Explain How This Helps America

Throwing Good Money After Bad [The Daily Reckoning] April 27, 2024 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( Explain How This Helps America class="centered subhead"Saratoga Springs, New York Editor’s note: Congress has approved a foreign aid package including $60 billion for Ukraine. But as James Howard Kunstler shows you today, it’s simply throwing good money after bad. He also shows you that it’s all about domestic politics. [James Howard Kunstler] JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER Dear Reader, Did it warm your heart to see all those blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags waved by our elected officials in Congress Saturday night with the passage of the $60-plus-billion aid bill to the Palookaville of Europe? [image 1] You realize, don’t you, that the tiny fraction of that hypothetical “money” — from our country’s empty treasury — that ever reaches Ukraine will rebound on the instant into Mr. Zelenskyy’s Cayman Islands bank account. The rest of the dough enters the recursive shell game between U.S. weapons-makers and the very hometown folks in Congress waving those blue-and-yellow flags, who will receive great greasy gobs of fresh “campaign donations” from the grateful bomb and missile producers. No wonder they’re cheering. What the $60-plus billion won’t do is provide any fresh arms and equipment to Ukraine’s sadsack army soon enough to prevent Russia from bringing this cruel, stupid and unnecessary war, which we started, to a close. Unprovoked, My Rear End The government and media say the war was “unprovoked.” But Putin being the tyrannical monster that he is, he just couldn’t help himself. That’s pure rubbish. Yes, we started it, not Russia, in 2014 with our intel blob overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych in the so-called “Maidan Revolution of Dignity” (what Wikipedia calls it). And for what reason? To jam Ukraine into NATO as a prelude to “weakening” Russia sufficient to bust it up and gain control over Russian oil, ores and grain. Put aside the pieties and accept it. That was actually the neocon’s game, equal parts megalomania and hubris, a fiasco as strategically ill-fated as Hitler’s push to gain control of Russia’s oil fields via Stalingrad in 1942–43. With failure and humiliation looming in Ukraine, the blob’s objective for now, in theory, is the vain hope of prolonging the hostilities just long enough to get its hologram president, “Joe Biden,” re-elected, so that said blob can continue its amoebic digestion of what’s left uneaten by it in our sore-beset republic. You’ve got to wonder, of course, what this blob thinks will remain to rule over when it’s done gobbling up everything and jailing everyone from sea to shining sea who objects. You tell me what conceivable way Ukraine can prevail in this proxy war now without just tripping off the civilization-ending nuke exchange? America doesn't have enough tactical missiles and artillery shells at hand to send over there. What we did have is gone. NATO never had much to begin with. Ukraine has run out of available cannon-fodder to conscript from its dwindling population. [URGENT: Unclaimed Giveaway Offer]( We have an item of considerable value on hold for you in our warehouse. Valued at nearly $300, this [special item]( is an opportunity you wanted to miss… [Click Here To Claim Yours Now]( A Colossal Waste Despite Mr. Macron’s recent bluster, NATO can’t raise a credible army, or even agree on which country would send what. Nobody is riding to the rescue. Instead, Russia is fortifying its home-grown armaments industry and its military while systematically turning off the electricity all over Ukraine by blowing up the power stations. Very soon, Ukraine will be reduced to medieval living conditions — no lights, no phones, no internet, no shopping, no ability to conduct modern warfare. End… of… story. This is apt to play out much faster than America’s blob-controlled news media will be able to lie about. I’d guess it can be functionally over before midsummer. That doesn’t mean the fighting will end at that point, but the outcome will effectively be decided. The result will be yet another humiliation on the “Joe Biden” scorecard. When it’s over, you can be sure the Russians will abstain from an end-zone dance so as not to provoke America’s genius-losers into some final petty grand act of requital. Russia will just soberly declare what is self-evident: that for centuries Ukraine has been in its sphere of influence, as Mexico is in ours, and that they have reestablished the natural order of things in that corner of the world. The Next Step After that, America and the rest of Western Civ can get on with the collapse of their financial system and very likely a period of profound political and economic chaos in which governments fall, nations change boundaries and shapes and their populations suffer dramatically from an imploded standard of living. That process may actually play out somewhat slower than the end of the Ukraine war over the coming years. It will look like a combined game of musical chairs and hot potato, with the opportunities to get a seat steadily fading, and the losers left holding things they can’t handle. In the meantime, our country — remember it, the USA, when it had its once-enviable mojo working? — is busy being insane and finding 60 ways to Sunday to commit suicide. How do you suppose the Democratic Party will actually pretend to put up “Joe Biden” for re-election when the Ukraine failure is completed? Answer: They can’t. [Biden out June 13?]( [click here for more...]( A former CIA insider just announced a disturbing prediction… Biden will withdraw as the Democrat nominee on June 13. [See his shocking evidence in this new report.]( [This former CIA advisor says the Dems already have Biden’s replacement – a shadow candidate hand-selected to defeat Trump]… [Click Here To Learn More]( This dumbshow of the old gaffer hiding at his beach house and avoiding direct engagement with reality is also drawing to a close. Instead of calling “a lid” on “JB’s” activities, some humid morning in the swamp his handlers will call in “a medical alert” instead, and that will be the last we see of that dreadful apparition. It’s also looking more and more as though the Republican Party faces its own civil war, especially after Speaker Mike Johnson’s perplexing flipperooski on the Ukraine aid vote. Judas! You recall, just weeks ago he said no dice to such a deal without a stop to the invasion coming across our Mexican border. Then, the intel blob boys lured him into a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) where they showed him… something! Everyone’s dying to know what. A secret signed agreement making Ukraine our 51st state? Photographs of Mike engaged in unwholesome recreations with Gawd knows who or what? Or did they just have a little talk with him about how stuff is supposed to work? Whatever it was has made Mike Johnson untenable in his position. And he has explained nothing. He totally caved and betrayed his own pledge. Hey Mike, how does that sit with those Christian principles you’re always talking about? Ever hear of Judas? I guess you just wanted to turn the other cheek after Democrats punched you in the face. That might be noble in your personal life, but not in politics. That’s just weakness. It’s not virtue. Simply put, he’s got to go. The Wild Card At the other end of all that stands — or, rather, sits at a defense table — Donald Trump, the seemingly inevitable leader of a party seeking to cough him up like a hairball stuck in its craw. And yet, every week that passes, the various lawfare traps set up to snare him look more amateurish and gauche — while Orange Man somehow manages to power through all that adversity. A big faction of the party he leads is in on that nefarious game. They want him out as much as the Democrats do. The wild card is the increasingly inflamed mood of the American people, in whose name the game is supposedly being played. With absolutely everyone lying to them about everything, it’s turned into some kind of bad-faith olympics. Who will win the gold? Regards, James Howard Kunstler for The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Editor’s note: This week, Paradigm Press hosted what might be the [craziest live event we’ve ever conducted.]( If you weren’t there… eccentric entrepreneur James Altucher handed out to viewers $1,000 per minute! That’s right, he gave away $1,000 every minute. The link for the 1,000 VIP vouchers worth over $20,000 vanished the moment we quit the Zoom. But if you missed it, joined late or had to leave early, here’s the good news: You can still claim a special voucher at [this link.]( That link will give you a VERY special offer for EVERYTHING James publishes. With the level of depth and knowledge James provides for his readers, it’s seriously one of the best deals we’ve ever seen in the industry. Please don’t hesitate — WE ONLY HAVE 1,000 AVAILABLE. [ Click here to get all of the details.]( Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) [James Howard Kunstler] [James Howard Kunstler]( is perhaps best known for his 2005 book [The Long Emergency]( which predicted the financial meltdown and the implications of the peak oil problem. His 1993 book, [The Geography of Nowhere]( about the fiasco of suburbia, is a campus cult classic among the architecture and urban planning students. [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2024 Paradigm Press, LLC. 1001 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD 21201. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your The Daily Reckoning e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from The Daily Reckoning, feel free to [click here.]( Please note: the mailbox associated with this email address is not monitored, so do not reply to this message. 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