Episode 202: “Biden’s Playing Nuclear War Brinksmanship with Russia; Meanwhile China Looms” with KT McFarland
Release Date: 10/18/2022
The Bill Walton Show
The war in Ukraine drags on at a terrible cost for all involved with no seeming end in sight. Some estimate that there have been almost 400,000 total Russian and Ukraine casualties so far, although both sides claim their losses are much lower. Ukraine is on the ropes and running out of manpower with its most of its elite forces destroyed. Missiles for its air defenses are depleted. Both sides are dragooning teenagers and old men for their armies. Russia’s military command is in disarray. But no one knows what is really going on. A key problem understanding the war in Ukraine is...
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“Terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other.… Therefore, one of the primary concerns of all tyrannical government is to bring this isolation about.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism “Americans have long sensed a new kind tyranny creeping into our lives. This disquiet has hovered in the background for a long time, though most of us couldn’t put our finger on it. Trends to control speech and behavior are isolating us from one another, and they have begun to intensify rapidly and spread throughout society’s...
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When Walmart went public in 1970 and soon thereafter listed on the New York Stock Exchange, its SEC disclosure prospectus was 20 pages long. Today, a prospectus requires massive numbers of mostly obscure disclosures imposing very real liabilities for the issuing company - but which no one reads, except for lawyers who charge $2,000 an hour to read it and to write it - and which can run upwards to 300 pages or more. Under President Joe Biden’s whole of government effort to weaponize federal agencies, this regulatory creep has become an outright onslaught of new regulations. Except...
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation is proceeding with plans to build a new headquarters which would be twice the size of the The Pentagon, the world’s largest office building. The new FBI headquarters is to be built on one of three sites in suburban Virginia and Maryland. Those sites are large parcels of 58, 61, and 80 acres. The Kremlin in Moscow —a walled fortress containing the administrative offices of the Russian central government, the official presidential residence, massive auditoriums, an arsenal, a museum, four palaces, three cathedrals and several churches—is just over 66...
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What are the evolutionary differences between men and women, and how do they survive and thrive through differing competitive strategies? In this episode, Dr. Joyce Benenson talks with Bill about her book, Warriors and Worriers, which draws her extensive lifelong research on children’s interactions. The result is fascinating array of studies and stories that explore the ways boys and men deter their enemies, while girls and women find assistants to aid them in coping with vulnerable children and elders. Dr. Benenson, a retired professor of psychology at Emmanuel College and an associate...
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Is the Federal Reserve a godlike Zeus able to control our money and the economy, preserve financial stability and keep a lid on inflation? Or is it like the Wizard of Oz? A little man behind the curtain pulling levers to create smoke and noise to terrify and control people, but in the end only one market participant among many worldwide. If you’re a bond trader in New York, trying to predict minute day to day changes in interest rates, it’s more like Zeus. For the rest of us, I believe, it’s like Oz. Trying to figure out the Fed is a complicated business and I'm...
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It looks like the bill is finally coming due after decades of reckless monetary policy and out of control federal spending. After 40 years of relatively stable prices, we now have raging inflation. Interest rates have risen dramatically. Mortgage rates have more than doubled. And commercial banks are now sitting on more than $600 billion of unrealized bond losses. Of course, and as expected, with the Silicon Valley Bank bailout, the Regulators have pulled out their default playbook declaring yet another institution systematically risky, taking another step toward the federalization of...
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This week, Americans for Limited Government published a provocative and insightful piece about the banking system asking, "Has the United States banking system become too big to save?” In the past three years, to finance massive federal spending, the Treasury has issued almost $8 trillion new treasury bonds with almost $4 trillion bought by US banks during the tail-end of the Fed’s era of zero interest rates. US Treasury Bonds? Sounds like a safe investment for a bank, but here’s the problem. After 40 years of relatively stable prices, we now have raging inflation...
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Under President Joe Biden and his Administration the whole of government has been weaponized to promote a so-called Diversity Equity and Inclusion agenda that, in fact, will bring about just the opposite of what these words mean. Case in point is an assertive, left-wing, anti-family Department of Labor with its power to regulate and attempt to social engineer virtually every aspect of the American workplace. Congress has granted it a stunning amount of power to administer more than 180 federal laws and thousands of regulations affecting more than 10 million employers and 150...
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Newly released documents show that the White House has played a major role in censoring Americans on social media. Email exchanges between Rob Flaherty, the White House’s director of digital media, and social-media executives prove the companies put Covid censorship policies in place in response to relentless, coercive pressure from the White House—not voluntarily as the government has claimed. The emails emerged last month in the discovery phase of Missouri v. Biden, a free-speech case brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and four private...
info_outlineIn the 20 months that Joe Biden has been President, his decisions and rhetoric have made the world ever more combustible. Events in Ukraine has reached a flash point. Still, the Biden Administration refuses to negotiate with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The chance of a wider war between NATO and Russia grows ever more likely, a war that would immediately draw in the United States under NATO’s Article 5 requiring collective defense . Worse, supposedly serious people - both in the Biden Administration and many top Republicans - are talking about a “limited nuclear war.’ Do they really want to risk this outcome over a country that most Americans cannot even find on a map? Meanwhile, China is about to elect President Xi Jinping to a third term, effectively anointing him as Emperor for Life. And Xi has his sights set on Taiwan, which like Putin with Ukraine, he believes must be absorbed into China. “The complete reunification of our country must be realized, and it can without a doubt be realized,” he declared this weekend. China will “never promise to renounce the use of force” on Taiwan. Neither Putin, nor Xi, are making idle threats. As my guest on this episode, KT McFarland explains: “Both the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, have the same sort of mindset problem. They think that they have been designated by fate to restore the greatness of their nations and that they personally want to achieve this during their time in office. And they're both in their seventies, so the clock is ticking.” KT McFarland shares her penetrating and savvy insights into these threats from Russian and China and has a plan of action for what to do about them. She has served as Deputy National Security Advisor under President Trump, in the Pentagon under President Reagan and is author of several books including “Revolution: Trump, Washington and “We the People.”” The main thing we need to do now is to keep the Ukraine conflict from escalating. Putin has put a general in charge who led the bombing campaign in Syria whose nickname is “General Armageddon.” Ukraine’s President Zelensky recklessly wants to join NATO now, has asked for the United States to deploy nuclear weapons and keeps upping his endless demands for billions of American dollars. Instead of refusing to negotiate with Russia, the United States needs to step in and bring Russian and Ukraine to the table to wrap this thing up. “For the first time in my adult lifetime … and I’ve studied nuclear weapons and taught nuclear weapons at MIT in the '80s. I was in the Reagan administration. I even go back to the Nixon and Ford administrations, so I have a long 45, 50 year old career, and I have never been as nervous about the threat of escalation to the point where it runs out of everybody's control as I am right now,” worries KT. Americans should be terrified that one of their politicians could push the wrong button and destroy the world. For a short, chock full with information and insight, briefing on both Russian and China today, listen in to this conversation with KT McFarland.