mtutiger

You realize that the significant decrease in demand for oil caused by the pandemic was the primary driver of $1.75 gas in April 2020, right? That's the point... You can't just pick and choose when to blame the pandemic based on how it reflects on your dear leader.

Christ on a Cracker...

Wow, He called it

The country behind the shooting down if MH17 has thoughts on threats to commercial airliners... Can't make it up folks!

One thing I've been thinking about is what happens if there ends up being a jailbreak on Lukashenko in Belarus.... there have been suggestions that Belarusian troops should have entered into Ukraine by now but that there's resistance. Keep in mind that Luka likely lost by a significant margin in 2020 and only held onto power through his repressive security services and with the help of Russia. In other words, there's probably a lot of dissension under the surface and his grip on power is tenuous, moreso than Putin's If a conflagration were to occur there, it stands to reason that would force Russia to have their attention divided even further.

Its similar to COVID/911 in how I view it, but what differentiates this situation is the range of theoretical outcomes... some bad and some better. On one hand, you have the prospect of a Russian win. On another hand, Ukraine could prevent Russia from achieving its objectives (seems likelier by the day) or even outright winning. All the while the dictator saber rattles about nuclear weapons (which I dont think will happen, but is unsettling regardless). Incidentally, that range of outcomes exposes flaws in the standard right wing partisan line (ie. This wouldn't be happening if Trump were POTUS)... namely, if the dictator ends up falling, is that really an argument in Trump's favor?

Visa/MC pulling out is probably right up there with the sanctions on the Russian Central Bank.... BFD

O RLY?

Oh my

Fair enough. But ultimately the main stakeholder in this conflict is Ukraine... and in terms of where a negotiated ceasefire happens, who is involved on their behalf, etc., their word is gonna matter a lot.

The 'allies' technically aren't party to this conflict either. To the extent that there have been talks about ceasefires or ending conflict, it has happened between Russia, its proxy Belarus, and Ukraine. I doubt that will change. For Trump to act as a third party, Ukraine would have to agree to that. Which, knowing the history, I doubt they ever would agree to that (considering the first impeachment and the lack of trust emanating from that)

I doubt Ukraine would agree to having talks under those conditions

Random thought: watching Ukraine's government run laps around the vaunted Russian disinformation machine makes me wonder how effective they really were. Discuss

Ahh, yes. Trump gets all the credit for the good things, none of the blame for the bad. Rinse, repeat, etc.

It's Yacht:30 folks...

They seem to be making more gains right now, but they are also 92% committed, still short a lot of their strategic objectives, logistics are still a mess, domestically they are facing stiff sanctions, etc. I wouldn't bet against them. But who knows.

This all sounds like best case scenario

April 2020... when the unemployment rate was 14.7%. Does Trump get credit for that too? Or just the gas?

Assuming that the poll is indicative of a trend (we don't know yet), Ukraine could be a factor to an extent considering his initial drop in support did coincide with Afghanistan and how that withdrawal took it's course.... I don't think that Americans disagreed with the withdrawal, but one of Biden's strengths going into 2020 was foreign policy and management of it and, to the extent that it impacted peoples views, fairly or on fairly, it was seen as contradictory to that strength. His handling of Ukraine, by contrast, has been relatively well done (regardless of what Archie thinks) in terms of the actions taken, so it may have been only a matter of time until that started to reflect some in Biden's approval numbers. The other part is COVID - things to seem to be normalizing a lot these days and that would probably be a benefit as well. In any event, this Presidency so far can be divided into two parts - the part where Biden was sitting between 53-55% and the part where Biden is sitting between 41-43%.... during both parts, there was an assumption by many of inevitability, that those numbers could never change. People need to be open that external events do happen and opinions can change.

Incredible... these guys will breathlessly promote and write stories about Q Polls (who have been a negative outlier at every point in this Presidency), yet a poll showing something different? In the trash. I'm open to the idea that it's an outlier until shown otherwise, but I just cannot help but notice the difference in coverage

Very well could be an outlier. Gotta wait for more polling to show movement. Although one takeaway from the poll may be that pundits moved way too quickly to declare that Ukraine wouldn't have much impact... this is one of the first polls taken post Ukraine/SOTU. Probably better to wait before making such pronouncements

Don't forget about Paul Manafort (ie. Yanukovych's former svengali) and his role both in Trump's campaign as well as the effort undertaken to remove the plank about Ukrainian security from the GOP platform. The evidence is still largely circumstantial, but it points to Trump and the undermining of Ukrainian self-determination being pre-meditated.