A couple days ago I posted two YouTube videos by an Estonian soldier, whose commentary (and accent) is quite interesting. He’s definitely very pro-Ukrainian. Here’s another YouTube channel by Nicholas Moran, whose bio link states he is Wargaming America’s resident tanker and amateur historian. Along with interesting points about the war videos we’re all seeing, he raises questions about what all we’re not seeing in these videos and sounds some cautionary notes about drawing large conclusions from edited snapshots we see in videos. He also has a very charming accent:
Moran mentions a Russian truck tire analysis in this video and that analysis was in a Twitter thread on March 2nd:
This is a thread that will explain the implied poor Russian Army truck maintenance practices based on this photo of a Pantsir-S1 wheeled gun-missile system's right rear pair of tires below & the operational implications during the Ukrainian mud season.🧵
It’s hard to keep a positive attitude if you follow the news about what’s happening here in the US with our political dramas and the economic problems compounding almost daily and then look beyond our shores to the crises swirling abroad. Everywhere you turn there’s another looming situation that’s like a flashing warning sign that major system failures are moving closer and inevitably going to impact all of us.
Yesterday I saw this report from Ukraine that made me think about the importance of carrying on, as best you can, no matter how terrible a situation you find yourself in:
None of the decisions I have made with personal preparedness come anywhere close to Ukrainian farmers making a decision to plant crops in a war zone. At 1:27 in this video the sound of a military jet flying overhead catches the farmer and reporter’s attention and they both look up at the sky, neither knowing if it’s a Ukrainian or Russian jet. That moment made me think how small my problems are compared to millions of other people in the world.
It feels surreal that we’re now seeing world leaders talking about nuclear war, looming global food and gas shortages, inflation climbing daily, talk of major economic collapses, oh, and warnings of likely major cyberattacks too, in the news these days. While things seem very likely to get much worse and chaotic in ways none of us ever thought possible in America, at the same time I believe there are millions of Americans, in communities all over our great country, who will show every bit as much courage, determination, resourcefulness, and resiliency as the Ukrainians have mustered with their country being invaded by Russia. I have a lot of faith in the American spirit.
However, I wonder where our leaders are in America, where both political parties flit from one media sideshow to the next and none of them seem focused on coming up with real solutions for any of the looming crises that keep hitting the news. It’s rather bizarre that nowhere in America are leaders standing up and offering leadership, advice or offering any coherent direction for any of these problems. It’s all talking points and gimmicks (usually more grandstanding pushing pointless legislation & government spending that doesn’t address the problems).
The government of Ukraine is urging their farmers to stay and plant their crops this spring. Where is our government on figuring out solutions for the sky-rocketing cost of fertilizer and looming fertilizer shortages? Do our states and federal government have food reserves to feed America in a crisis? What’s the state of government fuel and food reserves? What about the escalating inflation, the growing shortage problems, the gas prices?
Less than 8% of Americans are on Twitter, but I can guarantee you most of our American political leaders, the journalists and political pundits who try to rile up people in the news are on Twitter every single day – trying to outdo each other with the clever hot takes and driving spin cycles. President Biden likely doesn’t tweet, but he has a Twitter account where someone posts tweets and former President Trump has spent the past 14 months fuming that he’s not on Twitter and trying to come up with a social media platform that can compete with Twitter. That’s what our leaders are concerned about – owning spin cycles.
Although Ukraine has dominated the news the past month, there’s a lot of important news here in America that’s not getting nearly the same attention – especially in Washington. The emotional and rash ways in which Washington politicians talk about sending weapons system and aid to Ukraine with no concern about the price tag, the sensitivity of handing over advanced technology on a battlefield we have no control over or thinking about the “post-war” ramifications of all that weaponry (another likely international weapons open market bazaar forming) disturbs me. I do support sending more military aid to Ukraine, but I wish more thought went into decision-making, especially in light of the vast amount of military equipment we abandoned in Afghanistan and the 20-year US foreign policy failure of regime-change/democracy-building.
Even more disturbing has been the ways in which our politicians are like lemmings, who mindlessly rush to fall in line with the latest hot talking point. First it was the hysteria about the US and NATO establishing a no-fly zone, which alarmed the heck out of me, because that means being at war with Russia and being willing to shoot down Russian aircraft and taking out Russian anti-aircraft assets. The past week or so, it’s been hyperventilating about sending Ukraine MiG jets. It seems certain there will be more military hardware items that will fuel endless media hysteria with the situation in Ukraine.
The absolute most disturbing hot takes in American political and media circles have been the hysterical politicians and pundits demanding we stop the war immediately, as if there’s some magic off-button to make Putin stop his war of aggression. I have no idea what Putin’s going to do and presently what he does certainly determines how long this war drags on.
Some of the same politicians who called for more and more military action during the past 20 years of our “Global War On Terror/Building Democracy Project” now seem overly eager to beat their war drums about Russia. Senator Lindsey Graham, who gets a whole lot of air time on FOX News, has been saber-rattling about “regime change” in Moscow now and while many people may embrace the idea of Putin being gone, they’re missing the reality that Russia has a vast nuclear arsenal and a coup or uncertain control of a nation/state nuclear arsenal of that size would be a very dire world crisis situation. I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed (we were living in Germany at the time) and there were serious concerns about loose nukes within the US foreign policy and military communities, but it seems a lot of people in Washington, who are old enough to remember that, seem to have forgotten. A country with a vast nuclear arsenal that collapses or where there’s no clear governmental structure poses a huge global crisis, but Graham is always rushing on TV to beat his war drum and sound tough.
With all eyes focused on Ukraine, our own domestic problems have been shoved aside and the people who react emotionally aren’t just liberals who run from one cause to the next to virtue-signal, from masks to wrapping themselves in the Ukrainian flag, it’s Republicans in Washington too.
Yes, I see the seriousness of the situation in Ukraine, but when it comes to deciding how much military aid to send or how America responds, well, I prefer calmer heads to prevail and instead, there are a lot of overly emotional politicians reacting instantly to pleas from President Zelensky and a video intended to pull at our heartstrings. Here’s the reality – we need calm people making carefully thought out decisions, especially when it comes to such a serious decision as war and our elected officials should be weighing America’s national interests over any other interests. Zelensky, understandably, wants every possible means to save his country, but America has national interests here at home and around the globe and those need to be weighed carefully too.
At some point the politicians and pundit crowd in Washington need to seriously look back over our post-9/11 foreign policy military adventures and do some deep soul-searching. We left train wrecks all over the Middle East and beyond with this regime change/democracy-building pipedream and in the process squandered trillions of dollars, military equipment, humanitarian aid, and most of all American lives. There is little to show for any of it. And that’s why I am hoping we think more about how much and what kinds of aid we pour into Ukraine and if we have even thought about what happens down the road.
In our present media-driven, hot takes, political culture another important assessment tool that seems to have disappeared is a lessons learned approach, where after-action reports are compiled, analyzed and studied, looking for things that worked and things that didn’t work, then drilling down to see at which levels in an organization the failures occurred and why. Our military and intel agencies seem to skate by the lessons learned approach now and behave just like the politicians in Washington, using deceptive language and sliding on by, as if the debacles never happened.
I hope the military aid to Ukraine is done in close consultation with US military officials and NATO officials and designed to be things the Ukrainian fighters know how to use and that’s it’s weapons & assets that will bolster the type of battles they’re actually fighting. That means I’m hoping there’s strategic and tactical advice accompanying all of this military aid too.
One last comment about the war in Ukraine – the modernized Russian army sure seems to be way less impressive than advertised. The news keeps reporting high-ranking Russian officers (think it’s five generals so far) killed on the battlefield. I saw someone online posted a link to this story at a news site in Estonia: 12 March 2022 – Estonian expert: Russia is losing generals in Ukraine due to its communication failures. Here’s a quote from that short piece:
“Kunnas says the reason to that is that the Russian encrypted communication system had failed. “In today’s militaries, it’s a standard that communications are encrypted,” he says. “The Russian army uses a system called Era. It’s a very smart solution – all communication relies on 4G and 3G networks. What happened in Ukraine was, the Russians themselves destroyed the communication towers – to cut the Ukrainians off from being able to communicate. But the result is, the messages of the Russian army went into the air openly. Even British radio amateurs have been able to listen to Russia’s ‘secret’ messages.””
I haven’t heard any American military analysts mention this yet, so I’m awaiting more information.
Update 3/20/2022, 5:21 pm – I came across another article about the Russian army communication problems:
We are entering uncharted financial territory with the present situation we’re all facing – economic chaos is going to hit us all hard and none of us will be able to escape the fall-out. That’s the reality. All of these massive sanctions on Russia will impact us too. It’s already in motion, yet millions of people continue to walk around unaware and making no effort to prepare their finances, stocking up on basic supplies and thinking about how to survive escalating inflation, increasing shortage situations and the steep rise in gas prices. I can’t predict what’s going to happen with the conflict in Ukraine, but this spilling over into a larger world war is quite possible. While I hope this war in Ukraine ends soon, no one knows how this is going to turn out.
The steep gas prices are going to drive up the food prices and everything else even more. President Biden announced he’s stopping Russian oil imports and he also has not undone any of the green measures he put in place immediately when he came into office, intent on decreasing American oil and gas dependence. Most of us can’t just instantly switch to an electric car or go green. Russia may initiate major cyber-attacks , our own government is warning as this crisis with Russia invading Ukraine escalates.
Here’s a good video laying out the situation from Chris at City Prepping:
One thing Chris mentions in this video is normalcy bias, which is a cognitive bias where people tend to disbelieve and minimize threat warnings. I’ve seen this myself with people dismissing severe weather warnings even with our modern Doppler radar, where storms can be tracked in real time. Many people still dismiss tornado warnings, even when tornados have been spotted in their area.
We live in a culture where personal responsibility doesn’t weigh highly in our values anymore and that worries me with this current situation. I’ve talked to family members about becoming more prepared and the reactions I encounter when trying to mention being prepared is mostly complete dismissal or acting like I am being too alarmist from my four adult kids. I have other family members who have been preparing. I mentioned stocking up on more groceries with these shortages increasing, when I ran into one of my dearest friends recently at the grocery store of all places, as we were commenting on the empty shelf spaces. She told me she knows she probably should, but hasn’t and she said her pastor has been urging them to prepare.
I write about preparedness here on my blog and I mentioned it on Twitter a few times, but I’m pretty much convinced a whole lot of people won’t take any proactive efforts to prepare and will be left reacting as the economic problems escalate. I’ve been trying to stock up extra on basics, as I can afford, so I can hopefully help my family and others some, if things get really bad. I figure if things don’t get bad, I can always donate extra canned goods and things to my local food pantry or people in need.
Mostly, I’m trying to keep a positive attitude and be grateful for each day. I’m also trying to learn more about the history of Ukraine and the relationships with Russia. I started with reading, Ukraine and the Art of Strategy by Lawrence Freedman and I bought Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum. I have a few other books about Ukraine and Russia on my list that I will probably buy later. Reading more about situations happening in the world helps me understand more about what’s going on in the news now. I had some general knowledge about the Ukraine/Russia controversies and have been following those happenings for years, but I wanted to read more background history considering the events unfolding now.
Whenever I feel discouraged or let fear begin to creep in (and that’s usually when reading news online), I look at a small wooden plaque I bought at Walmart a few years ago and hung above my desk where I sit at my PC:
We still have control over our own actions and our own hearts. We can all choose to be kind to others, no matter how much terrible stuff is going on in the world.
One of my favorite YouTube prepper channels just put out a WWIII Victory Garden Challenge video, with some great ideas on how to increase your personal food security:
I’ve been following the American media/politicians spin war on Twitter over the situation in Ukraine quite a bit and hadn’t gotten around to writing a blog post, so here goes.
First, Russia invading Ukraine was a full-scale invasion. Despite all the partisan takes on this, I read that as an attempt at regime change. There have been Trump talking heads pushing pro-Putin positions and the Biden White House staking out wrong positions about what was happening prior to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This incursion went past those two so-called breakaway territories, that Jen Psaki talked about in the WH’s policy-by spin-word-games effort. I wasn’t sure Putin would really go for it with a full-scale invasion, but he did and that poses a very immediate and dramatic challenge for the United States and our allies, not just in Europe, but around the world.
All those months of news with China and Russia turning into “preppers” had led me to believe they were planning a full-scale economic war, but I sort of thought they would try to take down the West via an aggressive economic war first before waging actual territorial wars. I was definitely wrong there.
I’m not going to get into all the politics today, beyond saying that one of the most disturbing aspects of the American response has been listening to American elected officials and top “experts, especially the media talking heads, many who have never picked up a book on military strategy or read anything on military history or military strategy become war-planning experts overnight. There are also many former military people who are now into politics, who jumped into the fray and are big media “influencers” beating their various war drums about what military options they think President Biden should take.
I began studying military strategy in my teens – it interests me a lot. I found this report in the loft of a garage/shed behind an old house my father was looking through. He was a supervisor for a road construction company and this old house was slated to be torn down, for a road job he was working on. I climbed the ladder to the loft and found a box with old papers and things, but this was the prize and from then on I have been hooked on studying military strategy:
I’ve believed for years many top US military and top policy officials are very weak on understanding military strategy and there’s a persistent view that permeates, where they leap into supporting the latest hot military option of the day that’s become the media buzz topic and urging that option without even thinking about the larger strategic implications. America has been entering military engagements since the 1990s based on reacting to public opinion and ideas promoted by crowds of these sort of DC insider policy thought leaders and not by seriously thinking about America’s national interests and long-term ramifications for American foreign policy. I’ve been worrying since the Somalia debacle in the early 1990s about American military strategy. By the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle last year, I was angry and very alarmed, not only about the incompetence, but also totally disgusted by all the lying from the Biden WH and coming from the Pentagon.
That brings me to what’s been on my mind a lot besides the horrific Russian aggression taking place in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis there, the looming economic hardships that will impact around the world and here in America. I’ve been very concerned how quickly many people jump into fashionable causes and engage in mindless gestures, believing they’re doing something important. Mindless performative political posturing has replaced carefully studying issues and making thoughtful judgments even among our elected leaders.
A whole lot of the people who were COVID masking zealots have now become Ukraine super fans – wrapping themselves in the Ukrainian flag and declaring their support for the courageous and unexpected heroic president of Ukraine, Volodomyr Zelensky. It’s been striking how his simple reported words, “I need ammunition, not a ride,” when offered US assistance getting out of Ukraine, inspired so many people around the world. We’ve become so accustomed to leaders of countries grabbing suitcases of cash and abandoning their countries when war breaks out, that a leader who stands and fights with his people touched a chord around the globe. Personal and moral courage are rare these days.
It’s fine to support Ukraine and it’s fine to be inspired by Zelensky, but so much of the media-driven public virtue-signaling and mass outpourings come with a very dark underside. Along with all the wrapping themselves in the Ukrainian flag type media-driven craze has come a very disturbing anti-Russian craze, with people rushing to disparage and destroy everything Russian.
The average Russian has about as much control over what their government is doing as we do here in America. While media talking heads were cheering bars pouring out Russian vodka and the ridiculous banning of Russian cats from some international cat competition. I believe in our government taking economic sanctions with real teeth, not in targeting ordinary Russian people or Russian cats, for crying out loud. I wish President Biden would stop importing oil from Russia and halt the Russia-brokered Iran deal his administration is working on, because these are real and powerful government sanctions. Picking on Russian cats isn’t.
There are so many wonderful things in every culture and their people, so it’s disturbing to see the same people who jumped on the bandwagon attacking Trump-supporters as Deplorables, then people on the right who didn’t agree with the Covid mandates and masking, rush to demonize Russians and everything Russian. People need to stop and think before rushing to virtue-signal.
While I support Ukraine in this war, I am American and the only flag I will ever march behind is the American flag. I also have spent a lot of time over the years reading American history and the American Revolutionary period has been my favorite era, although in the past couple years I’ve pushed the timeline back a bit and started reading more about the pre-Revolutionary era. The French and Indian War has taken my fancy, because I have direct ancestors who were on the frontier of that war in Pennsylvania. I want to read more books on that war. I started with this book:
Not sure how I missed reading more about this war, but it’s now on my must-read list of topics I want to learn more about. One of my German ancestors was tasked with forming a militia for the common defense when the American frontier moved westward in northeastern PA. Delaware (Lenape) Indians were pushed out of the area where I grew up. I had read some about this time period back in 1976 when I was a teenager. That year was the American Bicentennial, so people all over America were discovering their American roots. Some civic-minded people in my village put together a book:
That brings me to the photo at the top. It’s one of my most prized possessions – a truly lovely Russian teapot one of my sons brought back from Russia as a gift for me. I absolutely love this teapot and as you can see by my Matryoshka dolls in the photo above, I have a thing for other Russian things too. I stitched this cute Russian dolls piece a few years ago too:
Heck, I even have some Soviet-era propaganda posters. I’m fascinated by propaganda too:
Sorry, but not sorry, I am not getting rid of anything Russian in my home. People need to stop being so stupid and think more. Ignorance, reckless rage and mindlessly following media-driven frenzies are more dangerous than owning Russian items.
I came across a video with very good advice on how to cope with all the craziness going on in the world:
I’ve always been a news junkie, long before the internet and smart phone age. I loved reading newspapers, and news magazines. While I was growing up the news on TV or radio was not 24-hour and I think we were better off with less access to all this media drama and incitement all day long, every day.
One thing I can say about war coverage is it comes with a whole bunch of information operations from all sides in conflicts. What reporters report on the ground may not be accurate and the social media information streams become filled with alarming images that I have no way to figure out details and accurate information about them.
Focus on the things you can control in your own life. I do urge people to stock up on extra food, water and supplies. I’ve believed that’s a good idea since my childhood Girl Scout days, but even with my prepping efforts I realize that at the end of the day, lots of things I didn’t “prepare” for will likely happen and I’ll have to just deal with it.
Each day, when faced with challenges and adversity, we should learn to take a deep breath and then suck it up and drive on. Oh, and don’t forget how to smile and enjoy all the many good things that happen, even amidst all this craziness.
What I hope Americans understand is that what’s happening in Ukraine will touch their daily lives here in America, even if our country isn’t involved in the war on the ground.
Sanctions against Russia come with costs to America, especially if China and other countries work with Russia to retaliate. Both Russia and China have been stockpiling grain and advising their citizens to stock up on necessary food.
“MOSCOW, RUSSIA — Russia plans to release about 75,000 tonnes from its government stockpile to the domestic market during the first quarter of 2021, state trader United Grain Company told Reuters on Jan. 14.
“China is telling families to stock up on food and other daily essentials as bad weather, energy shortages and Covid-19 restrictions threaten to disrupt supplies.
The country’s Ministry of Commerce late Monday issued a notice directing local governments to encourage people to stockpile “daily necessities,” including vegetables, oils and poultry, in order to “meet the needs of daily life and emergencies.”
The agency also urged local authorities to make sure that people have an “adequate supply” of essentials this winter into next spring. And it told those authorities to keep prices stable — a source of anxiety in recent weeks, as the cost of vegetables has surged throughout China because of unusually heavy rainfall that has hurt crops.”
I wish we had leaders here who had calmly urged Americans to prepare and worked to try to unite our country, but all we get is more hyper-partisan craziness spewing from both sides.
The yada, yada, yada I mentioned the other day means none of us can change what Putin’s doing or even what our own leaders are doing, but we do have control over how much news and social media we consume.
If you asked me what you should do now, I’d urge you to limit your news and media consumption, as the first belt-tightening you do as things get worse. I’d urge every American to work to strengthen their relationships with their family, friends and neighbors and find ways to help each other. I’d urge them to stock up food, water and basic supplies, because inflation and supply problems are likely to escalate. I’d urge them to pray.
Pray for our troops who are deployed around the world, working to keep us all safe.
Focus on what you can do each day, not on how bad things are. Each day brings hope.
Tonight the news is abuzz with Putin beginning an invasion of Ukraine. Putin delivered one of the most audacious warnings to the West about not interfering in Ukraine and now we await a response from western leaders.
Trump called in to Laura Ingraham’s show tonight and naturally claimed all this is happening because of a “stolen election” and tried to make it about himself. Many partisans on the right won’t see how inappropriate and disgraceful this comment is from a former president, when a hostile foreign leader is threatening our country. Putin was threatening all of America – not one side of partisans in America.
The White House hasn’t responded yet. One can only wonder if this latest act of aggression by Putin warrants swift and severe sanctions Biden promised.
Neither party has competent leaders, who will put the welfare of America ahead of their partisan battles.
If you’re wondering why the Biden White House is so slow with the sanctions, here’s the reality check – Russia is still the third highest exporter of oil to the US, behind Canada, which is the number one exporter of oil to us, and Mexico, according to Forbes: Russia Is A Major Supplier Of Oil To The U.S.
While I fully understand the support for the Freedom Convoy with Canada’s truckers and why many Americans support the American trucker’s protest starting, I feel confident that there’s a whole lot of hostile foreign information war operations helping fueling this trucker’s protest around the world.
Who benefits from escalating the internal turmoil in countries in the West?
The timing of this trucker’s protest kicking off and the escalating Russia vs. the West clash today certainly could not be worse for America and better for our adversaries. I don’t see any good coming out of the trucker’s protest. Dems, the Biden White House and the liberal media will quickly shift blame for all the worsening economic woes to the trucker’s protest. The likelihood of illegal mayhem happening with his protest is high. The likelihood of false flag operations by various entities to engage in criminal actions, that will overshadow the message of freedom the protest is supposedly about, is high too. The likelihood of any meaningful specific policy changes is low.
I do not support any illegal activities – that goes for either side of partisans – so, if there’s any illegally blocking bridges or roads, I do not support that.
My blog started out being mostly politics, but it’s become a lot of prepping these days. I think the food shortages, inflation, and economic turmoil are going to be the most important events for most of us in the foreseeable future.
The media right now and many of the online prepper and news sites are on Ukraine and WWIII – yada, yada, yada.
The situation in Ukraine escalated and I don’t have a prediction on what Putin will do next or how far he’ll go, but I feel confident in saying that the Biden White House will be slow to respond in an effective way to deter him. The night before last, I saw that the Biden White House was insisting that Putin moving into the two breakaway areas of Ukraine wouldn’t be an “invasion,” because it didn’t go beyond Putin’s 2014 incursion. By yesterday morning, the Germans finally agreed to sanctions on the NordStream2 pipeline with Russia, so the Biden WH changed their word game and decided that Putin’s action was an invasion. Same goes with sanctions against Russia. The Biden White House promised swift and severe sanctions, but now it’s looking more like slow and incremental sanctions.
I wish Biden would let the Keystone pipeline continue and unfreeze all the fossil fuel restrictions he put in place here. Instead, his spokespeople are playing word games, blaming what happened in Ukraine two days ago for the rising gas prices that have been hitting Americans for the past year. It’s all total bullshit coming from this White House. The Ukraine situation may well exacerbate the problems, but they didn’t cause the months of rising gas prices.
Everything in our politics and news media is idiotic word games. As an aside, I found it somehow fitting that the Twitter politics journalist and pundit class recently became obsessed with some stupid actual word game, Wordle. The developer sold the rights to the game to the NYT recently and now the Wordle crowd started complaining that the NYT is ruining the game. Yep, Wordle, sounds about right for the professional spin crowd…
And no, I don’t care what stupid comments Trump made calling Putin a genius. Trump will say whatever he thinks will fuel the right vs. left spin war in America and promote himself. Trump only cares that he is the main topic of conversation in the news. He uses the negative liberal media backlash to play the victim card for his supporters and it works. The bottom-line though is nothing Trump says will change any policy in the Biden White House. I’m just sick of all of the partisan politics and the extreme partisan politics will likely cause more turmoil. It sure won’t help make anything better in America.
None of us watching this can change any of the politics or what’s happening in Ukraine. The only people we can change or control is ourselves. I don’t have any brilliant takes on Ukraine and frankly, with so much information hitting us from so many directions, I have no idea what’s really going on in Ukraine. Lots of people online claim to have inside sources or connections, who are telling them – this, that or the other.
I don’t have any inside line, so I’m focusing on what I think matters to ordinary people. And what matters most is encouraging people to stock up as much as they can afford to each time they go to the grocery store. Stock up on other supplies too, especially necessary medical supplies. And at the same time try to put some money aside for the looming inflation that’s most likely going to get a lot worse.
Here’s a common sense video on the situation:
Nothing will return to normal anytime soon in America seems like a safe bet.
Since the Biden WH is coming under fire for their handling of the Ukraine crisis, as soon as possible, I expect they and the liberal media will flip to a new narrative – either Trump hysteria or the truckers protest that’s supposed to start. They will want to flip the narrative, so I’m not getting all worked up about Ukraine., because I suspect Putin will do what he wants in Ukraine (and possibly elsewhere) and Biden and the West will pay lip service to sanctions, but do as little to respond as possible. As quickly as they stopped talking about their Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, is how I expect them to try to deal with Ukraine.
I was a stay-at-home mom during my husband’s military career and when he decided to retire, our kids were older and I decided to get a job outside the home. I worked at Walmart a number of years and stayed as an hourly associate. During my years there I was a department manager of fabrics and crafts, department manager of the over-the-counter pharmacy, department manager of lawn and garden, department manager of hardware and also a zone merchandising supervisor, where I was responsible for the homelines area of the store and then I was asked to take over as the zone merchandising supervisor of the hardlines side of the store. I left Walmart in 2015, because my husband’s health had declined to the point it was no longer safe for him to be home alone for hours at a time.
I’m not an expert on anything – not foreign policy, not domestic policy, not politics – although I am interested in these things. However, I am very familiar with how Walmart stores operate and since Walmart is the largest retailer in America and the world, I’m going to mention some concerns with the shortage situations I’m seeing in my area. Merchandise arrives at Walmart stores in several ways – via Walmart trucks that come from Walmart warehouses, shipped from vendors directly, and some comes from vendors, who come to the store and stock their merchandise on the shelves themselves. There’s also merchandise in a few areas that was always slow coming in, that was called assembly merchandise that came from the warehouse, but took much longer to come in from suppliers than regular warehouse merchandise. Fabrics and crafts had a lot of assembly merchandise.
When I walk through my local Walmart stores in the past few months, I’ve noticed growing shortage problems, especially in vendor-stocked items – like soda, the bread aisle, the Debbie snack cake section is usually almost completely empty most of the time. When I worked at Walmart vendors always wanted more shelf space and space for displays and that they can’t even maintain stock on there regular spaces now was a red flag to me.
In a store, the end of aisle display areas (end caps is the term used in Walmart) are prime real estate and you want to keep your end caps filled up and looking nice, because that’s what people see first. I’ve noticed there are usually a whole lot of nearly empty end caps or end caps that are basically faked out – with little merchandise spread across the front of the shelves. Often feature displays of all sorts arrive in the store and when I worked there, department managers would order items that sell well for end cap displays too. What caught my notice was that there’s so many end caps that are skimpy so often, plus there are always many skimpy sections of shelves throughout the stores, yet there are always associates busy stocking.
I suspect the shortage problems are widespread and affecting all sorts of areas in our retail food supply. It’s not just a single problem that’s causing these shortages. The vendors seem to be having supply problems and the Walmart warehouse system also seems to be having problems. Other retail grocery chains are having shortage problems too.
I have already started some seeds indoors and I’ve got some cold hardy vegetables started on my patio. I plan to set up two raised beds when my son has time to come help me with that. Years ago, before my husband became ill, we had a nice size vegetable garden. My soil here is mostly sand and clay. It took a few years of constantly amending the soil before my garden produced a decent amount. Southeast GA a lot of years has drought conditions and if you’re on municipal water, then there are usually water restrictions in the summer too, which impacts gardening. Last summer was a lot of rain and my backyard was often like soup for days on end. There are also a myriad of bugs and plant diseases here that can turn your thriving vegetables into a dead zone overnight sometimes.
While I would love to grow enough fresh vegetables for myself, I’m not banking on this new gardening effort. I am continuing to stock up – especially canned goods. I also dehydrate a lot of things – especially frozen vegetables, which are still available and economical. I learned how to do that online. It works, it’s easy and I can use that freezer space for other items. The dehydrated vegetables can be stored in jars, in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers, or food saver bags. I suppose you could also use ziploc bags if you didn’t have any of the other options available.
Everywhere you look more serious problems in our food chain seem looming, so I think it makes sense to stock up, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to learn more skills and try as many ways as you can to be more self-reliant.
If you’re a person who waits for the government or “experts” to tell you economic problems are worsening or it’s time to stock up, I suspect you’ll be in for a rude awakening when reality hits you. I’m not saying panic or build a bunker, I am saying put some effort into stocking up extra food and water on a regular basis. And by all means try to come up with as many options as you can for sourcing food in your area, beyond the retail grocery stores.
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