Legacy

Political leaders seem to be concerned about their legacy and here is Obama's. From NPR.... Every president sees his party lose hundreds of positions — it's the price a party holding the White House pays — but no president has come close to Obama. During Obama's eight years in office, the Democrats have lost more House, Senate, state legislative and governors seats than under any other president. When Obama took office, there were 60 Democratic senators; now there are 46. The number of House seats held by Democrats has shrunk from 257 to 188. Democratic Party has lost a net total of 13 Governorships and 816 state legislative seats since President Obama entered office, the most of any president since Dwight Eisenhower. The 2022 mid terms are looking much like the Obama years.

Nuke power

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh. On CNN this AM there was a special report saying....dire report world running out of ways to fight climate change. Will someone tell these experts about thorium nuke plants. Will someone tell them to use natural gas in place of coal at power plants. Will someone tell them about natural gas for transportation.

Ukraine aid

When Putin took Crimea the congress approved $300 million in aid for Ukraine including anti armor systems, mortars, grenade launchers and ammunition but Obama refused to go along. He feared this would just cause the Russians to escalate. Here is a report from the New York Times in June 2015.WASHINGTON — With the peace process stalled and violence escalating in Ukraine, a bipartisan coalition in Congress is defying President Obama and European allies by pressing the administration to provide weapons to the embattled nation. From the Chicago Tribune December 2017 WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has approved a plan to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine The new arms include American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, U.S. officials said late Friday. This report is from the Washington Post The Trump administration has approved the largest U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine since 2014. Here is from Politico June 2021 The Biden White House has temporarily halted a military aid package to Ukraine that would include lethal weapons, a plan originally made in response to aggressive Russian troop movements along Ukraine’s border this spring. Both Obama and Biden feared that by giving aid to Ukraine they would provoke Russia so they refused request from Ukraine for aid.

Rich Russians

There are about 100 friends of Putin whom he helped get rich quick when the Soviet government fell in 1992. Their fortunes grew and today are worth about $800 billion dollars which is about the worth of the rest of the 144 million Russians. It's reported that many of these billionaires are holding money for Putin. They spend money lavishly. An example is Roman Abramovich, a former Russian provincial governor and Putin ally who became a steel and metals magnate. Now a dual Israeli citizen with a net worth estimated at more than $13 billion. He used his fortune to buy the British soccer club Chelsea and homes in London and New York. Many of the others are well known and could easily be charged with stealing money from the Russian people.

Politico

Her is a report from Politico a liberal site The world’s biggest social media companies are scrambling to combat a global barrage of Kremlin-backed falsehoods and digital tricks around the invasion of Ukraine — putting the tech giants back in the political crosshairs over the spread of online disinformation. Russia-backed media reports falsely claiming that the Ukrainian government is conducting genocide of civilians ran unchecked and unchallenged on Twitter and on Facebook. Videos from the Russian government — including speeches from Vladimir Putin — on YouTube received dollars from Western advertisers. Unverified TikTok videos of alleged real-time battles were instead historical footage, including doctored conflict-zone images and sounds. These debunked posts have been racking up millions of likes, comments and shares on Facebook and Twitter, according to CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool owned by Meta, and POLITICO’s separate review of TikTok and Google’s YouTube.

Energy policy

The Biden administration states that it is their concern about climate change that determines their energy policy. This policy sets up road blocks to keep energy companies from expanding and producing more oil, coal and natural gas while simultaneously encouraging the development of wind and solar. Many ordinary citizens believe in this policy but in their personal lives are not willing to make the necessary sacrifices. Look at your life and your neighbors lives. Do you live in a small house, drive a small car, live in the city or do you live in a large house on a large lot in the suburbs and drive 20 miles to work each day in your SUV or pickup. If you are in the latter group do you water your grass and spray with herbicides and fertilizers, do you mow every week in the summer and use other tools like edgers and leaf blowers. Do you have a four wheeler and a boat to go with your cabin at the lake where you also have a lawn. If climate change means the end of the world as we know it in just a few years are these people acting like believers or is this like many expect just a political position for these people. Climate change is real and the solution is nuclear power but that is never mentioned and as long as people are manipulated using politics nothing much will change.

Putin Tyson

What is going to happen to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remains to be seen but when Russian news reported that he left the country he put his safety at risk and showed up on TV in front of the government buildings in Kiev. Contrast that to the former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani who fled the Taliban and is now living in UAE. How he is paying for this is not known but he is accused of taking money with him when he left Kabul. Here is some military advice to Putin from Mike Tyson who said, Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. I always thought that explained the difference between academia and the business world. All of those physics problems which used friction-less planes.