Hello Ken,Ken wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2024 3:12 pm Some of it is also just accounting games. Like, for example, when the US sends Abrams Tanks to Ukraine they are just pulling older tanks out of storage depots and putting them on ships. These were tanks that were built and paid for decades ago and that have been mothballed due to downsizing. But they still count them as representing $10 million a piece in aid each, even if it isn't a dime of new money. so 100 Abrams tanks shipped to Ukraine would count as $1 billion of military aid, even though it isn't any new spending.
Same thing when they send artillery ammunition. This stuff has a finite shelf life. It doesn't really cost anything to empty out American warehouses of older munitions that will expire and need to be replaced anyway. Saves us from having to dispose of it in fact.
We still have to use money to replace the old tanks sent to Ukraine, otherwise, the USA would not have to spend 46 billion dollars on a losing war. So it is not "free" to send money to Ukraine.
Artillery shells keep literally forever. I understand Russia has been shooting old artillery shells from WWII. A few years ago, a friend let me shoot his British Enfield with .303 ammo from WWII, and it never misfired. Ammo keeps forever, it if is kept dry.
CNN says we have allocated 113 billion dollars to Ukraine, with 43 billion dollars already spent.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/21/politics ... index.html
The government just printed up these billions of dollars for Ukraine and sent it. Nobody earned it. That is why we have runaway inflation - they are telling us inflation is 3.5% when it is over 10% in the grocery stores:
https://www.biden-mart.com/
So, it is either one of two things:
Either corruption, as the money we sent to Ukraine went elsewhere, like to the Democratic Party, or corrupt Wall Street, as Ukraine is noted for corruption, or,
Or incompetence, as we really did send all of that aid and equipment over there, and our tanks, guns, HIMARS, jets, anti-aircraft, etc are absolutely no match for the Russians. (which is even scarier). Or, no Ukrainian knows how to use what we send over there, and so it was stupidly incompetent to send it to Ukraine in the first place.
So it is either corruption, or incompetence. Take your pick.
I vote for corruption, as there is no evidence that the money made it to the defense contractors. It is obvious we are not in a booming war-time economy with all of these lucrative defense contracts employing millions of people.
But if someone want to argue corruption and "incompetence", then that is a valid point. Perhaps it is both.
But regardless, after two years, whatever we have done, it is not working. The money has been wasted.
And to top it off, if the 2020 election had not been stolen, this war would have never happened in the first place under Trump. He would have gotten a peace deal with Russia, and made the Ukrainain Azov Nazi Brigade stop shelling Russian speaking Ukrainian villages - so Russia would have never invaded Ukraine in the first place.
Russia was asking for a peace deal that the Russian speaking Donbas and Luhansk regions of Ukraine become autonomous under neither Ukraine or Russia, that the Soviet built irrigation canal be turned back on for the Crimea, and that Russia's claims to the Crimea since the time of Catherine the Great be acknowledged. That is what it would have taken to never had the war in the first place.
And, when Trump is reelected in November (if the Democrats don't steal the election again), I predict that the war will be over in February of 2025, two weeks after he takes office. That is, if the Democrats don't have us in a nuclear war by election day.
Everyone should look on the last 3.5 years of Democrat rule in sheer horror. Shutting down our own pipelines, blowing up the Nordstream pipeline, sending Boris Johnson to kill the peace plan that both Russia and Ukraine would have accepted without our meddling, and all of the dead bodies that resulted from this war. And potentially starting WWIII with nuclear war between Russia and the USA. How could you do any worse?
If there was ever a time that Satan was in charge of America, is is right now. All of the violence in our cities, the flood of illegals across the border, and drag queen story time hour. And then the murder of hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine. All on one US administration. It is unbelievable. They all need to go to jail.
I understand that January 6th will become the new "National Entrapment Day" federal holiday next year. We need to remember the political prisoners in the USA whose only crime was to walk through an open door into the Capitol, and arrest the FBI assets like Ray Epps that made it all possible but are walking around free. And arrest all of the BLM people that burned down our cities, too. And arrest Michael Byrd who shot an unarmed woman in the neck in cold blooded murder, and got away with it. And the list could go on for a long time.
Have a great day.
John