$6 or $7 per gallon is a small price to pay to defend democracy....

I concur on the culinary experience at the higher end having more value. I love good food and I love to eat. But there are way too many other ways to spend $120 that bring more enjoyment for a longer period of time for me. That’s just how I’m wired. Not a knock on fine dining.

 

We agree on that, too! I rarely do the $120 meal personally - but in theory it's a better choice. Especially if you're the kind of person who has to pay for experiences (common in urban types - given their recreational choices are almost all 'manufactured' entertainment). I'd rather cook up stew and sourdough in the woodfired oven, and share with family, friends & guitars. Feeds many for next to nothing, and the music is free

 

Having to pay big money for experiences must suck. The greatest experiences of my life were essentially free and couldn’t be recreated with any amount of money.

To get back to the thread topic, if people would be willing to cut back on purchased experience (theme parks, $120 meals, airline or long drive vacations, etc.) even temporarily, it would help limit inflation and leave more affordable resources for third world countries that can’t compete with cash flush westerners looking for unnecessary instant gratification.

Every $120 steak dinner purchased gives me more incentive and working capital to purchase very scarce nitrogen fertilizer at extremely elevated prices. A sustenance farmer in sub Saharan Africa has no chance of competing with me for that nitrogen. If I do without it I may lose money for a year. If the African goes without his wife and two of his children will starve to death.

I’ve already said my piece about the OP but it bears repeating. The premise that Americans can afford $7/gallon gas so everything is fine makes me sick. It’s such blatant elitism and disregard for human life outside of this consumerism bubble of warped reality I’m nauseous thinking about it.

 

Could you please define democracy?

 

You're right. UCLA is evil.

UCLA Pulls Ad For 'Unpaid' Professor Job Amid Backlash

It's just the latest example of hypocrisy emanating from America's 'elite' institutions of higher education.

Advertised for an experienced professor, with a PhD and: "Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position."

********s

Woke Scum.

And we aren't paying $6/g to "defend liberty". We are paying for Biden and the Left's screw up.

 

Um, eastern Russia has 2x more oil and natural gas than Central Asia which has 5x-7x more oil and natural gas than the Middle East and North Africa.

In case you don't get it, that means eastern Russia has 10x-14x more oil and natural gas than the Middle East and North Africa.

And it has lots of rare earth ores and minerals.

There's nothing in Ukraine that Russia needs, except to prevent the US/NATO from using it for airbases.

Defend Democracy, and you defend against that.

Thank you for admitting that you are totally confounded and confused by hypothetical scenarios.

Bush illegally overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2004 which is why the US/NATO will be able to base aircraft in Ukraine.

Hypothetically, if Russia illegally overthrew the Mexican government -- like Bush did with Ukraine -- then Mexico would allow Russia to base aircraft there.

Who said anything about Putin?

I'm simply explaining why Russia is doing what they're doing and they'd be invading Ukraine whether Putin was in charge or not.

 

YOU were the one who called it a "quest for the control of resources"

I do defend Democracy. And the only reason you defend a dictatorship is because you obviously have never lived under one. So you don't know what you're saying.

That says it all right there about how seriously we should take your post. BTW, who's Bush?

I did! The OP did! This thread is about defending democracy against Putin!

Please try to focus!

 

Your lack of reading comprehension is not impressive.

It is the US that is on the quest for resources, not Russia as I clearly pointed out here....

And I pointed it out here as well ....

In case you don't get it, eastern Russia is in Russia and not in Ukraine.

The US and Britain want those resources in eastern Russia and will stop at nothing to get them.

Russia knows that. So do China and India and a few others.

Very obviously, you didn't know that, but then you weren't involved in writing the doctrines and policies and plans to gain control of eastern Russia.

I lived in East Berlin from time to time while I worked there and also worked in Potsdam.

I also lived and worked in Romania under Ceausescu.

And I worked Hungarian and Czechoslovakia while it was still Czechoslovakia and both were behind the "Iron Curtain,"

I also worked in Panama to remove Noreiga lest he spill the beans that the Snake Department and CIA didn't want him to spill.

I also worked in Iraq. Since Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship, I worked there to get ready to work in Iraq.

In other words you cannot accept Reality®.

Bush would be George W. Bush, the 43rd US President who served from 2001-2009.

It's shocking you don't know that and doesn't say much about your credibility.

Um, Bush illegally overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2004 and installed a puppet.

There is nothing democratic about that in spite of your many protestations.

And, what kind of democracy allows a foreign country like the US to muscle in force it to put Americans on the boards of the companies owning all the natural resources in Ukraine?

Because that's what Obama did.

You wanna explain to us how Hunter Biden is even remotely qualified to sit on the board of directors for Ukraine's natural gas company?

 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aGyqlFF56Pk

 

At this point you, and maybe Tucker Carlson (I seem to have heard that Tucker "changed his mind" as he started losing sponsors) are pretty much alone in believing Putin propaganda. But this does make it clear how vulnerable you are to disinformation.

 

This is so true.

I am a perfect example.

I do not believe I have any moral connection to Trump supporters. I do not believe there is any common ground here. I believe that they are generally speaking, morally repugnant people. I have no desire to live with, or to try and create a common society with people that I consider to be immoral. This is why I predict civil war is in our future. The current situation is becoming untenable.

 

It's not "disinformation." It is the current US Geo-Political Strategy that your State Department created and has been in play for decades.

Unlike you, I was drafting, editing, and revising policy, doctrine and strategy on it. Admittedly, I was on the Southwest Asian Working Group which is Indian, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, but the Central Asian, Eastern European, North African and Mediterranean Groups all work together as a team.

Since you know everything, why don't you tell us where Russian ships can port and where Russian can put forward operating bases in the Mediterranean?

Oh, that's right, you can't because there aren't any more.

That's by design. The US goal is to drive Russia out of the Mediterranean and pen them up in the Black Sea.

Clinton carved up Yugoslavia. Russian ships can't port in the Adriatic and there's no place to base fighters or bombers, except in Serbia which is ringed by NATO member-States so they'd have to fly through a barrage of Patriot missiles to get out of there.

The Russians can't port ships or put air bases in Libya and Tunisia thanks to Arab Spring bankrolled by Bush and Obama and thanks to the fact that Obama illegally overthrew the governments of both countries.

What did Tunisian journalist Mohammed Talbi say?

Oh, yeah, "We have the right to shut up." Obama's pupped was cracking on their heads.

Syria is the only place that's left and lo and behold the US is meddling there.

If you were going to host a delegation of Turkish diplomats, why would you not host them at the US Embassy Mission Tripoli?

Why would you go to an out-of-the-way place like the US Consular Activity in Benghazi?

Well, you'd go to an out-of-the-way place to escape a high profile place like Tripoli that was full of Media and press people because you didn't want people to know what was going on.

What was going on? Obama illegally giving money to Pakistan to illegally buy weapons from Iran to illegally ship them to Turkey to illegally smuggle them into Syria.

Where have we seen that before?

Oh, Clinton, who illegally gave money to Pakistan to illegally buy weapons from Iran to illegally smuggle them to Albania where Obama bin Laden's #2 lieutenant al-Zawahiri (later killed by a US drone strike in Pakistan) who was illegally smuggling them into Bosnia and Kosovo-Metohija under the watchful eye of the CIA and Iranian VEVAK who were there to make sure no man-portable air defense systems were "accidentally" included in the illegal weapons shipments.

Seeing how you can't bring yourself to admit that the Bush Administration illegally overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2004, you probably won't be able to ask yourself why US VII Corps units (1st Armored Division, 3rd Infantry Division, 1st Infantry (FWD), 3rd Armored Cav) and VII Corps Artillery and the Tiger Brigade --2nd Armored (FWD)-- under British command in NORTHAG were conducting desert warfare training in Turkey in the desert that borders Iraq.

You probably think they were doing desert warfare training to be able to defeat the nomadic Polish tribes and fierce Czech desert warriors roaming the deserts of Eastern Europe on their camels.

Why don't you read us the communiques between April Glaspie and her handlers in the State Department? Oh, that's right, you can't because they aren't scheduled for declassification review until the year 2067.

What do you suppose your government is trying to hide from people like you?

Why do you suppose the US V Corps didn't get the call go to Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield?

We already covered that. The US VII Corps spent October 1989 up through Desert Shield doing desert warfare training. The US V Corps did not.

Somebody had one helluva Ouija board. Or maybe Tarot cards or a real shiny crystal ball. Wouldn't you like to get your hands on that?

You probably think the US withdraw from Afghanistan was a fiasco.

No one is drinking the "Iran's got nukes" Kool-Aid®.

That's a dead horse. Even the Media won't touch that any more.

I'd look for a false flag event in the next few years after Ukraine dies down. Blame Iran who obviously must be in cahoots with the Taliban. I mean they just gots to be.

What a great excuse to invade Iran. And re-invade Afghanistan.

I used to lay awake at night thinking I'd be responsible for the deaths of 10s of 1,000s of Balochs. My strategic contribution was the Baluchistan Gambit. My bosses liked it. We can illegally give money to Pakistan to illegally buy weapons from Iran to illegally arm the Balochs.

Oh, wait....that would be awkward. Half of Baluchistan is in Pakistan and the other half in Iran. That's okay, we can illegally give money to Turkey to illegally buy weapons from Iran and then illegally arm the Balochs and back their bid for independence. When Iran moves to crush the revolt, that creates the pretext to invade Iran.

Did you rehearse for the invasion of Iran? My job was to seize both bridges and two fording points along the Karun River, you know, so US and British armored units can race from Kuwait into Iran.

What was your job? Oh, you didn't have one. Sucks to be you. Maybe one day you'll understand.

But first, I have to teach you how to grasp hypothetical scenarios.

 

There is now practically unanimous bi-partisan agreement that Putin's propaganda is disinformation. So there is no reason for me to waste my time on this when there are so few Putin believers left.

So you're on your own, fella. I'm not interested...

 

For anyone’s info;

ALL EMPLOYEES, Oil and Gas Extraction

Source; FRED

Number of employees;

December 2014; 200,000 employees

December 2015; 187,000 employees

December 2016; 157,000 employees

December 2017: 140,000 employees

December 2018; 140,000 employees

December 2019; 140,000 employees

December 2020; 110,000 employees

Wow!......during Trump’s presidency, we had a “Drill BABY Drill”, however, the number of employees remained at near 140,000 ????????

Note; When I was a Republican, Bush’s Drill Baby Drill created over 10,000 direct oil and gas jobs, indirect; unknown,

Thus, what happened?

Anyone?