Bull:1, China Shop 0

This is another fine article at Powerline by John Hinderaker.

There isn't anything particularly new, nothing that you don't already know. I'm assuming. But Hinderaker lays it all out and he organizes very well.

Get out the fainting couches! President Trump is in Europe, and once again he is saying the unsayable. The occasion is the NATO summit that began today in Brussels. Trump fired an opening salvo that included two themes, as reported by Bloomberg. The first is that Germany, in particular, undermines the alliance’s defenses against Russia by being too dependent on Russian natural gas:

Then a long quote by Trump that we already heard in the video posted earlier. Then a fairly detailed analysis of what we saw in the video.

Recommended.

Then I turned off Facebook blocker and read comments. And since comments are through Facebook and you must be a Facebook member you can always reliably expect dopes dragging the place down. But not so much this time. Except for this one guy.

With a name like Tess Douchervilles I should have known the remark would be vinegary.

Simple economics, Russian natural gas is probably much cheaper than shipped in gas. It looks like a wedge issue to get the Germans to pay more and or buy gas from America. There is plenty of unused natural gas in Alaska. The security issue is nonsensical. Why would Russia attack its best costumers?

No, the remark is nonsensical. Who said anything about customers being attacked? The customers are putting themselves in a vulnerable position, unable to respond to provocations elsewhere. They're forfeiting their mojo, dissipating their gravi-tah. All that is covered precisely by John Hinderaker. The comment was mansplained.

Who said anything about Russia attacking its customers? The point of the blog post is twofold: 1. With Germany & other western Euro nations buying petroleum from Russia, those countries provide Russia with hard currency to fund its expansionist desires. 2. By getting ther petroleum from Russia, Mr. Putin has the western countries by the short hairs. If they attempt to stand up to him, he just cuts off their energy supplies in the dead of winter. That is a form of attack I suppose but he doesn’t need to put his military into battle to get the effect he wants - acquiescence.  

It isn’t the western Euro countries that have to worry about their security. The nations worried about their security are the Baltic nations & former Soviet Bloc nations. If you don’t believe Putin is out to re-establish the former Soviet footpirint, you haven’t been paying attention. If Germany & company are dependent on Russian petroleum, will they come to they aid of the former Soviet bloc countries if Putin decides to annex them like he did Crimea? President Trump is suggesting they won’t & those former Soviet bloc countries tend to agree with him. So does former president Obama.

You know that already. But Tess doesn't. I'd wager nearly everyone you now doesn't.

See what you have to put up with.

Another commenter posted this:

 

So there you have it. Trump sticking up for Americans, just like he said he would do.