How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[sburke]

1 minute ago, LongLeftFlank said:

1.  He picked Vance solely to help him win the Rust Belt. Vance's actual Opinions on anything whatsoever will not amount to the proverbial bucket of warm piss in a Trump Admin reboot, until the point at which Trump clearly shows (I mean, to Republicans) his mortal expiration date (the man is what, 79?).

2. Trump couldn't find Ukraine on a map with both hands (you seen what I did there?). He gave exactly zero effs whether Ukraine or Ukrainians lived or died except inasmuch as it fed his own Donald agenda. The only reason it even entered his vocabulary was that he saw a chance to use [Outer Bu******istan] as a stick to beat Joe Biden with, via Hunter.

3.  So in other words, until a couple of days ago he was perfectly happy to see Ukraine win, preferably so long as TRUMP brand Art of the Deal(r) could be claimed to be behind it.

4. That has all changed now, irrevocably. And it has now made things vastly more difficult for the majority of American 'conservatives' (in the old fashioned Reagan sense) who have been on the Ukraine side all along.

....You are living in the DC bubble, bro. Everything gets filtered through the lens of OrangeManBad. Whether or not that's objectively true could become a moot point on 6 November 2024.

And evidently, so too is Vlodymyr Zelenskyy. He's about to find out there's an external world that, for better or worse, still has a vote in these matters.

Again, while I am no fan of the Kambot either, it gives me NO pleasure to say any of this, so take a hard pass on the ad homs. You should know better by now, in any case.

Trump thinks he has a special relationship with Putin.  He likes to think he is a deal maker.  To all the points Billbindc made Zelensky apparently feels it is critical for the war effort to make those of East European descent in the US understand what is at stake.  Respectfully I think you might be in your own bubble.  Trump was never perfectly happy to see Ukraine win.  Not sure where you got that from as he explicitly refused to commit to that twice in the debate.  That was (checks calendar) 2 weeks ago.

[LongLeftFlank]

I'm in no bubble; most of my American friends overseas are nice blue PMC liberals and my fellow foreigners find Trump incomprehensible.

Zelenskyy's 'principled stand' did not move one single American vote from R to D; or from 'R to not voting'; or from 'not voting to D'.  If you disagree, let's see your evidence.

He was given terrible advice by the Team Blue zealots who surround him, and should that bet go bad, he will need to pay with his job. And Ukraine will pay with him.

Ukraine had better have someone really good warming up in the bullpen.

Brother  @Haiduk, any ideas on this last point? (I hope all is well with you, or reasonably so. Our blues ain't like yours. Heroiam Slava!)

[billbindc]

7 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

1.  He picked Vance solely to help him win the Rust Belt. Vance's actual Opinions on anything whatsoever will not amount to the proverbial bucket of warm piss in a Trump Admin reboot, until the point at which Trump clearly shows (I mean, to Republicans) his mortal expiration date (the man is what, 79?).

2. Trump couldn't find Ukraine on a map with both hands (you seen what I did there?). He gave exactly zero effs whether Ukraine or Ukrainians lived or died except inasmuch as it fed his own Donald agenda. The only reason it even entered his vocabulary was that he saw a chance to use [Outer Bu******istan] as a stick to beat Joe Biden with, via Hunter.

3.  So in other words, until a couple of days ago he was perfectly happy to see Ukraine win, preferably so long as TRUMP brand Art of the Deal(r) could be claimed to be behind it.

4. That has all changed now, irrevocably. And it has now made things vastly more difficult for the majority of American 'conservatives' (in the old fashioned Reagan sense) who have been on the Ukraine side all along.

....You are living in the DC Big Blue Bubble, bro. Everything gets filtered through the lens of OrangeManBad. Whether or not that's objectively true could become a moot point on 6 November 2024.

And evidently, so too is Vlodymyr Zelenskyy. He's about to find out there's an external world that, for better or worse, still has a vote in these matters.

Again, while I am no fan of the Kambot either, it gives me NO pleasure to say any of this, so take a hard pass on the ad homs. You should know better by now, in any case.

1. Vance was picked to get Thiel and Elon money. He actually *hurts* the Ohio and the rest of the Rust Belt as we obvious from polling before he was picked and after. And an already declining 78 year old candidate is not who you bet your country on if you are in an existential war with Russia.

2. Trump literally tried to use Ukraine to get dirt on Biden before the 2020 election and personally directed Giuliani and others in that endeavor. You are kidding yourself if you think he doesn’t know where/what it is and means. 

3. As noted, no Trump has been instead saying he would ‘settle’ Ukraine in 24 hours for many months and refused to agree that he wanted Ukraine to succeed at the debate. You are not naive enough to misunderstand what that means.

4. Nope. Plenty of conservatives will support Ukraine anyway. MAGA folks won’t and already didn’t. 

You can yell “Blue Bubble” all you want my friend but I’m sorry…you are simply not engaging with the realities.

 

[FancyCat]

Zelensky was already in the **** house due to the Hunter Biden stuff. He still says stuff about the 2020 election being "disputed" despite it being a drag on him in 2024, theres no way hes not over that either. 

[Butschi]

3 hours ago, mosuri said:

No need for to rely on the plot alone - data is publicly available.

Way too busy with work to do any number crunching myself now, but if anyone's interested knock yourself out here:

https://tilastot.tulli.fi/en/frontpage

https://tilastot.tulli.fi/en/tables/country-statistics

https://tilastot.tulli.fi/en/tables/statistics-on-logistics

Couldn't easily find an Excel that reports value both per category and per destination country, possibly it's somewhere as well, but would need to dig more than two minutes.

I stand by what I said. The author of that plot makes a claim, so it is his job to provide the source not mine out yours - thanks for the info, though, might take a look nonetheless.

[sburke]

6 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Zelenskyy's 'principled stand' did not move one single American vote from R to D; or from 'R to not voting'; or from 'not voting to D'.  If you disagree, let's see your evidence.

What?  You make a statement (and a pretty strong one) with not one iota of evidence and tell us that if we disagree we need to show evidence? I disagree that your statement is accurate, show me your evidence.

[billbindc]

3 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I'm in no bubble; most of my American friends overseas are nice blue PMC liberals and my fellow foreigners find Trump incomprehensible.

Zelenskyy's 'principled stand' did not move one single American vote from R to D; or from 'R to not voting'; or from 'not voting to D'.  If you disagree, let's see your evidence.

He was given terrible advice by the Team Blue zealots who surround him, and should that bet go bad, he will need to pay with his job. And Ukraine will pay with him.

Ukraine had better have someone really good warming up in the bullpen.

Brother  @Haiduk, any ideas on this last point? (I hope all is well with you, or reasonably so. Our blues ain't like yours. Heroiam Slava!)

You should perhaps consider that being with a bunch of ex-pats is *not* a great way to read the American zeitgeist. It’s not even a good way to get a read on domestic American liberals much less domestic American conservatives. If you spent time with the latter, you would be surprised at how much support Ukraine enjoys and how many of those folks were Haley voters in the primaries long after Trump had sealed the deal. 

Finally, do you really think Zelensky went to Scranton on a lark? Do you deep down really think that he thought he had a decent shot of support from a Trump administration but decided to inject himself into a US presidential race anyway?

Come on, now.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

3 hours ago, dan/california said:

It is hard to overstate how inflationary it is to dump that much money on very poor people. Every ruble, at least every ruble that is actually paid out, is going to be spent like it is on fire. And most of it will be spent on the stuff working class people buy, so the resulting inflation is going to be felt by those same people.

Perun addressed this in his analysis of Russian economy on Youtube two or three weeks ago. He concluded that this inflation is counterbalanced by the general increase in wages caused by the scarcity of workers and competition between employers. The people are happy because their pay goes up more than they get angry at inflation.

[LongLeftFlank]

Just now, billbindc said:

1. Vance was picked to get Thiel and Elon money. He actually *hurts* the Ohio and the rest of the Rust Belt as we obvious from polling before he was picked and after. And an already declining 78 year old candidate is not who you bet your country on if you are in an existential war with Russia.

2. Trump literally tried to use Ukraine to get dirt on Biden before the 2020 election and personally directed Giuliani and others in that endeavor. You are kidding yourself if you think he doesn’t know where/what it is and means. 

3. As noted, no Trump has been instead saying he would ‘settle’ Ukraine in 24 hours for many months and refused to agree that he wanted Ukraine to succeed at the debate. You are not naive enough to misunderstand what that means.

4. Nope. Plenty of conservatives will support Ukraine anyway. MAGA folks won’t and already didn’t. 

You can yell “Blue Bubble” all you want my friend but I’m sorry…you are simply not engaging with the realities.

 

This from the guy who sternly lectured me on doubting that Joseph Robinette Biden was anything less than in full and total command of his administration.

Again, I notice you and SB are both instantly going to 'shoot the messenger mode' (I expect Steve to join in shortly).

So I guess we'll have to see on 5 November.

P.S. Google just changed something in their search engine that makes it virtually impossible to call up any kind of popular film clip; you get irrelevant crap instead. So the quality of my meme bombing may be disrupted, to the relief of some folks here.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

11 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Zelenskyy's 'principled stand' did not move one single American vote from R to D; or from 'R to not voting'; or from 'not voting to D'.  If you disagree, let's see your evidence.

He was given terrible advice by the Team Blue zealots who surround him, and should that bet go bad, he will need to pay with his job. And Ukraine will pay with him.

I think it is Zelenski himself who makes these blunders. When dealing with Polish Prime Minister he was also needlessly abrasive and the meeting developed into a minor diplomatic row. I suspect he might have burned out psychologically. He's had an extremely stressful life since 2022.

[Letter from Prague]

In my country, we have a saying: It doesn't matter how it's voted, it matters how its counted.

It does not really matter what Zelensky said or not said, because it does not really matter if Trump loses in a landslide, because he will have fake electors and he will have corrupt voting commissions and he will have people challenging the result at the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court will say "Trump Won" in a landmark 6:3 decision.

This election is going to about whether the Democrats will have the balls to do what is necessary to protect the democracy or whether they give up on it pretending that is the "principled" thing to do (and this will be last elections in US).

[Butschi]

12 hours ago, Eug85 said:

It is very strange - you started with accusations of dishonesty towards my source, and ended with an excuse for your government that trade with Russia is necessary to preserve the economy of your country. If this is so, then why is Finland doing this? Do you think that Finland's economy will soon fall? I would like to note that before the war, Finland and Russia were closely intertwined. They are neighboring countries and, as can be seen from the graph, their pre-war level of trade was very high. And finally. Do you really think that the unnaturally multiple increase in the supply of washing machines to Uzbekistan is caused by the cult of cleanliness there and that the sanctions bodies of Western countries should not pay attention to such facts?

You post something moralizing and provoking, your post gets analyzed and challenged in detail but instead of reacting to any of the points made you shoot back a number of (again) moralizing questions. There is a pattern and it is very predictable. You made a claim, I challenged it, so answer my points first if you are interested in a discussion.

[LongLeftFlank]

12 minutes ago, sburke said:

What?  You make a statement (and a pretty strong one) with not one iota of evidence and tell us that if we disagree we need to show evidence? I disagree that your statement is accurate, show me your evidence.

This is a fair point. So let's both keep our eyes open. But this is risky business IMHO.

[dan/california]

11 minutes ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

Perun addressed this in his analysis of Russian economy on Youtube two or three weeks ago. He concluded that this inflation is counterbalanced by the general increase in wages caused by the scarcity of workers and competition between employers. The people are happy because their pay goes up more than they get angry at inflation.

So far, but every possible condition is in place for that inflation to spiral completely out of control. Lets look again in six months.

[billbindc]

11 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

This from the guy who sternly lectured me on doubting that Joseph Robinette Biden was anything less than in full and total command of his administration.

Again, I notice you and SB are both instantly going to 'shoot the messenger mode' (I expect Steve to join in shortly).

So I guess we'll have to see on 5 November.

P.S. Google just changed something in their search engine that makes it virtually impossible to call up any kind of popular film clip; you get irrelevant crap instead. So the quality of my meme bombing may be disrupted, to the relief of some folks here.

I’m giving you facts, not opinions on this. Ukraine simply doesn’t take this risk unless they already *know* what they are getting if Trump wins as has been amply demonstrated by Vance and Trump’s public comments. Trump literally said the other day that the war in Ukraine was *America’s fault*. If you think that means he will be a tough negotiating partner with Putin, I would love to play you in poker.

[dan/california]

2 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

This is a fair point. So let's both keep our eyes open. But this is risky business IMHO.

Well it is certainly that. 

[dan/california]

 

Quote

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defense-aerospace-report/id1228868129?i=1000670556173

If you want to listen to a couple of VERY plugged in DC people have exactly the same arguments we are having this week? This podcast has you covered. Kursk, Trump, permission to shoot ATACMS at Russia, they cover it all.

[billbindc]

5 minutes ago, Letter from Prague said:

In my country, we have a saying: It doesn't matter how it's voted, it matters how its counted.

It does not really matter what Zelensky said or not said, because it does not really matter if Trump loses in a landslide, because he will have fake electors and he will have corrupt voting commissions and he will have people challenging the result at the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court will say "Trump Won" in a landmark 6:3 decision.

This election is going to about whether the Democrats will have the balls to do what is necessary to protect the democracy or whether they give up on it pretending that is the "principled" thing to do (and this will be last elections in US).

I never understand where these takes come from. Who do you think has had the balls to defend American democracy since Trump came on the scene? Hint…it wasn’t Occupy.

[LongLeftFlank]

1 minute ago, billbindc said:

I never understand where these takes come from. Who do you think has had the balls to defend American democracy since Trump came on the scene? Hint…it wasn’t Occupy.

Well they have certainly defended the structure of the *Republic* (some would call it 'the Swamp') against a rather ignorant demagogue.

The 'Demos', however, doesn't always play along.

[billbindc]

Just now, LongLeftFlank said:

Well they have certainly defended the structure of the *Republic* (some would call it 'the Swamp') against a rather ignorant demagogue.

The 'Demos', however, doesn't always play along.

I wouldn’t call it the Swamp or the Republic…I’d call it the rule of law, democracy and the Constitution. And Trump is just the expression of very bad trends that have been building for a long time. But, well off topic now so…

[Battlefront.com]

26 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

This from the guy who sternly lectured me on doubting that Joseph Robinette Biden was anything less than in full and total command of his administration.

Again, I notice you and SB are both instantly going to 'shoot the messenger mode' (I expect Steve to join in shortly).

 

There's two separate issues here and they are being conflated:

1.  The likelihood a second Trump Administration would support Ukraine in a meaningful way vs. throwing it under the bus

2.  Whether it was smart for Zelensky to openly side with a Harris in the event Trump wins

I think #2 is an open question, but #1 is absolutely backed up by years of observed behavior, campaign rhetoric, and what the MAGA movement wants.  Blue bubble?  No, someone has to have one of the most strained forms of "devil's advocate" to argue that Trump Admin 2.0 would support Ukraine vs. throwing it under the bus.

Here's some relevant behavior to note.  Trump said on the campaign trail that he would end the war in Afghanistan (no doubt using the words "easy", "24 hours", etc.).  It took him years to get around to it, but he eventually did.  And how did he do it?  By negotiating a deal with the Taliban and NOT including the Afghan government.  At all.  The Taliban got what it wanted, Trump got what he wanted (ironically only because he didn't get reelected), and the Afghan government got screwed.  The end result was the collapse of the Afghan government.  It might have been the inevitable end, but many experts (military and civilian) say that a combination of a hard timeline and leaving the Afghans out of the negotiations ensured Afghanistan's failure.

Trump views Putin as one of his golfing buddies.  He'll make a deal on the golf course first chance he gets.  We saw how "strong" Trump was when meeting Putin in Helsinki, so no real mystery who would set the agenda and walk away with the win.  Zelensky would get a phone call after it happened.

Steve

[LongLeftFlank]

Just now, Battlefront.com said:

There's two separate issues here and they are being conflated:

1.  The likelihood a second Trump Administration would support Ukraine in a meaningful way vs. throwing it under the bus

2.  Whether it was smart for Zelensky to openly side with a Harris in the event Trump wins

I think #2 is an open question, but #1 is absolutely backed up by years of observed behavior, campaign rhetoric, and what the MAGA movement wants.  Blue bubble?  No, someone has to have one of the most strained forms of "devil's advocate" to argue that Trump Admin 2.0 would support Ukraine vs. throwing it under the bus.

Here's some relevant behavior to note.  Trump said on the campaign trail that he would end the war in Afghanistan (no doubt using the words "easy", "24 hours", etc.).  It took him years to get around to it, but he eventually did.  And how did he do it?  By negotiating a deal with the Taliban and NOT including the Afghan government.  At all.  The Taliban got what it wanted, Trump got what he wanted (ironically only because he didn't get reelected), and the Afghan government got screwed.  The end result was the collapse of the Afghan government.  It might have been the inevitable end, but many experts (military and civilian) say that a combination of a hard timeline and leaving the Afghans out of the negotiations ensured Afghanistan's failure.

Steve

But IF in spite of all our fervently wishing it weren't so, Trump wins, decisively (no Supreme Court, no dimpled chads wev), in November (and lives to take office in Jan).

Then everything we've all been saying is blahblahblah, and Zelenskyy is the one going under the bus. And hopefully it isn't the entire Ukrainian nation as well (sadly, not the first nation that Team America has fed into a wood chipper once it became inconvenient). That was my primary point. I knew it would stir up some anger here.

BillB seems confident that Z fully knows what he's doing, and I respect his view, but the stakes are pretty high here.

[Holien]

31 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Again, I notice you and SB are both instantly going to 'shoot the messenger mode' (I expect Steve to join in shortly).

Another snow flake...

Just because they have challenged your pov you turn it into an attack on you.

How else should they challenge you?

You are starting to sound like certain other folk...

[LongLeftFlank]

5 minutes ago, Holien said:

Another snow flake...

Just because they have challenged your pov you turn it into an attack on you.

How else should they challenge you?

You are starting to sound like certain other folk...

Res ipse loquitur.

[Baneman]

7 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

But IF in spite of all our fervently wishing it weren't so, Trump wins, decisively (no Supreme Court, no dimpled chads wev), in November (and lives to take office in Jan).

Then everything we've all been saying is blahblahblah, and Zelenskyy is the one going under the bus. ..

But the point you seem determined to avoid is that Ukraine would be going under the bus if Trump won, anyway.

It's not burning bridges if you know the bridge is going to be demolished by the other party.
Trump is not wholly rational, but he is very predictable and he won't have forgiven Ukraine's part in his impeachment.
Zelensky is perfectly aware that he really has nothing to lose with this.