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Additionally, the forum gets a "bounty" for various offers at Amazon.com. For instance, if you sign up for a 30 day free trial of Amazon Prime, the forum will earn $3. Same if you buy a Prime membership for someone else as a gift! Trying out or purchasing an Audible membership will earn the forum a few bucks. And creating an Amazon Business account will send a $15 commission our way.
If you have an Amazon Echo, you need a free trial of Amazon Music!! We will earn $3 and it's free to you!
Your personal information is completely private, I only get a list of items that were ordered/shipped via the link, no names or locations or anything. This does not cost you anything extra and it helps offset the operating costs of this forum, which include our hosting fees and the yearly registration and licensing fees.
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Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects
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Russia raises interest rates from 8.5% to 12% in an emergency meeting. Doesn't reverse ruble's slide so far.
Russian central bank jacks up interest rates to 12% at emergency meeting after ruble plunge (cnbc.com)
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Russia's economy has been a boon ever since the sanctions. Most the world are more than happy to do business with Putin. Their economy has grown at twice the rate of the U.S. just shows you how our media totally ignores the real world and how ridiculous the so called sanctions are.
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Originally posted by klondike View PostRussia's economy has been a boon ever since the sanctions. Most the world are more than happy to do business with Putin. Their economy has grown at twice the rate of the U.S. just shows you how our media totally ignores the real world and how ridiculous the so called sanctions are.
Russian Federation and the IMF
Inflation is currently higher in Russia than in the US and the ruble is down 35% on the year.
Ruble: Russia's central bank raises interest rates to 12% after currency plunges | CNN Business
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At the very start of the war in Ukraine - not counting the part from 2014 to February 2022 that Ukraine counts as Russia's war against them - the west collectively developed a two part strategy to punish Putin for his misguided imperial aggression. Keep in mind, Putin has embarked on 4 wars since he assumed the Russian Federation's presidency (technically) in 2012. So, the west and in particular the US and Germany are late to the party.
Sanctions, one of the two parts of the strategy to punish Putin, were not undertaken, by anyone paying attention, to have an immediate impact on the consumer part of Russian's economy. So, IMO, it's a hackneyed and mostly uninformed POV to argue "sanctions have had no effect." First, sanctions targeting gas and oil imports did have the immediate affect of roiling the energy markets and ultimately produced an agreement to cap the price of a BBL of oil users were willing to pay Russia at $60.
According to the Russian Ministry of Finance, federal government oil revenues from January–March of 2023 were over 40 percent lower than a year prior. Before the war, oil revenues constituted 30–35 percent of the total Russian budget. In 2023, oil revenues have fallen to just 23 percent of the Russian budget.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featu...ssian%20budget.
The Kremlin has done a very good job of insulating Russian consumers using a massive propaganda campaign and restricting access from inside Russia to western news sources, as the tool to accomplish that. The average man on the street in Russia has this sort of "what-me-worry" attitude if approached by a journalist and asked how they've been affected by the war in Ukraine. State TV floods the news with the statements of supportive figures and wildly inaccurate assessments of what's going on at the front. Muscovites and generally the upper class in Moscow and St. Petersburg are starting to feel the pain associated with the availability of western consumer products that before Putin's invasion filled stores and shopping centers. Inflation is crippling the buying power of this class. The flight of money out of Russia has become a major concern of Russian economists.
Putin is facing some difficult choices going forward as the appearance of normalcy within the consumer economy is fading with the risk of sharply rising citizen discontent. Sure, Russia is a police state with Putin able to continue to access the levers of power regardless of a failing economy. OTH an economic collapse of the scale and shape it appears to be taking are going to strangulate military spending - and that was the initial intent of sanctions.
Analysts I'm reading have noted that Putin can continue to prosecute his war aims in Ukraine at the low level he is currently pursuing them, choice one, but he can't accelerate it (choice two) lacking an economy that produces sufficient revenue to do that. He needs to be able to do that to show progress toward his objective of securing control or the Crimea and Ukrainian Donbas. You can see that on a day to day basis the UAF is demonstratively threatening that security as well as facilitating a global view of Russia and Putin as losers further isolating Russia from the world at large. Obviously, not Putin's intent. He's gradually getting boxed in. Sanctions, despite Putin's attempts to subvert their impact, are starting to bite. As well, the true Ukrainian strategy in using it's western supplied and equipped military to fight a war is emerging. The popular view of Ukraine's "summer counter-offensive" where Ukraine will liberate a lot of Russian occupied territory, likely misses the true, longer range objective Ukraine is pursuing of strangulating Putin's ability to further prosecute his war.
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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Regarding all the indictments against Trump.
What's going to happen if he beats all the charges?
I mean, those who have brought these charges are all in on destroying Trump.
If they fail?"The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, .. I'd worn them for weeks, and they needed the air"
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Originally posted by lineygoblue View PostRegarding all the indictments against Trump.
What's going to happen if he beats all the charges?
I mean, those who have brought these charges are all in on destroying Trump.
If they fail?
All of this would have been rendered much less significant if just 10 more Republican Senators could've found some spine in Feb. 2021. Instead Trump will win the nomination, destroy DeSantis' career, lose the general election, and STILL dominate your party's politics till 2028 at least.
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Trump's best chances in Georgia are maybe to get it moved to Federal court and maybe get a more favorable jury pool with a Trump-appointed judge. But even if it's tried physically in a Fed courthouse, they're still state charges and he can't pardon himself if he's elected President. Not even Kemp can pardon him. Pardons in Georgia are handled by a board.
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Originally posted by lineygoblue View PostRegarding all the indictments against Trump.
What's going to happen if he beats all the charges?
I mean, those who have brought these charges are all in on destroying Trump.
If they fail?
Even the stuff Jack Smith brought against Trump. The conservative media is making the case it is all 1A. Never mind on page 2, Smith says Trump has a right to say whatever he wants about 2020 election. And that he can believe whatever he wants. And that he has every legal right to contest the 2020 (which he did around 60 times) election.
It is when Trump goes beyond that is where the illegality (alleged at this point) occurs.
However, the cumulative effect of the indictments are two fold: 1) It helps him in Republican primary because it causes his opponents to bend the knee. And the Republican base is all about the vibes these days. 2) It turns the normies off to Trump and makes him weaker in the general, if Biden actually was more than a 4/5 zombie he would use this opportunity to push for some very popular ideas and demonstrate he is trying to deal with the plethora of insecurities Americans find themselves in.2012 Detroit Lions Draft: 1) Cordy Glenn G , 2) Brandon Taylor S, 3) Sean Spence olb, 4) Joe Adams WR/KR, 5) Matt McCants OT, 7a) B.J. Coleman QB 7b) Kewshan Martin WR
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