1> Nobody knows what Putin wants.
2> I am sure the Democrats are proftitng greatly from this boondoggle.
3> If you make winning impossible using conventional weapons, then are you enabling the tactical nuke option ?
4> Just wait for this instability to hit this country and we still need to import Russian oil and Russia forges a new axis of evil.
5> It is all Trumps fault anyway. He was always in bed with Russia (even though Hillary hit the reset button).
6> The average citizen in this country still has no idea what is going on and the consequences.
Nor are they motivated to find out.
7> This won't end well for anyone

^^^ WTF are you talking about? Trump's fault???

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Dakor,

quote:

Originally posted by oldbill123:

5> It is all Trumps fault anyway. He was always in bed with Russia (even though Hillary hit the reset button).

I sure hope you are speaking facetiously here because that shit don’t fly around here. At all.

Inside the 'Flying Kremlin': What does Russia's 'Doomsday plane' mean for the war in Ukraine?

https://www.euronews.com/next/...N2M0Yjk1Y2QifQ%3D%3D

synchronized IED video at link

https://twitter.com/i/status/1524448276002525186

https://hotair.com/allahpundit...-tank-turret-n468708

"An unfortunate flaw in Russian tank design means that the tank’s shells are positioned in a circular automatic loader located directly beneath the two crewmen who operate the turret. In American tanks the shells are located away from the crew, behind an armored wall. The logic seems simple: If enemy fire hits the tank and the shells start cooking off, the crew needs a chance to get out safely.

But not simple enough for Russian designers, evidently.

If you hit a Russian tank in the right spot and the shells start cooking off — kaboom. The crewmen have no chance. The force of the shells exploding upward can blow the turret clean off the body of the vehicle, which is why this has become known as the “jack in the box” flaw in Russian armor"



https://www.washingtonpost.com...ast-jack-in-the-box/

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:


"An unfortunate flaw in Russian tank design means that the tank’s shells are positioned in a circular automatic loader located directly beneath the two crewmen who operate the turret. In American tanks the shells are located away from the crew, behind an armored wall. The logic seems simple: If enemy fire hits the tank and the shells start cooking off, the crew needs a chance to get out safely.

But not simple enough for Russian designers, evidently.

If you hit a Russian tank in the right spot and the shells start cooking off — kaboom. The crewmen have no chance. The force of the shells exploding upward can blow the turret clean off the body of the vehicle, which is why this has become known as the “jack in the box” flaw in Russian armor"

That's not a flaw to them, they've never given a shit about human life in that fucked up country. You're just another piece of equipment to them and if you blow up, oh well.

I just saw a video of how they treat their dead when they actually bother to go gather them. Guys throwing body bags into rail cars like they were sacks of garbage to be taken to the dump.

The depiction of the Leopard 2 isn't entirely accurate since it also store almost half of its main gun ammo next to the driver, unvented. Turkish Leopard 2A4 had been blown apart with hits to this frontal hull ammo stowage.

Merkava Mk4 also has small main gun ammo stowage, armored but also unvented, in the rear hull. However it is a small amount that the crew can elect to forgo it going into battle.

M1A1/2 tanks are the only ones that have all of its main gun ammo stowages armored and vented.

If only Republicans loved America as much as they love Ukraine

Daniel Horowitz

We’ve had a revolution in this country for the past two years, in which constitutional and even human rights were suspended. To this day, a clot shot is being imposed on our soldiers in the military. Yet senators like Ben Sasse were dead silent as if in quarantine for two years. I didn’t even know some of them were still in Washington. We also have cartels killing Americans by sending over unfathomable quantities of deadly poison and criminal aliens. Yet crickets. But the minute Ukraine comes into the news, there is no amount of money and arms that is too much to bestow upon the country. Their only criticism of Biden is that he’s not sending enough aid quickly enough.

Oh, and inflation is just a figment of your imagination. So not only do they love Ukrainians more than Americans, they are actually increasing inflation with more printed money, plus prolonging a stalemate war that will result in more supply chain shortages and dead civilians.

After giving $13.6 billion to Ukraine, Congress nearly unanimously passed a lend-lease program to essentially lend any weapon aside from nuclear weapons to the dubious Ukrainian military, which is mixed with prominent neo-Nazi forces. But that wasn’t enough. Biden submitted a $33 billion weapons and aid bill to Ukraine, and congressional Democrats upped the price tag to $40 billion. Together with the first $13 billion, that is more than double the sum we spend on interest on the national debt.

So what is the GOP response? Yes, let’s get this done even faster, but our only objection is that it not be tethered to the $10 billion COVID bill. But that bill – which is a handout to Pfizer and Moderna, because, you know, they are quite poor – only bothers them because they want to use it as leverage to require Biden to keep Title 42 turnbacks at the border. They actually don’t oppose his COVID policy bills at all, just as they don’t oppose his Ukraine bill. And even with regard to the the border, Title 42 is kind of a tangential issue to the fact that our government is working with the cartels and that Republicans should demand that the $40 billion spent on Ukraine’s border be spent arming the Texas and Arizona National Guards against the cartels.

You see, Republicans, with all their feigned political combat against Democrats, will never fight the issue that matters, in the way it matters, and at the time it matters. In fact, when it actually matters, they are on the other side – not the side of America.

According to Roll Call, Sen. Lindsey Graham praised Biden for agreeing to split the COVID and Ukraine bills. “I don’t care, as long as the money is going to help the war cause,” he said. “It’s in our interest, defeating Putin is priceless.”

Yup, all the money, arms, and effort he would never put into defending Americans’ liberty from COVID fascism or our border from the cartels, he will use for Ukraine. The sky is the limit. He also called upon Russia to be designated as a state sponsor of terror, but of course no such call for designating the Mexican cartels that actually affect our security more than anything in the world.

Sen. Ben Sasse had no concerns about where this money is going and whether it is going to Hunter Biden’s extracurricular activities, such as the bioweapons facilities. No, everything in Ukraine is pristine and we “shouldn’t get bogged down in partisan politics.”

“This is really simple: If we want Ukraine to win, we need to continue to arm them to the teeth," he said. "A clean Ukraine bill will have the votes. Let’s get this done.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear that “we need to do it quickly."

“We all agree the most important thing going on in the world now is the war in Ukraine,” McConnell said at a press conference on Tuesday, announcing the bipartisan agreement with the president.

How is that for a bold contrast between the parties! Nothing here at home to worry about. But it’s worse than that. Their strategy for Ukraine is actually harming domestic policy.

Just hours after the text of the bill dropped on Tuesday, nearly three-quarters of the House Republicans joined every Democrat in approving the funding. Only 57 Republicans voted no.

As the central theme of their midterm election campaign, Republican leaders are decrying Bidenflation. However, they have supported nearly every major spending bill that has led to this inflation and have shown no sign of graduating to the next level of economic literacy. At a time of supply shortages, including in weaponry, they are sending stockpiles abroad to fuel a war in eastern Ukraine.

Moreover, so long as they fuel the war rather than bring about a solution that ends the fighting through Ukraine renouncing any future NATO membership and ceding the ethnic Russian areas, it will continue to exacerbate the pain of supply shortages across the globe. Imagine how many factories we could build for things like baby formula or fertilizer.

Instead, our funding is going to neo-Nazi nationalist groups that ran a “No to Capitulation” campaign against Zelenskyy’s own peace accord in 2019. Ironically, if not for the Azov Brigade we are now funding, there likely would have been no war.
Perhaps we can all self-identify as Ukrainians, and our Republican politicians will pay attention to those who’ve had their lives destroyed by Pfizer’s experimental gene therapy.

https://www.conservativereview...laze-2657307514.html

^^ I think it's fair to ask how deep Biden's commitment to rescinding Rule 42 runs. The Republicans in Congress could obviously do far better on a number of fronts, but they have managed to find poison pills before that Biden and the Congressional Dems just won't swallow.

I'm also trying to stay away from nesting and walls of text, but it seems to me that Horowitz is making a lot of assumptions and interpretations and then drawing firm conclusions on the basis of those assumptions and interpretations. The idea that Putin would never have attacked Ukraine if it weren't for the existence of the Azov Battalion strikes me as just plain weird given the series of attacks Putin's made and the never-ending scroll of reasons Putin's come up with for making those attacks.

quote:

it seems to me that Horowitz is making a lot of assumptions and interpretations and then drawing firm conclusions on the basis of those assumptions and interpretations.

It's an opinion piece. It's argumentative. Granted.

But the main point, to me, as I've highlighted, is that the Republicans have voted for nearly every major spending bill that has led to this inflation and this $40 billion is further exacerbating our domestic problems.

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
synchronized IED video at link

https://twitter.com/i/status/1524448276002525186

https://hotair.com/allahpundit...-tank-turret-n468708

"An unfortunate flaw in Russian tank design means that the tank’s shells are positioned in a circular automatic loader located directly beneath the two crewmen who operate the turret. In American tanks the shells are located away from the crew, behind an armored wall. The logic seems simple: If enemy fire hits the tank and the shells start cooking off, the crew needs a chance to get out safely.

Not a flaw, a short-coming but, not a flaw. Russian tank design is tied to their doctrine: tanks are to be relatively inexpensive, easy to build and used for deep offensive runs after artillery has shaped the battlefield. Crew safety is not a priority, see autoloader accidents, lack of air conditioning, and disposable attitude towards vehicle maintenance.
Contrast that to Western main battle tanks which have more armor and safety features as the doctrine was built around defense. Magazine blowout panels, enhanced optics and networked sensors, enhanced crew comfort (compared to Russian tanks)and NBC protections.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
But the main point, to me, as I've highlighted, is that the Republicans have voted for nearly every major spending bill that has led to this inflation and this $40 billion is further exacerbating our domestic problems.

I've been waiting and watching to see what the Repub leadership were going to do to squander the absolute rout of the Dem's they were looking at this fall, and IMO here it is. Roe wasn't going to do it, but blatantly shipping American dollars overseas to Ukraine while turning a complete blind eye to the suffering and pain Americans are feeling damn sure will. The Uni-party showed its face to every American this week, and laughed at their pain.

Ok
Trumps fault was sarcasm.

My understanding is that we still need heavy crude and import it from Russia. Only other source is Argentina and they side with Russia

Canada (tar sands) is by far the largest source of our heavy crude, then Mexico and Saudi Arabia. As you can see from the link, many sources provide crude oil to the U.S. and switching is readily achievable, in fact done every day via arbitrage.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/p..._epc0_im0_mbbl_m.htm

quote:

Argentina

Venezuela. FWIW, their oil is hard and expensive enough to process that they actually had to get their own refinery in the US in order to market their oil here. I want to say that the refinery got taken over by creditors, or rather plaintiffs that won an award, here in the US a few years ago.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
But the main point, to me, as I've highlighted, is that the Republicans have voted for nearly every major spending bill that has led to this inflation and this $40 billion is further exacerbating our domestic problems.

Yeah, that's a more than fair point.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Why so cynical?

Why so gullible?

The Biden Administration and our joke of a news media are telling us how things are in all of this. Cynicism is absolutely called for, and lots of it. I don't believe a single thing either of these entities tells me.

And you can just say goodbye to that 30 to 40 billion tax payer dollars, flushed straight down the toilet.

Oh, yes, so many things to be positive about. I'm positive the American public is being lied to, I'm positive the American taxpayer is getting screwed. I'm positive that all of this is a waste of time and money.

Where did I say I wanted to spend $40, much less $40B on Ukraine?

I was just commenting on Russia's motives and saying that Ukraine doesn't seem to have to have done anything to bring this on themselves.

I remember before the second Gulf war when Scott Ritter resigned in protest while he was a weapon's inspector. At the time I could not understand what he was doing undermining the United States. We would later learn he was telling the truth about Iraq and their weapons of mass destruction. It would have been easier for him to just play along with what the U.S. Government wanted him to say and he caught a lot of flak for his stance. Might not agree on every point in his video but, it is worth a listen., in my opinion.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Where did I say I wanted to spend $40, much less $40B on Ukraine?

Who said you did?

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
synchronized IED video at link

https://twitter.com/i/status/1524448276002525186

https://hotair.com/allahpundit...-tank-turret-n468708

"An unfortunate flaw in Russian tank design means that the tank’s shells are positioned in a circular automatic loader located directly beneath the two crewmen who operate the turret. In American tanks the shells are located away from the crew, behind an armored wall. The logic seems simple: If enemy fire hits the tank and the shells start cooking off, the crew needs a chance to get out safely.

But not simple enough for Russian designers, evidently.

If you hit a Russian tank in the right spot and the shells start cooking off — kaboom. The crewmen have no chance. The force of the shells exploding upward can blow the turret clean off the body of the vehicle, which is why this has become known as the “jack in the box” flaw in Russian armor"



https://www.washingtonpost.com...ast-jack-in-the-box/

The automatic loader in a Russian tank is a hazard to the crew's hands and fingers all by itself.