefield through western assistance and forcing territorial concessions from Putin may be a better course of action than igniting WWIII.
I think it's a good bet that western intelligence sources know a good deal more about the state of affairs in Russia and their capacity to wage an all-out war v. Ukraine much longer than such assessments are in the public domain. So, for me, its a "trust me on this" situation that I'm not altogether comfortable with. I do know that what's in the information space is not altogether consistent with what's going on in the battel space or in Russia itself. I think it is safe to say that things are not going as planned for Putin.Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. But the shine on the NC Trophy is embarrassingly wearing off. It's M B-Ball ..... or hockey or volley ball or name your college sport favorite time ...... until next year.
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This is a reasonable counter to the "trust me on this" position I outlined above. The entire article is at the link. Worth a read:
Russia’s continuing campaign of threats and bluster is having the intended effect: causing Moscow’s adversaries to hesitate. The pervasive notion that provoking Russia would lead to disastrous consequences is a key victory for Moscow. Successfully dissuading the west from providing Ukraine all the support it needs to turn the tide of the war confirms once again for Vladimir Putin that Russia’s military inferiority to the west can be overcome through leveraging western fear.
The article goes on to state that it is key weapons systems and a general reluctance to open storerooms of those weapons and empty them in support of Ukraine that could tip the balance of power in the battle space to Ukraine. It's NOT about using NATO forces to fight in Ukraine alongside Ukrainian forces.
The Russians cannot win in the battle space alone with just the enormous amount of manpower it can muster. IOW Russia won't run out of soldiers. What they will run out of and some believe, based on performance of the Russian forces, both air and ground, they didn't have much at all to start with, is advanced weapon systems that the west does have and could provide. Technical superiority is a known force multiplier. Dilly-dallying in sending it to Ukraine, with the misplaced concern in the west over how Russia will react, is pissing away potential for a final Ukrainian victory or at the very least a negotiated conclusion of hostilities on Ukraine's terms. Failing to do that will allow Putin to get exactly what he wants - a long drawn out war where Russian artillery reduces cities to ruble before Russian occupiers move in as slow and drawn out as that process might be. Meanwhile, support for Ukraine in the face of the high costs of food and energy, things Putin is strategically leveraging, will wane. Game over.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ukraine-russiaMission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. But the shine on the NC Trophy is embarrassingly wearing off. It's M B-Ball ..... or hockey or volley ball or name your college sport favorite time ...... until next year.
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