Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1. ​ @SkyRiver1 Trump expanded trade relations with Mexico while cutting and tariffing them with China.
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  2.  @SwaziPrince  Too many people went to college, many getting worthless degrees. People with critical hands-on skills in the energy, aerospace, automotive, construction, repair, telecom infrastructure, and other sectors make income that is very competitive with many white collar professions.
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  3.  @kevf  Direct Foreign Investments into the USD have broken all historic records just in Q1 and Q2 of 2022. Zeihan isn’t a propagandist. Nations, industries, and militaries don’t pay him to come tell them propaganda. That’s Russian inability to think outside of the Russian psyche, where everything has to be propaganda. Russia has suffered an average of 2 brain drains per generation since the Great War, so it isn’t unreasonable to accept that Russians can’t think outside of the box. The intelligentsia in Russia has largely been eradicated systemically and not showing signs of coming back.
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  4. If you follow Zeihan, there isn’t such a thing as the metro-dollar. The USD is backed by far more than oil exchange currency. The US mainland with its temperate zone, agriculture, rivers, sea ports, mountains, isolation from any enemies, industries, manufacturing, education, medical advances, biggest economy, and military are what actually back the USD. When the world experiences instability, nations with large cash reserves put their money in the US. The Russian propaganda about metro-dollar is very myopic thinking without even taking a few monumental economic factors into consideration.
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  5.  @shane1648  His methodology for his research and analytical team is, "Where could we be wrong on this?" They work outwards from there. It's one of the main reasons why his perspective is alien compared to what you hear from academics.
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  6.  @korayven9255  There is no problem with my economic analyses. You excluded all the other major costs I listed and narrowed your response to groceries alone, which are at unprecedented highs. Even upper tier earners are noticing high prices and thinking this has to be bad for middle class and low income families. But then you totally avoided home, auto, insurance, and other day-to-day costs real people are struggling with. Reading legacy corporate media trash will not pain the correct picture of any of this for you if you choose to live in a bubble like that. What you’re describing is not what the Nation is feeling every day. Shut off the corporate excrement, and start paying attention.
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  7.  @korayven9255  Economics isn’t partisan. I criticize anyone who engages in bad economic policies. I couldn’t care less about what letter they place to their fake political persona. For example, even though Obama was hostile towards US energy, prices were going down towards the end of his Presidency, mainly because of the Shale revolution. Trump put the throttle down even more with that and dropped prices lower, which was great for the economy. Energy is the life blood of an economy. If you look at the numbers, they don’t cleanly fall within White Houses, though White Houses can drive policies that help or hurt the US.
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  8.  @ugiswrong  I’ve been following him since the 2000s, and there are years of videos of him sitting down with other analysts presenting opposing views and discussing the merits and faults of each viewpoint as a benefit of the presentation. He critiques himself and openly owns what he has gotten wrong, the length of the war in Ukraine being a recent example (everyone though it would go down rapidly per Putin’s plan).
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  9. COSCO Shipping, not COSTCO big retail brand in the US. Chinese billionaires have been investing in the US for years because they understand how doomed the Chinese economy is, and don’t want their money tied-up in China.
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  10.  @dogblack3400  Uh, Democrats supported offshoring of US labor for generations now, starting with restrictive policies on business in labor, environmentalist laws that big corporations avoid, and taxation. Republicans and Democrats are financed by the larger corporations, whereas more local politicians see the effects of offshoring regardless of party. It’s not a simple Dem vs Rep argument, but the Dems have been the worst about attacking businesses and making it difficult to operate them. You would think Democrats would favor US labor with all the union votes, but the ideology around environmentalist cult behavior throws the US worker to the curb, in favor of Chinamen and other Asians, especially as China finances so many Democrat candidates with bribes. This is why the Dem party is losing the union vote, but cracking down on making sure they COUNT the union vote more, while managing expanded ballot-harvesting and stuffing scams.
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  11. Many European local and state governments try to keep these stories as quiet as possible because it deters more immigration, which they see as a solution to their birth rate problems. Thry need young workers to prop up the social safety net system, and since WWII killed so many prime age males, Europe needed lots of workers to come from somewhere. To make matters worse, Western Europe adopted pro-abortion policies that encouraged women to sleep around, kill the babies in the womb, and not have as many native children. North Africans and Middle Easterners are told they are superior to these decadent Europeans, so they abuse the social welfare system and expect to be treated like kings. When police attempt to enforce the laws, the response is vitriolic as in, "How dare you try to rule me!"
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  12.  @cosmothewonderdog8602  CNN: Statute of limitations on the alleged crimes is 2 years. These were misdemeanors at best, which NYC never tries. There was no due process of law here and this whole case defied any normal legal standards.
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  13. It wasn’t him, but that’s the story. Photos of the guy look like a football lineman, nothing like the Dallas Oswald in custody or in the photos. Even J. Edgar Hoover said the Oswald in Mexico City was a dead-end, not the same person.
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  14. What I’ve noticed about that part of the world is that the people are very resourceful, cobbling things with really weird solutions you would never see anywhere else, after 70 years of Communism as the official state economy, but in reality was held together with a black market and lots of grey area deals. The Russians and Eastern Europeans are notorious for this.
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  15.  @dand7763  In all fairness, Putin was counting on Biden to pull Zelensky out of Kiev on a plane, and would have been relatively successful at seizing Kiev and occupying Ukraine had that happened. By Zelensky not leaving, it threw a wrench in Putin's SMO, turning it into a drawn-out war of attrition. This delayed the annexation of Moldova and immediate follow-on staging for the invasion of Romania and Poland.
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  16. Millennials comprise the senior leadership of the military at the operational levels, many of whom are now retired already.
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  17. Small caliber CIWS don't work. Needs to be 20mm or higher due to range, especially if cruise and anti-ship missiles are to be encountered.
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  18. How's the weather in Saint Petersburg comrade?
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  19. Would you agree that it's easier to shut down a refinery by taking out the pipes or trying to target the catalytic cracker?
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  20.  @bob_lemoche  Soviets worked very hard to penetrate and co-opt Western media since the late 1940s, with much success. Anytime you turn on a major broadcast network, look for the demoralization messaging, right out of Soviet Active Measures ideological warfare strategy. A great example of this is the CBC anti-JSF/F-35 messaging. They forgot to mention the dozens of Canadian companies making parts for F-35s, or the fact that Russia doesn't want a 5th Gen net-centric NORAD web flying and operating together between USAF in Alaska, RCAF from northern airfields, and US Air National Guard bases in New England. This will provide even more early warning and tracking of Russian bombers, submarines, ships, and satellites. Trudeau even campaigned on killing the F-35 deal for Canada as a main promise, which would only benefit Russia, while harming Canada's defense posture.
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  21. Bush would let the factions form their opinions and duke it out, then make his decision. He showed up early and reestablished the normal business attire and WH protocols from before the Clinton days. Clinton WH was run like a college frat house in many ways, relaxed attire, lots of profanity, criminal class from Arkansas moving in during the transition, "the graduates" (proven female employees with big tits and oral skills who could be counted on not to talk) taking multiple WH jobs so Bill could buzz from flower to flower in each of their offices while Hillary was dictating a lot of policy in the early days. I was in the Army's Official Escort to the President from 1994-1996, stationed in DC. We had guys doing WH and Pentagon duties as Aides and uniformed security. The Clinton WH was a sh*t show just from a professional conduct perspective, and that's not even taking into account all the murders.
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  22. South Korean industry was handed to them by the US. They went from an agricultural society fertilizing rice paddies with their own feces to a little Asian powerhouse overnight. That was US tech delivered to them. I was stationed there and have deployed there since. It was crazy to see how much they changed in such a short time.
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  23. Moscow was also founded by Yuri Dolgoruki hundreds of years prior to that. He was a Kievan Rus prince who expanded the Kievan Rus up into the Eurasian steppe on the Moskva River.
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  24. Conformity to hype trends and no math or analytical skills should ban you from the comments section.
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  25.  @AliceinWonderlandzz  Marilyn Monroe worked at a drone factory during WWII. The US had drones in Vietnam that no nation has caught up to still. We never stopped developing all types of different UAS and even Unmanned Space Systems with reusable/reentry capability.
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  26. This topic is something he has covered since the 2000s with colleagues at STRATFOR who were senior Federal investigators that specifically covered down on Mexican cartels and the drug industry of the region.
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  27. ​ @CMark89  Peter Z has covered the Belt & Road Initiative for years. Imagine trying to shift your imports and exports from sea-based high volume under US protection, to land-based through the most warlord-infested, mountainous, remote regions in the world, where Iran is along that road to Saudi Arabia. It's one of the most ridiculous proposals in history.
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  28.  @billweberx  Yup. It takes about a century (10 decades) to develop an initial competent navy that can just function, not necessarily win anything, but just operate with sustainable losses from accidents. That's assuming a competent military and political leadership, training, and shipyard base. Russia has never really had such a force. Their main naval yards were in Ukraine. They couldn't operate without significant losses, which were emphasized by how incompetent their submariner force was, but plagued their black and ice water armadas as well. Russians and Chinese are not seafaring peoples at heart or in their DNA. Swedes, Dutch, Brits, French, Spaniards, Portuguese, Japanese, Italians, and Greeks, are. The US was born from Brits, Dutch, French, and Spaniards, and rose to be the most seafaring people on the planet. No other competent navy emerged dominant after WWII, then the US throttled up into an era of sea power the world has never seen. A new generation of sea power has been created by the US where net-centric low observable platforms in space, the air, on the surface, and below the surface work together in unison without much interference from planners far away. Japan and the US are allies in the Pacific, with the US enabling Japan with cutting edge net-centric weapons and stealth technology, while China rapidly tries to play catch-up in a game where no matter what they do, they can't control access to their critical sea ports.
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  29.  @billweberx  I’m agreeing with and supplanting what you stated.
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  30.  @HiwasseeRiver  There is no peer to the US if we’re talking about military strength, economy, agriculture, GDP, force projection capacity, naval dominance, technology, training, etc.
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  31.  @dr.williams5251  If you look at really old mil surplus items stored in whatever they were caked in, you can definitely see those protectant coatings turn into solids. I've seen it on items that have gone through multiple seasonal cycles in both extreme cold and hot weather environments. Smells nasty too. I don't have specific information on what the NorK trash is coated in, but North Korea is one of the most industrially-antiquated nations in the world. I'm one of the few people you'll ever meet who has actually been there twice, and studied their force structure as part of my job in the mid-late 1990s. They are heavily artillery-centric and airpower-poor, like Russia. I would be embarrassed to have to source anything from them.
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  32. ​ @brent.johnson Peter is more of an intellectual than an American.
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  33. My contact in the Russian Foreign Ministry was bragging about how Russia would re-take all its rightful territories, including Kazakhstan, Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. This was in the 2000s after Putin assumed the Presidency. It was before Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. After hearing these braggadocios claims, I went to Estonia to help out with the Erna Raid exercise. At the end of that, we learned Russia was invading Georgia. Peter and George Friedman were in the process of writing a book at the time where they had to change the manuscript from “Russia will invade Georgia.” to “Russia has invaded Georgia.” I subscribed to STARTFOR after that and have been following Peter's and George Friedman’s work ever since.
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  34.  @paulallen2680  The teachers don't have basic competence in elementary mathematics, geometry, or science. Keep in mind we have Karen brigades of unionized teachers who learned common core reverse-logic basic math, who are now expected to teach math to classrooms full of hyped-up, drugged-up kids with more fatherlessness as a rule, single mothers trying to juggle their responsibilities with minimal support, bombarded with distractions.
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  35. Rail Baltica is basically converting the Baltics to European standard rail gauge instead of leaving them on the old Russian tracks. That will help with economic integration of the baltics.
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  36. ​ @ChucksSEADnDEAD  France and Germany weren't onboard with OIF because Saddam was trading his oil in Euros, which helped increase the value of the Euro. UK on the GBP were our biggest ally in OIF.
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  37.  @zibbitybibbitybop  It was only 50 years from 1945-1995 when a genocidal war broke out in Yugoslavia, which was of course the birthplace of The Great War in 1914. Europe had 31 wars and conflicts between Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and The Great War of 1914. The Cold War was Europe's brightest, most peaceful fairytale provided only by US security and the threat of Russian invasion.
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  38. Chernobyl already had reactor #1 partially melt down in 1982 if I recall. They kept it secret and the facility was constantly poorly-run until 1986 when the incident happened with #4.
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  39. In this thread, we find out who has never even skimmed The Art of the Deal.
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  40. If you've ever been there, it's extremely hot, very limited water resources, lots of sand and dust, with neighbors competing for that water over the past ~4000 years.
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  41.  @orboakin8074  African geography overall is terrible because of no navigable rivers on most of the continent. So any marginal success in Africa has always been driven by an external empire, whether it be the Sumerians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, British, French, and Dutch. North Africa was best when it was really part of Europe before being overrun with the expansion of the Caliph.
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  42.  @orboakin8074  The most successful African sate was South Africa under Boer rule. South Africa has actual rivers and sea ports, mountains, and arable valleys with great resources. Once the Dutch Boers discovered the richness of the land, especially diamonds and gold, the British then inserted themselves saying, “Whatcha got there, mate?” Hence the Boer Wars where concentration camps were introduced and tens of thousand of women and children were killed there by the Brits. South Africa is done now though, after the communists got involved and overthrew the Afrikaners.
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  43.  @listener523  Reagan ran circles around most Presidents on his worst day when it came to speeches due to his decades of acting experience, and his many years of speaking gigs he did touring across the Nation. He was a brilliant public speaker. Biden makes Nixon's 1960 TV debate performance look like a seasoned pro. Biden is beyond an embarrassment, and always has been. He was mocked out of the primaries in 1988 by the DNC.
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  44.  @aguy559  Now explain why foreigners chant that when Biden arrives to their country.
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  45.  @jager6863  Yup. Governor experience is historically one of the best preparatory jobs for the Presidency by DC standards, but I feel like we need more real-world business leadership from people who are used to interacting with a wide range of blue and white collar employees, as well as various entrepreneurs and small business owners.
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  46.  @aguy559  Entire stadiums of Americans do it as the norm at games. It undermines the election results claiming that 82 million people voted for Biden-a guy who can’t even draw flies for his own, rare rallies.
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  47.  @edgeldine3499  Biden was a poor student at Syracuse Law, has always been gaffe-prone, can’t deliver a speech without saying really offensive things or making huge factual errors, and should never have been allowed into public service outside of a manual labor job. He would do well emptying the waste bins, sweeping the floor, “Hi Joe!” as long as it was in some type of adult correctional institution with no children around. He’s a self-described pedophile who revealed to his Syracuse Law roommate that he can’t keep his hands off kids unless he “chokes the chicken” before he goes out into public, and can’t drink, otherwise he will lose total control. That was in the 1960s. The Soviets picked-up on this as a great vector for coercing him, then propped up his Senate candidacy in Delaware in the 1972 via Council for a Livable World (Soviet active measures program to get as many politicians into office in the US who act as moles).
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  48. The canal through Nicaragua would destroy a massive freshwater lake. There was a lot of talk about it in the 2000s but it was made clear the project wasn't viable, especially considering the effects it would have on people, animals, plant life, and systemic erosion and death of vast ecologies.
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  49.  @kennethrobinson7647  Texas has historically been Democrat, big oil, big agriculture. Out of the past 42 elections, Texas has voted for a Democrat President 27 times, and a Republican 15 times. Texas voted for the winning candidate 25 times, and losing candidate 17 times.
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  50. There are 14,000 airports in the US. You can be anywhere in hours.
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