drray23
drray23's JournalPresident Biden SOTU speech was so incredibly good
It was so well received by the vast majority of americans, greater than 70 % at last count depending on which poll you look at. Even the Washington Time had a good article about it.
In times of crisis, President Biden unique ability to connect with people is an asset that maybe the white house should use more. Not only is he excellent at it, that form of communication - i.e big, televised speech on every network and cable outlets reaches everybody regardless of their political leanings, it allows for bypassing the usual media bias.
Unsurprisingly when told the truth in a rational and empathetic way people understand it. This reminded me (sort of, I was not born) of the FDR fireplace chats.
I wonder if the white house could come up with a way to do something similar so that they can stay connected with the public. The question of course is, would the networks carry it if it was a regular thing or is this kind of gravitas only a once-a-year thing provided by the SOTU?
Would NATO intervene if Putin triggers article 5 by invading a NATO country
or will there be some advocating for not doing so in fears of triggering ww3/ nuclear war ?
If that's the case Putin holds all the cards and there is nothing that can be done.
Is there a trigger for actual military intervention ?
I know that we don't want to get involved directly for fear of triggering an all out war. I do wonder if that calculus changes if Putin starts mass killings by leveling cities with millions of people in it like Kyiv and Kharkiv.
Do we just stand there watching, wearing sunflowers and blue and yellow or does this motivates NATO to establish air superiority to stop it ? We did it during the Bosnian wars over Sarajevo.
It all hinges on whether or not western powers believe Putin would use nukes if we ground his air force over Ukraine.
I've yet to see Manchin converse with a democrat.
He is not even pretending to be a Democrat anymore. He is mingling with the gop senators, flanked by Mitt Romney.
Putin is precipitating an end to Russia and its satellite countries
Or at least an end to their hegemony in eastern Europe. His actions unified Europe like never before, NATO is strengthened and the international community at large is imposing crushing sanctions making Russia a de facto Pariah on the world stage both politically and economically.
Client states of Russia like Belarus who are getting dragged in it will suffer the backslash as well. I suspect that the political and economic pressure will be so big that their economies will collapse accelerating the protests that are already taking place there and ultimately leading to the overthrow of these dictators.
As for Russia, Putin will end up being "retired" in a Datcha somewhere while somebody else takes over and hopefully steer that country to a more reasonable direction.
Anyhow, we will see how this unfolds soon enough or if my analysis is just completely off base.
Looks like Ukrainians maybe blowing up fuel depots.
There was a huge serie of explosions on the outskirts of Kyiv at a military airport installation.
You can see that on the clips CNN showed. Some experts are saying it could be deliberate to deny Russians from fuel for their tanks. It would be a smart move, cut their supply lines and they will fail. Napoleon ran into this issue fighting Russia of all places..
Price of oil and Ukraine
I am wondering if Putin's strategy is not to actually invade Ukraine but instead make it look like he will in order to drive the price of oil. Its Russia's main source of income. I am not an expert in geopolitics, so I looked it up.
It does look like some analysts have been considering this possibility. For example, the financial review has an article about it:
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/oil-prices-surge-as-world-on-edge-over-ukraine-20220213-p59w2i
After all, the cost of a long and sustained war in Ukraine could be devastating to the Russian economy.
Raising the prospect of a war however has immediate benefits such as making the cost of oil skyrocket, making Putin look strong domestically and may be enabling him to extract concessions from NATO.
We shall see in a few days if that was the goal all along or if instead, he really wants to invade and recreate the eastern block.
Why is the media still carrying the narrative that the GOP will win the house in 2022 ?
I understand that initially it was reported that the gerrymandering was such that it gave them a huge advantage.
However, it is turning out that it is not so cut and dry and the democrats may actually hold an edge instead of being heavily handicapped.
So why is this narrative still prevalent? Is it just because the media is too lazy to reassess, that they are going with the usual "the party in power loses the midterms" or something more nefarious? (Maybe to drive down democratic voter participation?)
The Trump strategy to get away with crimes
Commit so many infractions that you overwhelm the system. Clog it by filling frivolous appeals.
Go from one scandal to another one by constantly spewing bullshit to keep the media off balance.
The poor DOJ and 1/6 committee keep having to issue more subpoena, talk to more witnesses because Trump and his crew raised the bar to a level that is order of magnitudes worse than Watergate.
Hopefully this will run to an end eventually and Trump will be caught. This strategy has worked all his life so far.
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