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Ghost of LL

Burnt Ends
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Posts posted by Ghost of LL

  1. 17 minutes ago, Ken Griffey Jr said:

    Again, I didn’t mean as far as manpower, although they appear to have more than Ukraine. They’re battle tested as they’ve had to adapt to this new kind of warfare. We’re seeing the increased number of drones, newer EW systems deployed. They’ve increased missile and shell production.  
     

    What EW capabilities do we have? What drone production capacity? I have no doubt that we can build higher tech, more expensive drones. But this conflict seems to be more about mass production than anything else. It’s shocking to me that we can’t match their artillery shell production anytime soon. The hollowing out of our industrial capacity is a big problem, especially if (when?) we end up in multiple conflicts. Our country is awfully complacent, and this thread is a microcosm of that imo. 
     

    oh, it’s succeeded, but their plan was the Russian would scurry and they didn’t. Now they’re using small craft to bring over everything with sometimes not enough drinking water on the left side. Unless something changes it will be much ado about nothing.
     

    The calls that something big is about to happen is very reminiscent of the summer counteroffensive. 

    Is it really your contention that the Russian military is stronger today than it was on February 1, 2022?

    Are you contending that the Russian military is comparatively stronger vis-a-vis Nato than it was on February 1, 2022?

    And to the extent you're contending that the Russian military is stronger either in absolute or comparative terms, on what evidence are you basing that?  When you say "they've had to adapt to this new kind of warfare," what evidence of such adaptation are you seeing?  Where have those adaptations been successful?  Because Russia's war aim continues to be the conquest of Ukraine.  But for 20 months, they haven't had any meaningful gains.  That doesn't reflect any successful adaptation to me.

    The reality for any objective observer is that this war is weakening Russia in every way.  Russia may not be losing.  But it's not winning.

    And for Russia, that is losing.

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  2. And thank you, Aaron Rodgers, for demonstrating that no rational person could think Texas doesn't deserve to be in the CFP and that the only reason one would argue otherwise is a manic hatred of the Longhorns.

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  3. 1 hour ago, Ken Griffey Jr said:

    All the dead Ukrainians? Decimation of their country? I certainly do get the cynical view that rubblizing and rebuilding parts of Ukraine will make some people money. There’s always unintended consequences though.
     

    Look what’s happening to Germany.  Vast deindustrialization. They’ll be moving to rust belt status in the future. How will that be handled by their population? Not well, I’m guessing. And I’m no saying I know how that could’ve been prevented, but a lot of this thread is Go Team! without even knowing if it’s true or what will be the fallout. 
     

    In terms of manpower yes, but they’ve been battle tested in the new ways of war and ramped their spend significantly. 

    Battle doesn't harden an army that suffers the casualties that the Russian Army has suffered.  Would you say that the United States Army was "battle tested" in 1974?  Fuck no, you wouldn't.  The United States Army in 1974 was severely degraded, and that's after having suffered 50,000 dead in ten years, not 70,000 in 20 months.

    The Ukrainian Army is also battle degraded.  And the Ukrainian nation is suffering mightily.  Their interest is for this war to successfully end at the earliest possible time.  So from that standpoint, the interests of Ukraine diverge somewhat from the interests of the United States.

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  4. 1 hour ago, InkaUtexas said:

    And there is also Colombia. They do not like the government in Venezuela and have a pretty good military that is not that active right now. 

    Concerning the Brits. They maintain Jungle training centers in Kenya and in Belize. I bet they could conduct a defensive action pretty damn well. 

    Probably the best deterrent would be a massive "training" event in Guyana with the US, UK, Brazil and maybe Canada. A show of force, build a training facility.  

    I don't love that, because then the Venezuelans will frame their aggression as being a reaction to Anglo-American imperialism in the form of a base being built on Venezuela's borders.  And while that may be bullshit, it'd gain a lot of traction around Latin America and undermine our ability to build a broader CONMEBOL coalition to counter the Venezuelan aggression.

    It'd be far better to let the Brazilians take the lead.  And to the extent Brazil needs support, we can provide that covertly.

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  5. 14 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    In a perfect world, the UK should be enforcing Guyana's borders since they were the ones who supposedly settled the issue with Venezuela prior to British Guyana going independent. Early 60s? But I doubt the UK is in any position to do much of anything that doesn't involved their current territories. 

    Where does the other South American powers stand on this issue? Does Brazil have an interest in helping their neighbors maintain their borders?

    The UK does have the ability to project power . . . or at least enough power as would be necessary to fight off Venezuela.  The Royal Navy has two active carriers, each of which has more than enough combat capability to destroy the Venezuelan Air Force is pretty short order.  The challenge, then, is ground support in a jungle environment against a non-mechanized adversary.  And as the USAF demonstrated in Vietnam, that presents some challenges.

    That's where the Brazilian ground forces come in.  And yeah--they do have an interest there.  As the Fish points out above, Brazil has a strong interest in keeping their road through Guyana to the Caribbean ports open.  And yeah--it is their road.  It was built with Brazilian money and serves primarily Brazilian interests.  It's the same way it's "our Canal," irrespective of Panamanian sovereignty.  

    But beyond that, there's some regional dick swinging that comes into play here.  Brazil sees itself as the regional hegemon.  And if you're the regional hegemon, you don't take too kindly to one of the subordinate powers trying to upset the regional status quo without your pre-approval.  That's just not how this works.  So Brazil has an interest in putting Venezuela back in its place and demonstrating to the rest of CONMEBOL that shit can't go down in South America without Brasilia's say-so.

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  6. 1 minute ago, WBT said:

    Walk me through it.  I think if Georgia loses, Michigan as #1 seed chooses the Rose and #2 seed Washington plays #3 Texas in the Sugar.

    There’s no choosing. The 2 and 3 seeds play in the Rose.

    I’m counting on Georgia and FSU losing. 

  7. 2 hours ago, dcar00 said:

    they deserve all this.  could have held the Big 12 together but LHN, LHN.

    I bet they'd trade LHN for the wasteland they are now.

    Yeah, and I think this is worth remembering as we continue to hear whining and complaining about Texas from the Irate8.  It was Nebraska that destroyed the Big 12 when they decided they were sick of losing to Texas.  It was a petulent little baby temper tantrum that sowed the seeds of the conference's destruction and ultimately cratered their own program. 

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  8. 6 minutes ago, shadow_operative2.0 said:

    LHN 

    Virtually every home game/match of those 4 sports is on there. 

    But to that point, the Big12 CG is an ESPN property.  It could easily simulcast the game on LHN if it so chose.

  9. 1 hour ago, Chad Fuck said:

    How do you know so much about Russian railroads, Oleg?

    I kind of weirdly like trains, as some of you have noticed from my occasional spats with @Spankytoes on various European travel treads in which he advocates for flying between European cities and I favor taking the train (including overnight trains, which are seeing a major resurgence across Europe).  And one train-centric trip I have toyed with taking from time to time is the Trans-Siberian.

    Tangentially, there is a very peculiar subset of train nerds out there who have taken the BAM.  There are a number of videos on YouTube.  And on that line, the primary tourist attractions are the stops at largely deserted Soviet-era towns that were originally built and settled for the workers that built the BAM.  The Soviet expectation was that those towns would be further populated by people coming to work in nearby coal mines and other industries that would pop up along the BAM.  But with the fall of the Soviet Union, those enterprises never materialized.  And the workers who were there to build the railway left.  So you have these deserted Soviet towns that are kind of similar to what you will see in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.  So you can go and see that without getting all radioactive.

    By the way--one of those videos is from that delightful Englishman whose videos about Donbas were posted on this thread about a thousand pages ago.  It's really an interesting watch.

     

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  10. 10 minutes ago, kevwun said:

    I'm guessing that will create a nice bottleneck of rail shipments between Russia and China so it was worth the effort.  If the tunnel itself was compromised by the explosion, it will be closed for a long time.

    The BAM is a real interesting piece of late-Soviet era planning.  The purpose was to create a line parallel to the Trans-Siberian further away from the border with China for obvious strategic reasons.  For much of its length, the Trans-Siberian runs just a few miles from the Chinese border, which is a real problem given the tension of Sino-Soviet relations.

    The entire thing was a shitshow from the beginning.  The Soviets sent a bunch of workers out to new towns that didn't have electricity or running water (many of which are now abandoned).  And the permafrost on which the line is built is now thawing, which is going to destroy the entire line in the next decade.

    The tunnel that was attacked took nearly 30 years to complete.  So if it was structurally compromised, that's not going to be an easy fix.  It runs a mile underground and is 10 miles long.  But here's the thing--there is an old bypass line that they used on the BAM during construction of that tunnel.  I don't know what kind of shape it's in, but it'd obviously be a lot quicker to bring that into operation.  And, of course, there's always the Trans-Siberian.

    So on balance, I don't think it's that big of a catastrophe.

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  11. 2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    Real median household income in the US is just about at $75k/yr

    https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-279.html

    Knock off a third of that to cover taxes if you're looking at around $53k left in take home pay. Median mortgage payment is right around $2k/mo right now. That's at least $24k gone before you even get to insurance, PMI, HOA costs, and utility costs. Count in a car or transportation costs for work, and you're looking at way south of $20k/yr left over for food, clothing, kids, and everything else.

     

    That's not much money these days my man. Sure if you zoom out far enough and look at enough sythnetic metrics it looks peachy - and it definitely us in a top income bracket! - but the reality isn't so nice for most of everyone else.

    And what I'm saying is that that's still better than it was five years ago.  Or ten years ago.  Or certainly 20 years ago.  The economy is performing well for everyone.  

  12. 11 hours ago, Captainant said:

    I think you're mixing signals here. Average/median wage earners haven't really gotten a pay bump AND inflation continues to eat away at savings. """The economy""" doing well means the stock market is doing well, which means top earners are doing well. There's a whole shitload of folks left behind in those statistics, and most don't have the stability to jump between jobs and hope for better wages without worry of getting evicted because they can't pay rent because they're waiting for a management job. 

     

    On that note, id betcha a dollar the reason mortgage delinquency rates are down is because of the massive growth of investment home loans. Investors aren't gonna welch on their principal payments - it's mostly homeowners at the end of their rope going delinquent. 

    The statistics don't bear that out.  Wages are increasing at a >5% clip this year; inflation is at 3.2%.  Wage growth has exceeded inflation throughout 2023.

    I'm sorry, man, but this is entirely a case of "feels" and misinformation.  The truth is that the economy is great.  For everyone.  And particularly for those at the bottom of the wage scale.  Arguing otherwise is to ignore every measure of objective reality.

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