@Marie

Here’s the thing, however. Such horrendous projections do not phase these clowns one single bit – as was underscored in spades by Congress’ shameful boondoggling on the Ukraine aid bill. That $40 billion was rushed into law sight unseen and without the benefit of any committee hearings at all.

Worse still, the historic party of the antiwar left went abjectly AWOL. The vote among Dems was 48-0 in the Senate and 223-0 in the House. And those stunning counts include Bernie Sanders and the House "squad" all in the "yea" column.

That is to say, if Washington cannot muster even a single Dem "nay" vote on the funding of a mindless war that has no bearing whatsoever on America’s homeland security, then the prospects for restoration of even a semblance of fiscal discipline are somewhere between slim and none.

Not one word from Pelosi on how they were going to pay for the $40 billion being sent to Ukraine like she insists be done for any money spent on we the people. And it’s funny how they forget what Obama said about Ukraine. "It’s no concern to our national security."

Bingo!

Historians will someday wonder how today’s insanities actually came to pass, but there is actually no mystery. Washington has become the world’s capital of perpetual war because it was able – for a time – to perpetually issue debt and then monetize it at the central bank.

At the end of the day, that’s the greatest central banking sin of all: It has turned the nation’s politicians – including so-called progressives – into Sunday afternoon warriors who are a menace to the nation, and, for that matter, to the entire planet.

Congress votes for higher military budgets because they know that millions of the billions will funnel back to them as campaign donations. How much of the money will be ciphered off into their bank accounts is unknown, but you can bet your patootie that they are doing it.

I posted an article on Zelensky's backer and the massive corruption in Ukraine in Saturday’s OT that is worth a read if interested.

another former senior government official that was instrumental in championing very bad USG policies:

Perpetual Debt, Perpetual War, David Stockman. (For those that don't know, Stockman was Reagan's OMB Director. One of the architects of "Reaganomics" that led to the current non-tax and spend ethos in DC. And for which Stockmman takes no responsibility and only criticizes the deficits and ever increasing national debt. FYI - I've loathed Stockman since 1981. He was also a Peter Peterson guy, another fiscal evil-doer.)

Massive fiscal deficits year-after-year have become a way of life in the Imperial City, but even then CBO’s latest 10-year forecast is a shocker. It shows that even if there is no recession for the next ten years (fat chance!) and existing tax and spending policies (dashed red line) remain in place without enactment of a single new spending program or tax cut (even fatter chance!), the deficit will exceed $3 trillion per year by the end of the decade.

The National Debt when Reagan took office was just under a trillion dollars and just under three trillion eight years later. I include the above paragraph to merely set the stage for Stockman's general lament but no need to read the rest of that part.

Indeed, what in the world is wrong with these blithering knuckleheads? Last week’s action brings already spent and promised Ukraine weapons and aid to $54 billion.

For crying out loud, Ukraine’s GDP last year was just $155 billion. At the current run rate, they have spent 120% of Ukraine’s GDP on its own destruction, and with no end in sight.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the pretentious little peacock who parades as the country’s president is now telling the world that the war will go on until the last Ukrainian soldier is dead and Washington’s endless bounty is finally used up.

After all, at a moment when Russia is making steady gains in Donbas, reportedly now poised to take all of Luhansk province, Zelensky instructed the grandees gathered at Davos that Ukrainian forces would fight to liberate all occupied territory:

Ukraine will fight until it reclaims all its territories," he stressed. "It’s about our independence and our sovereignty." This as there have been calls from a handful of European leaders to make some territorial concessions for the sake of ending the war based on a negotiated settlement.

Zelensky had said the day prior, on Tuesday, that negotiating recognition of Russia’s possession of Crimea is not on the table. "Russia will also have to leave Crimea," he had said during a daily briefing according to the Kyiv Independent. Speaking of Kherson, Melitopol, Enerhodar, Mariupol, he said the Russians must exit these and "all other cities and communities where they are still pretending to be the owners."

There is no other way to say it: Washington has empowered a madman, who is so smitten by his own strutting on the world stage that rationality itself has become the victim.

There is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that Putin is about to give back Crimea, nor the Donbas and all the cities listed above by Zelensky. And when they stay in Russian possession it will not make a damn bit of difference to America’s national security anyway.

But, of course, that’s not what Ukraine is actually about. Those 271 Dem "yea" votes were merely an exercise in political virtue-signalling. They were a vote against Donald Trump’s avatar on the scene – the endlessly demonized Vladimir Putin.

That’s why the discourse about this calamity has lost all touch with reality. For instance, Zelensky is now saying that if Ukraine is not victorious, the Baltics will be next on Putin’s agenda and American servicemen will soon be shedding Article 5 blood in Latvia.

That’s absurd, yet nary of word of rebuke was to be heard from Washington. The town is in full on war heat with no compunction at all about the massive waste of American treasure or putting the American economy itself in harm’s way.
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The rest of the article is worth reading.