Right about what? Months ago you were saying Biden could unilaterally end the war by pulling aid. The hold up in aid has more to do with the Republican house than anything Biden has done. You were also saying Biden needed to do so to bring gas prices down yet gas prices have dropped even as the war has continued.
*sigh* I've explained this to you a million times but you don't get it. Gas prices are calculated by two things. The price of oil per barrel and the cost to refine such oil into refined gasoline. The war in Ukraine is is forcing Russian refineries to be offline which is why during peak season (march-october) refinery margins are 4x than what they are normally. Price of crude oil right now is 80 bucks but average gas is around 3.10 in the usa. Crude was 80 dollars last summer and the price of gasoline was 3.55 simply cuz the cost of refining the oil is much higher than it is during off peak season. In the usa we don't switch gasoline blends until March and then we don't switch again till early November. Early voting and election season will occur during peak gasoline time which will keep gas prices elevated if we don't end the war. Whatever gas prices you are seeing at the pump will not be the prices come next year as crack margins (refinery margins) will be back in the 40s instead of the teens like they are usual. Biden will end this war or have a ceasefire in place one way or another before the election so he can tame refinery margins and thus have cheap gas for election. The only thing that matters is the 2024 election.
Russian jets were shot down by Patriot systems the other day cuz they got too close to the Frontlines. With the amount of s400s in place the f16 will be worthless and will be shot down. Fighter jets don't have some superhuman power. With the amount of SAMs deployed close to the frontline the f16s will be worthless.
I agree we switch blends but that kind of puts a dent in your argument regarding the war was the primary driver of gas prices. The fact is gas prices have come down significantly. I don’t have stats off hand but from what I’ve seen it appears to be greater than previous years when there wasn’t a war in the Ukraine and we still switched blends. Regarding a peace deal or a ceasefire by fall of this year that still seems much more of a function of whether either side thinks they can make significant gains and less what Biden can do unilaterally. At the moment it appears stalemated.
Why can't you have a educated debate without spewing conspiracies. Please inform me how you would have avoided the war? Would you have removed nato equipment from all of eastern Europe which putin was demanding ? "Facade"
You can not "mix" winter and summer blends together. That's not how this works. My argument which I've made to you a million times which is that the war is causing refinery margins to be 4x of what they are normally which is just a fact. Pre war margins in summer would be 15-20 while past summer it was 40+ We havnt build new refineries in decades as they're very capital heavy. As long as the war drags on gas won't be cheap between March to November. Refinery margins right now are close to what they were pre war which is why you're seeing cheap gas. They will go back up come March when the summer blend kicks in. The war has to end
All of this is irrelevant when you realize ... gas prices don't drive voting. Especially when Trump is on the ballot. The war will eventually end. It won't be because of oil or gas prices and it won't be done to win an election.
I'm not saying that--I was referring to the sea of propaganda coming out that Ukraine was "destroying Russia." Russia is the 2nd strongest military in the modern world only behind the U.S. It is pretty inconceivable that any amount of weapons transfer would change the outcome of the war. I don't like that Russia invaded ukraine, morally I am in agreement that its wrong. Unfortunately, given where we stand and the financing of disastrous wars...we can't afford to back prolonging a stalemate to a conflict that is a foregone conclusion. That isn't a conspiracy, ukraine with any amount of weapons transfer will never defeat russia. Short of moving our aircraft carriers, airforce, troops on the ground it is impossible. That isn't a conspiracy. Again, I'm not taking a moral stance, but moreso an objective one in the context of our current situation/standing
Not really. Quite the opposite. The Republicans cutting off funding actually makes it far more likely that this war stretches out over the next decade instead of another year and change. If the US and the “industrial complex” was given the funding and political will with the electorate it could end the war in weeks. Biden knows he doesn’t have the funding and the political support to go all in, and R’s cut off the funding for proxy support so here we are. Playing into Putin’s hands and narratives. Two things can be true at the same time though. The US was right to initially fund a Ukrainian resistance given how important it is for global peace that this type of action does not become normalized, and the dictators of this world see it as an opening to invade their own neighbors, and at the same time this war has definitely been a boom for Raytheon, Lockheed, etc. It isn’t right that there is a for profit war machine in the world but to understand how that came to be you have to understand how the US won world war 2. Eisenhower warned of this monster getting out of hand and the US and our Allies never came up with a solution to both ensure peace through strength, checks and balances across nations, and the mechanisms in industry to keep arms a non profit organization. Not sure there’s a great answer here other than hopping in the Delorean to 1890 and killing baby Hitler. The military industrial complex just going away overnight because some morally righteous democrat takes office and gives himself the power to wipe away a trillion dollar industry does not have costs that come with it as well. Another country, most likely China, will step right in and relaunch the exact same machine and this time it’ll be used for way worse than playing world police.
there is no amount of debating we could do here to convince you that there is no amount of weapons transfer (short of troops on the ground full on war) that would change the outcome of this. It is inconceivable to try and act like that isn't the case. I said this months ago when people were arguing that Russia was getting destroyed. We don't sit here saying that the Stromile Swift rockets would beat the 96' bulls if Barry or whoever was on the bench had all the gatorade and rest in the world, because we have objective metrics that tell us otherwise. With respect to this conflict there is no objective metric (even with weapons transfers) that would be anything other than the foregone conlcusion. It is pure insanity that people keep arguing this
Please link me to what speeches or articles the WH put out that ukraine was "destroying" russia. Please link me to WH sources directly. During the early days of the war the hot thing was the "no fly zone" which the WH properly rejected as it was WW3. Then poland wanted to send fighter jets through the USA and the WH rejected it. Ukraine asked for tanks early on and the WH rejected it. The WH has always rejected escalation in the heat of the moment. Biden is a old MFER and he knew that Americans would get tired of Ukraine and that properly arming them at the beginning was a call for WW3. The entire WH strategy from DAY 1 has always been defensive. They knew that Americans were in no mood for ww3. What annoys me is you trolls @Space Ghost who somehow paint this as some huge crisis. The WH has never given ukraine the offensive weapons in numbers they needed cuz they knew americans would get tired of ukraine and the cost would be too high incase ukraine entered mainland RU. The WH never trusted UKR and properly so. Ukraine is a corrupt country. Ukraine still killed over 300k thousand Russians and they wiped away half of their modern tanks. The war was a massive success for the west.
Why are you planting Biden and the Whitehouse in a debate he was literally never brought into? Does what I said have to come from the Whitehouse for it to be official news? Does countless media reporting over the last year about russia on the brink of collapse (just scroll back in this thread) from bipartisan angles, not mean anything. This isn't NK where state level media is driving our narratives and what we believe to be news. Again, read my post. I like your takes on a lot of topics man but everything turns into a defensive biden strategy. I'm not even linking him, and a to answer your question a cursory google search from just this week will tell you otherwise. .
Where are you getting those numbers and even if true how are you considering this a massive success? You seem to be the only one to think that it is. What wars in which Ls were taken like this, resources wasted, americans made poorer...turned out to be success stories? You do realize Ukraine will cede more land than initially thought right This was a massive failure. The only bigger failure is the inability to acknowledge it for what it is. A good portion of this thread can't separate moral and rational standing. Morally, I can be against what russia did. Rationally, I have to make peace with the best possible outcome. All in all, I'm not even attacking biden right now which is the crazy part..
Russia has never recovered from WW2 and their birth rate has never recovered. They were going through a massive demographic collapse before the war even started which is why Putin wanted a quick war. Russia can not afford the war its currently having and why many folks think this will be Russias last war. US officals said back in August (before the latest russian offensive which they've lost thousands) was close to 300k. Im sure its close to 400k now which is insane considering Russias birthrate has totally collapsed in the past few decades. When you factor in how many thousands of Russians left RU to fleee the consignment the numbers are in the millions. Peter actually did a good episode on this https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html
Except history has a significant amount of evidence to suggest you are wrong that the Russians are this unstoppable force. A much stronger Soviet force lost in Afghanistan and the US itself was beat in Vietnam by the Vietcong funded by the Soviets. Santa Ana’s huge army was beat by the small Texas militia, etc etc. Even superpowers aren’t always guaranteed victories when they invade another country. Especially one with a population as motivated as Ukraine is to kick the Russians out. Also insanity is still thinking that the 2023 Russian army is anything like the Ottoman Empire or Alexander the Great. Yes they have their own massive military industrial complex too and a ton of bodies to throw at a war, but other than that their capabilities and leadership situation is horrible.
