The Last Vestige Of Optimism

I don’t expect that my wonderful wife and I will win the Mega Millions or Powerball lotteries. However, I do believe that we can win and my belief, no doubt, exceeds the miniscule probability (asymptotically approaching zero, remember) that we will win.

Growing up as the child of Holocaust survivors has left me less than an optimist. My inability to find a satisfying career post-baseball has amplified my pessimism. For example, I think we have basically no chance of buying the “Goose Bumps” house.

However, I still find myself thinking that we could win a lottery. In my diminished mental state, though, I try to rationalize being OK with only matching the five main numbers and missing the Mega Ball or Power Ball. That could still yield as much as $5 million, pre-tax, in the Mega Millions. Still, that thinking is an obvious manifestation of being a pessimist at the core.

We are a product of nature and nurture. NO behavioral paradigm, not even being an optimist, is always the optimal course of action. That’s one of the difficult aspects of being human, knowing when to deviate from one’s normal behavior. I firmly believe that being flexible and being objective are very important in achieving one’s goals.

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I thought this article from CEPA, the Center for European Policy Analysis, was interesting. It’s titled, “It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia.”

Here are some key points; please indulge me as I intend to quote heavily from the piece.

 

“Altogether, the Biden administration received Congressional approval for $40bn in aid for Ukraine for 2022 and has requested an additional $37.7bn for 2022. More than half of this aid has been earmarked for defense.

These sums pale into insignificance when set against a total US defense budget of $715bn for 2022. The assistance represents 5.6% of total US defense spending. But Russia is a primary adversary of the US, a top tier rival not too far behind China, its number one strategic challenger. In cold, geopolitical terms, this war provides a prime opportunity for the US to erode and degrade Russia’s conventional defense capability, with no boots on the ground and little risk to US lives.

The Ukrainian armed forces have already killed or wounded upwards of 100,000 Russian troops, half its original fighting force; there have been almost 8,000 confirmed losses of armored vehicles including thousands of tanks, thousands of APCs, artillery pieces, hundreds of fixed and rotary wing aircraft, and numerous naval vessels. US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment. If we divide out the US defense budget to the threats it faces, Russia would perhaps be of the order of $100bn-150bn in spend-to-threat. So spending just $40bn a year, erodes a threat value of $100-150bn, a two-to-three time return.

The war has served to destroy the myth that Russian military technology is somehow comparable to that of the US and West. Remember that Ukraine is using only upgraded second generation US technology but is consistently beating whatever Russia’s military can deploy. Wars are shop windows for defense manufacturers; any buyer in their right mind will want the technology made by the winner. Putin’s misjudgment has merely provided a fantastic marketing opportunity for its Western competitors.”

 

Ukraine is fighting for its very existence having been brutally attacked by an evil dictator. Those in the US who question aid to Ukraine are showing their ignorance and their lack of connection to such barbarism. I know from my parents just how evil the world can be.

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The automotive well has run dry. I suspect many of you are tired of reading about whether I’m going to buy a Cadillac XLR or Pontiac Solstice GXP, or maybe a Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk.

I do not have the mental stamina for another post series like Cars: A To Z or Threes And Sevens. Maybe, just maybe, if we buy the “Goose Bumps” house and I really have a place to comfortably and safely store another car, then I might resume writing about my choices.

The average blog exists for only 100 days. In two weeks, this blog will be five years old. I fully understand how blog authors just run out of steam.

 

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