From the Frying Pan into the Fire: Ukraine; Trump.
By Gene W. Edwards
Russia will need to keep some troops at home to guard the Russian Federation, but watch for Putin to soon commit at least 100,000–150,000 more troops to Ukraine, even instituting a general draft to add more. The war should be over within one year of its start = 2/24/2023. Expect Putin to use tactical nukes, which don’t spread much radiation but can take out one square mile at a time! He’s also systematically destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure. Best case scenario: he’ll settle for the eastern Ukraine areas he annexed in 2014 and in September of 2022.
The sanctions did nothing because Russia remains awash in oil and gas and has plenty of authoritarian-regime allies to sell them to. Russia’s economy took a beating in 2020 because of COVID-19 but recovered nicely, running a steady 1.775 trillion dollars in gross domestic product in 2021 and 2022 — resuming where it left off — which is still quite paltry compared to our 25.35 trillion GDP and our $75,000 per capita compared to Russia’s $30,000 in purchasing power parity. Expect Russia to continue annexing portions of Texas-size Ukraine. Yes, it’s an evil war, by any measure!
Russia’s two Nord Stream gas pipelines to Germany, suppling energy also to some other countries in Western Europe, were sabotaged — critical portions blown up — in September of 2022. Who did it? Why would Russia destroy its own income stream, its recently constructed, expensive, massive, energy pipeline to/from Germany? Result: Europe will freeze this winter, much its industry will have to shut down from lack of energy, and the war in Ukraine will take more of a back seat to “just maintaining.” Europeans will have to watch TV by candlelight. Meanwhile, the USA is suffering from inflation and massive growth prospects at the same time. Our American dollar is now equal in value to the Euro, and I expect us to be back on track as an economic powerhouse sometime in the first half of next year. NATO and the USA’s involvement in Ukraine is allegedly to prevent appeasement, the big running over the small — just because they can.
*****
I’m reading, with zest, Denver Riggleman’s new book titled Breach. An intelligence I.T. guru, Riggleman was working for the insurrection committee and discovered an array of linkages between the White House and the insurrectionists and Big Lie MAGA crowd before, during, and after 1/6/2021. Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, is in the crosshairs of all of it. Everything emanating from Trump and his co-conspirators went through Meadows.
I’m totally unimpressed with Meadows. He should be termed a “useful idiot.” He tried to push COVID-19 aside, like Trump did, for months and he is the one who kept urging the Republicans to try to repeal Obamacare in Congress; they tried countless times. He unwittingly turned over 2,219 of his smartphone text records to Riggleman. Most or all of them? Did you know the White House switchboard was shut down — no calls in or out via them — from 11:17 A.M. to 6:54 P.M. on 1/6?
I pre-ordered Michael Cohen’s next book, titled Revenge. His first book, Disloyal: A Memoir, sold 500,000 copies. Cohen is an enormously amusing and intelligent lawyer who may be the chief force that puts Trump in the slammer. For some three years, Trump’s fixer, Cohen, was the nation’s best-known high-profile lawyer, in name recognition second only to its attorney general then, William Barr. Chapter 11 in Disloyal is an absolute must-read! It had me flying out of my chair! No one knows Trump like Cohen does. Whether you like or dislike Trump, Cohen puts him under a microscope, reading him like a book, warts and all.
Love (from the foxhole),
Gene W. Edwards
10/1/2022