Home » Open thread 3/12/22

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Open thread 3/12/22 — 26 Comments

  1. I saw the poll in which a majority of Democrats say they wouldn’t fight to defend against an invasion of the US. Where do they think they could go hide? Tunnels?

  2. SHIREHOME,
    I have been hearing that a recession is coming. Though clearly high energy prices are here now and that is an immediate recessionary factor.

    Ed Yardeni has stated that substantial inflation and negative real interest rates will likely be with us for at least a few years.

  3. LOL…. about 2 months ago we discovered a gopher tortoise burrow on our lot where we are building our house. They are a protected species here in Florida. Fortunately, it’s on a berm that runs along the edge of the property. Our builder checked and as long as the building area is at least 30 ft from the burrow we don’t have to worry about relocation of the tortoise. In fact we are not clearing any of that edge to provide a tree/shrub buffer. The lot is 3 acres, so the tortoise will have at least a half acre left in natural condition to him/herself.

  4. Off topic but highly informative;

    “Blackrock’s Edward Dowd with Steve Bannon”
    https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/matthew-dowd-on-war-room/

    “Dr. Klaus Schwab or: How the CFR Taught Me to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”

    Tremendously informative article that reveals the World Economic Forum’s origination. An unknown 30+ yr old European was not the force that started it.

    https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/03/investigative-reports/dr-klaus-schwab-or-how-the-cfr-taught-me-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb/#comment-18846

  5. Problem with posting a comment again.

    perhaps including links is the factor?

    Opened page again tried to repost but get the dreaded: “Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!”

    Please fix neo.

  6. Must-reading on the military implications of a No Fly Zone in Ukraine, many technical & tactical details and analysis of why this is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea on just about every level.

    Plus – a warning to Ukraine’s defenders.
    Noroh
    Also, more on the Iranian deal and administration obfuscation on the timeline of nuclear weapons break-through.

    Yes, they are still lying.

    https://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2022/03/10/toc-ready-room-10-march-2022-nfzs-convoys-and-iran-follies-oh-my/

    We no longer got us a convoy. Don’t think inside a box on this.
    … I’ve seen reporting from multiple sources all day (Thursday) that the Russian convoy parked outside Kyiv has dispersed. This is being taken, for the most part, as a sign that the Russian campaign plan may be falling apart, or unit commanders and soldiers are losing heart, or whatever.

    On Fox News Thursday evening, a video clip was shown over an over of a tank group that apparently drove into an ambush east of Kyiv. The implication was that this was part of the convoy, running into a Ukrainian trap as it sought to “redeploy” from the convoy.

    Maybe such a straightforward conclusion is correct. But as the commentary implied, it sure makes the Russians look incompetent to bolt into a trap like that. …

    The Russians truly are not that stupid. None of this has looked right from the beginning, and the sudden dispersal of this convoy doesn’t look right either. It doesn’t fit with operations that are hanging together elsewhere (i.e., in eastern Ukraine), in spite of Putin evidently not using his best weaponry and troops for much of this fight.

    It’s weird – unless it means something about deliberate intentions. If I were Ukraine, I’d be on the lookout for a Russian battle-shaping maneuver: possibly a classic baiting of a Russian trap. What would be the most favorable outcome for the Russians, of a Russian convoy dispersal? Obviously, the Russian dispersal prompting a dispersal of Ukrainian forces, going out to hunt Russians whom they expect to be scattered in small, poorly defended numbers.

    The ultimate effect is not to even out the fight between Russian attackers and Ukrainian defenders, or generate ambush opportunities for the Russian force. It’s to flush the forces defending Kyiv out of position.

    We’ll see. If I were the Ukrainians, I wouldn’t run too far or too fast toward retreating Russians.

    Side note: this is tactic straight out of one of the warfare episodes in the Book of Mormon. In fact, several aspects of the current international situation have parallels in the history of the Nephites in ancient America.
    Well, coincidences do happen, when the time-line is long enough, but it’s kind of a strange thing for a backwoods 19th-century New York farm-boy to have a handle on.

    Former State Department official Gabriel Noronha, who has put up some great tweet threads over the last week on the Amazon-warehouse-size inventory Team Biden is planning to give away in the Iran nuclear talks, encapsulated such a disconnect nicely in a tweet on Tuesday, 8 March.

    It was too juicy to just leave to its own devices, so I composed a tweet thread around it.

    The gist up front is that the intelligence community’s latest global threat assessment, published in February, leads with the surreal assertion that “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities that we judge would be necessary to produce a nuclear device.”

    The tweet thread is a reminder of why that’s ridiculous.

    Links in the source.
    Noronha’s 3-8 tweet is NOT that book-length thread from last week. Take a look at it.

  7. Fascinating indeed.
    “And the armadillo will lie down with the rattlesnake…”

    (Wonder if that was a controlled burn for the sake of the documentary…. In any event, I’ve never ever seen a tortoise take off like that (towards the end of the clip).
    Give Secretariat a run for his money, all things being relative…)

  8. AesopFan,

    Fooling an enemy into leading them out of position or into an ambush are tactics that have been done for millenia.

  9. AesopFan; Geoffrey Britain:

    Right from the start of the time the convoy appeared to stop moving, I’ve seen speculation on what it signifies. That speculation has covered just about everything from “hopelessly bogged down” to “cagily waiting to make just the right move at the right time” and everything in between.

    You may note that I have barely written anything on the subject. There’s a reason for that, and it’s not that I’m unfamiliar with the reporting on it, both official and unofficial. The reason is that each person sounds like they’ve got the scoop and has photos, etc., and logic to “prove” it. My personal opinion is that no one outside of some Russian military people knows what’s what with it. Perhaps not even them, if the Russians are as clueless as some say. Perhaps they know exactly what they’re doing and it’s all part of a clever plan, if the Russians are as smart as others say.

  10. Geoffrey Britain:

    It was in the spam folder although I don’t know why. It’s posted now.

  11. You see Vlad has to attack NATO (or any) countries that are supplying arms to Ukraine. It is perfectly reasonable to fear NATO reacting to Vlad’s liberation and de-Nazification of Ukraine (not).

    Issues, causes, pretexts.

    https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/03/12/nato-weapons-shipments-to-ukraine-are-legitimate-targets-russia-declares-n535096

    Who will Vlad attack first? Poland, Romania, or the Baltics? Will it be conventional missile attacks or will Vlad go full on stupid and poop a tactical nuke?

    How will NATO respond? Lots of targeting packages being worked on probably.

    This is why Vlad can’t have nice things.

  12. Doc Zero credibly sounds an alarm.
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1501189109699776525.html

    There is nothing the socialists can’t do to the American people if they can get gas up to $8 a gallon. The sky is the limit for statism and fundamental transformation at that point. The final defeat of the American middle class would be at hand.

    The problem has always been public resistance to rising gas prices. The Left has long daydreamed about making gas more expensive to cripple the middle class – Obama openly said he wanted $8 gas – but once the ratchet begins, the public squeals, and the Left loses elections.

    But what if it’s different this time? What if the pandemic-weakened, demoralized middle class can be held down while the Left pounds it with high gas prices and inflation? No matter what happens in the midterms, they can use the White House to block energy for 3 more years.

    This is another Obamacare moment for the hard Left: a time when short-term political sacrifices can be made to effect long-term social engineering changes to the electorate. Obamacare was just a warm-up for what the Left can do to us this time around.

    The hated middle class gone forever, subdued by crashing wages, diminished buying power, the death of small business? Everyone dependent on government benefits? Industry firmly under political control? Well worth losing more seats in a midterm that was going to be bad anyway.

    The middle class is the intersection of voting strength and economic independence. Destroy its sense of independence, entrepreneurship, and opportunity and its voting strength no longer matters. People arranging their lives around high gas prices have little sense of opportunity.

    If you feel like every day is a nonstop battle to keep your head above water, that our national leadership needs your total obedience and unquestioning support to keep endless crises at bay, you won’t vote like a true middle class. You’ll want protection, not opportunity. /end

  13. neo,

    I haven’t been following the military aspects of the invasion, so I was reacting to the possibility/uncertainty that AesopFan might be laboring under the impression that Joseph Smith originated that tactic. Or even the ancient Nephites in America.

    Thank you for rescuing my comment from the spam folder.

  14. AesopFan,

    Impoverishing America’s middle class to extinction would inevitably result in the extermination of the democrat party. Hopefully through voting them out of power. If electoral fraud prevents that corrective, quite possibly a modern version of the guillotine will result. Though mobs might well resort to S. Africa’s “necklacing” of the more prominent members on the left.

    Government economic enslavement is not going to work.

  15. More from Instapundit aka Glenn Reynolds
    https://instapundit.com/508893/

    DIVERSITY PROBLEM: 2022 Midterms: 20-1, North Carolina university employees are donating to Democrats over Republicans.

    Seriously, we’re always told that universities should represent the entire community. Yet it’s quite clear that they’re political monocultures whose members often actively favor a single political party. Why should taxpayers support them? We were told that we needed affirmative action because citizens wouldn’t want to support institutions made up of people who didn’t look like them. Well?

  16. Finally got a straight line for a comic I’ve wanted to post.

    https://spectatorworld.com/topic/ukraine-invasion-first-social-media-war-volodymyr-zelensky/
    “The Ukraine invasion is the first social media war, And Volodymyr Zelensky is its star”

    The long-running high-intensity discussion about Ukraine, Russia, NATO, etc. among Neo and her commenters made me think of this Dilbert strip.
    https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-02-26-at-7.56.33-PM.png?w=1160&ssl=1

  17. @ Geoffrey > “…I was reacting to the possibility/uncertainty that AesopFan might be laboring under the impression that Joseph Smith originated that tactic. Or even the ancient Nephites in America.”

    Not originated – just a note that a standard military technique was being used (and very effectively) in an odd place to find it.

  18. @Kate; 11:55— Interesting. Do they think that they will be embraced by those invading? Do they think they will not have to hide, that all us right-wingers will be killed in our futile efforts at defense?

    I cannot consider not defending, even if it appears futile. I get the Little Mrs on her way to safety, and join the resistance. I’m old; Basic Training was in 1967. But reasonably equipped I can put up as good a fight as anyone. These leftists are beginning to get under my skin.

  19. In the Open Thread spirit…

    I’m watching “The Prince of Tides.” Nick Nolte is trying to help his twin sister after her suicide attempt by seeing her psychiatrist, played by Barbra Streisand. Streisand is also dealing with her failed marriage. Then the predictable happens. Given the movie poster scene, showing Nolte and Streisand in bed together, I’m not giving anything away.

    I didn’t read the book, which was well-received and a bestseller, but yeesh. I like Nolte and even Streisand some. However, half the scenes go clunk on my meter as trite and overwritten. The ending was hardly a surprise either.

    The film was likewise well-received and made it into the Criterion Collection, which perhaps I regard too highly. Streisand has her goodly share of Hollywood pull. One wonders.

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