[Mozilla]

We have always been uncomfortable allies with Russia & China. These are huge countries with problematic resources & challenging climates. The Russians are some of the toughest people on the planet, but they are also the most disorganized. They have the biggest breadbasket on the planet, big enough that if it were managed could feed the majority of the world & yet they cannot make it work for them. These are people who weather snow easily & are physically strong & tough. The Chinese are clever but they are overpopulated & have used up most of their natural resources. The US is a huge country with still unpopulated tracts of land & usable resources. South America also has potential for opportunistic entities. When you have a large population who is starving, what do they do? Die or survive. Never kid yourself that other countries are not a threat to us. The question is are we tough enough to defend what we have claimed for ourselves & can we do what is necessary to survive?

[Tau Food]

I can't believe that there are folks who are still betting on Russia.

Go ahead and trade all your dollars for rubles. What could go wrong with a genius like Putin in charge? I really don't know how he could have done a worse job of managing an economy that once had real prospects. Seriously, what could he have done that would have been worse?

Even Hugo Chavez of Venezuela did a better job.

[nomad]

You still follow that whiny cry baby beck? That hack is history to me! let him make another crying run for the border with his toys for illegals, but he can stay there and get bent by them as well.

[deadrock]

Cue the ‘bring back jobs from China,’ broken record.

[logi_cal869]

Oh, good. More lining for the kitty crate.

The idea that the Chinese will come to the US for needed land before moving north is absolutely preposterous, let alone shoot the hand that feeds it.

Let alone that the condition bureaucrats and politicians have left us in puts us in a position to do much of anything. The ‘Russian enemy’ meme is so boorish.

But, hey: Now we’re fomenting conflict with this BS ploy on oil. So go ahead, have your war if you can get welfare recipients to fight it. Because that’s all that’ll be left of our military if a$$hats keep trotting them off on new crusades to funnel juicy contracts to their cronies...

[Intolerant in NJ]

Sort of an aside, but this week’s PBS Frontline program is an excellent review of Putin’s background and rise to power, from his early days as a low level city government bureaucrat to the totalitarian he is today - essentially he first helped protect those who did, and then himself became involved in taking resources that originally belonged to the Soviet government and distributing them to close cronies supposedly so the resources could be used to provide for the Russian people - except most of the resources ended up in the pockets of the cronies - very much like Obama and the ‘rat party, except that the resources aren’t owned by the government, they are tax-payer monies which go to cronies like the unions and Solyndra and never get back to the tax-payers - anyhow, well worth watching either on the tube or internet......