Welcome to the year 2022 AD.

 BUT it's the year 2022 AD . AND I feel old already .America's a mess right now, and if anything improves I really wouldn't care all that much.  I am way past my limit with all of this. Back in 2019, I was just starting to put the pieces of my broken life back together, so when this thing (1)>>Covid [plan] demic  hit it felt like a slap in the face. Humans cannot live like this. It looks like it will never end . Hopefully you are stronger than I. I recommend living life as much as you can for now, hopefully this variant stuff doesn't progress too far but live free while you can. There is nothing wrong with being tired of the way things are and going out and having fun.It has been an age-old desire to have that foreknowledge. The ancients tried to gain it by studying the position of the stars, the flight of birds, the condition of an animal’s liver, the appearance of water when poured into a vessel, the position of objects that are dropped on water, and by consulting the dead. (2)>>Yet WE NEVER KNEW this was coming in 2020. WE were so off guard that the media and our government was wasting time to impeach Donald Trump for 4 years . No matter what some people may imagine, the future cannot be seen in crystal balls, cards, tea leaves or in a person’s palm. Neither can the future be learned from mediums who claim they are in contact with the dead. The people who make claims of having the power of foreknowledge are false prophets. The future is a blank page to them, just as it is to everyone else. As long as people are willing to pay them they are willing to make a pretense of being able to look into the future.For example, George Orwell’s satirical novel 1984, published in 1949, painted the picture of a dehumanized society under totalitarian rule. And in 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring drew worldwide attention to the dangers of environmental pollution due to indiscriminate use of chemicals. Since then, the best-seller list has been crowded with books on the subject.But what have all the predictions and warnings accomplished? Have they aroused the public and the authorities to take action to curb the problems and to safeguard the future? The author of the best-seller The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich, who has been writing and broadcasting on environmental issues since the 1960’s, had this to say: “In some senses, we’ve come a long way. We have the National Environmental Policy Act, we have environmental impact statements, and so on. But it’s nowhere near enough progress to keep up with the rate at which we’re tearing things apart . . . I’ve wasted a lot of breath, I guess.” He summarized his hopes for the future this way: “If completely optimistic is 10, and completely pessimistic is one, I would put it at about one point two.” Thus, all the books, reports, studies and conferences in the last several decades have done little to change most people’s thinking and attitude as to the future.People are stupid sheep.  (3)>>The Indoctrination is so deep that people truly can't see what really happening.  Not to be overlooked is the effect of the widespread practice of information manipulation, or even distortion, by governments, businesses, industries, and so forth. RIGHT NOW WE ARE LIVING FOR THE MOMENT .

NOTES AND COMMENTS: 

(1)>>Covid [plan] demic .  Plandemic is real , but poorly planned . I guess that in 2022 we still be frighten with new variations of the virus , more booster shots . The first installment of PLANDEMIC, a 26 minute documentary featuring celebrated virologist Judy Mikovits, has been seen by over one billion people worldwide, setting a historic record. The premiere of PLANDEMIC 2 (aka INDOCTORNATION) featuring white collar crime investigator, Dr. David Martin, also set a world record with 2 million viewers attending the global livestream.  Remember when Biden said they were going to knock on doors asking people to get vaccinated? That's martial law, the Holocaust and 1984 all rolled into one.I am against information control and censorship. It is my god given right as an American to reaffirm my beliefs in the echo chamber of unintentionally hilarious idea that there was no lab leak for the virus verses the notion that the virus is less dangerous than the cold .BUT still blows my mind how many people believe the "official story". Just like 911 people seem to believe whatever the MSM tells them. Logic and critical thinking have not occured to them.(2)>>Yet WE NEVER KNEW this was coming in 2020. I've  written often on my blog in the last two years we never saw this coming , we so distracted with the Trump impeachment fiasco in 2020 . The mainstream media has gas lighted us , bombed us with propaganda that some Chinese guy at the wet market in Wuhan ate? Didn't Fauci say it could have come from bat eating, when he funded gain of function in Wuhan? How is this murderer of millions still walking around? He's giving his opinion now on vaccines and health policies? (3)>>The Indoctrination is so deep that people truly can't see what really happening.  When independent media is silenced, governments are able to promote self-serving propaganda rather than facts. Now what we have been told for two years on "facts"on covid ,  is more like a psychological game in indoctrination how much a population can panic and jump as the government tells them to do . AS I write , people rushing to get Covid tested for the holidays . Again its "conditioning" of the public . Next is MORE BOOSTERS . At some point the general public will CRACK LIKE A EGG! 

Kamala Harris AWOL.

VP Kamala Harris AWOL .

Kamala Harris exposes just how useless the Vice President’s office has become in the U.S. "It's so obvious she's in over her head," said after Vice President Kamala Harris stumbled answering a national security question and seemed to call "democracy" the biggest threat to the United States, on Monday's "John Bachman Now". I find it very hard to believe that millions saw her as a qualified candidate for VP. Honestly Tulsi Gabbard should have gotten the democratic nomination. I would have voted for her without question. The sudden disappearance  of VP Kamala Harris is  VARY interesting .I said the same thing about Mike Pence in a past blog post. . Whom I thought that Pence was running Trump from behind . (1)>>Kamala Harris is  without question  America's first Woman Vice President . Yes, this tests the American system in regards to gender equality .  While most of the Democrats , even some feminists praise Biden's choice for Harris . Whereas "we" can put the puzzles together,  was not of his liking her.  (2)>> Remember how Kamala drilled Biden during the debate  , but  I think  that Biden was  giving into to pressure too pick her as his VP . ALL  the credit  should go to Speaker  of the House CA  Nancy Pelosi . The Pelosi connection to Harris is vary obvious .  (2.1)>> Tax payer money flowed into the Harris campaign from California .It's more about a slant toward her nephew California Governor Gavin Newsom .  Her political future is tied to how popular Biden is during his presidency. If Biden is popular, and people like him, then they will associate her with more of the same. If he's unpopular, nothing she could say or do would make her stand out. (3)>>At present she’s been like every other vice-President: largely forgettable. So, she’s been average. It’s fine for the country, but not so much for her political brand or hopes of being a future president. The polls show here in approval ratings like  Biden blow the 30 % percentage .The narrative has turned against Harris, the first woman and the first Black to be vice-president. In the U.S., it is always about the narrative, the contemporary cant, the conventional wisdom — even when the cant is no longer contemporary and the wisdom is no longer conventional.Harris’s problems are real. A closely reported piece on CNN on Nov. 14, based on some 30 interviews with staff and insiders, described (4)>>“exasperation and dysfunction” in the vice-president’s circle. I think this is reversing cause and effect; people don't like her, for various reasons, and that is why she performed so poorly. She was getting dumpstered in her own state and would have certainly lost it by several places if she hadn't dropped out beforehand.Those reasons she did poorly are all still true. That is lower than her four predecessors in their first years. (5)>>It’s also lower than the approval rating for President Joe Biden, who sits at 38%, and former President Donald Trump as he was leaving office in January, when he was polling around 41%.There's certainly time to rehab her image, but she is starting from a deficit, and thus far seems to have gone down further rather than up. I've had my issues with her since the primaries. But putting all of that aside; she's terribly uncharismatic. She has the same charisma issues as Hillary Clinton, with none of the political allies to make up for it. Her laughter and deflection of questions make her incredibly unlikable on camera. Where I've been disappointed is in her political ability. She's shown a lot of the same difficulty navigating political situations that she did in the primary. Take the issue of her going to the border. Folks asked her about visiting the border. She gave a very reasonable answer that there isn't much value in visiting the border, but the media found a way to criticize it anyway. She ran ineffective damage control, then as it continued to be an issue, reversed course and went to visit the border, but now it looked like she was going just because she caved to pressure, not because it was actually a good policy move.Personally, (6)>>I think if the Democrats run her in 2024 (which they probably will) they are asking to get walloped.Running Harris in 2024 would be like begging for a repeat of the Trump/Clinton matchup. And we all know how that one ended for Democrats...

NOTES AND COMMENTS: (1)>>Kamala Harris is  without question  America's first Woman Vice President . While it's true that Harris is the first of the firsts you might assume . BUT Biden's choice for a person least experienced for the Vice Presidential job is staggering . Second if you think that Democrats had a better choice for the VP Job would have been Hillary Clinton. YES , HILLARY !!!. My personal choice for the first woman President would have been Tulsi Gabbard , but that is another story . I suspect that Biden did not pick Harris , nor did he like her . An  am getting that he had some political pressure from the real de facto "President " of the US , Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi . Here are other bit's about[ curious]  Harris as the first woman VP . It's how the race card was played out by the left media outlets . For months we heard was " The First Black Woman" , the first this, and that , as far as race . The media wanted the woke-ism on the lap of Harris  while neglecting that she is part Jamaican, not black , may be mulatto .   It's more a cultural than genetic issue. She's not a descendant of slavery like African-Americans. Harris is actually the descendant a Jamaican slave owner. More stranger , not even mention that she is part Indian [ NOT NATIVE AMERICAN , NO] Look, I know this is sarcasm, but her mother was from India [ south west part ] India, Bengaldesh and Pakistan are culturally and historically different enough from other asian countries to not group them under "Asian" when talking about the countries. The subcontinent makes more sense. Are they treating identity like some kind of schizo split personality thing?How is the "black" part bigger? Her father was a Jamaican immigrant and left a few years after she was born. She was raised by her Indian mother in Canada.Just because she pretends she is "black" doesn't make it the bigger part of her identity, to make it simple throw out the race card , just just call her "Jamaican American".(2)>> Remember how Kamala drilled Biden during the debate .  NOW  we talked about "race" , lets go further into the debate between Harris and Biden . The biggest bull shit in a US debate history I've seen is when Harris  gave most personal attack of  the Democratic debate was aimed not at President Donald Trump, but at former Vice President Joe Biden. California Sen. Kamala Harris called out Biden on the issue of race, saying the way he recently described his past working relationship with two segregationist lawmakers was “hurtful.”Harris also accused Biden of opposing busing, which Biden disputed. “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me,” Harris said. (2.1)>> Tax payer money flowed into the Harris campaign from California .The Harris campaign was staring down some hard fundraising math: They had bragged about how well she’d done in the first quarter of the year after her launch, but aides could see she was falling short ahead of the quarterly fundraising deadline on June 30, which would come three days after the debate. She had raised $12 million, and their plan had targeted that number to be at least $15 million. It was also the practical consideration of political math: There was no path to the nomination for Harris—or for pretty much anyone, except for Sanders, and maybe Elizabeth Warren—except through a Biden collapse. Harris had to make a splash to get her political donations up. She had to take down Biden for any of that money to matter.(3)>>At present she’s been like every other vice-President: largely forgettable. I recall a few months ago reading an article describing how this could be a calculated move to make the notion of both a female VP and President more palatable. She has taken hard line stances and aggressively pushed opponents in the past, which conservative media tends to play off as her being "bitchy" or not having the temperament for politics. Supposing this is a real challenge for her to overcome, then it behooves her to not be too aggressive or progressive. Despite where her political ideologies may lie, until she's got a VP term under her belt and can use that as a jumping point for either herself or women politicians as a whole, it could be political suicide and set back women politicians if she comes off too strong. Kamala Harris Vice Presidency has flopped so bad. Biden essentially pulled the old school move of ending her political career by appointing her VP There’s no future for Khive. She won’t even get a MSNBC contract because she’s so uncharismatic . (4)>>“exasperation and dysfunction” in the vice-president’s circle. The rumors started circulating in July: Vice President Harris’s staff was wilting in a dysfunctional and frustrated office, burned out just a few months after her historic swearing-in and pondering exit strategies. A few days later, Harris hosted an all-staff party at her official residence, where most of her office bit into hamburgers and posted pictures of smiling, congenial co-workers on Twitter, pixelated counterpoints to the narrative of an office in shambles. Two people close to Harris' team said some individuals inside the vice president's office are frustrated with what they see as a dysfunctional operation that has been at times waylaid by internal conflict. Some of that ire is directed squarely at Harris' chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, those people said. But given his age and Harris being "a heartbeat away" from the presidency, it stands to reason that she might have hoped that she'd be more actively prepped for the Oval Office than previous vice presidents. But that clearly hasn't been the case in Year One of the Biden Administration.(5)>>It’s also lower than the approval rating for President Joe Biden. Because of Biden's age and current unpopularity, there's been lots of talk in Washington about the possibility that he won't run for reelection in 2024, though Biden himself has reportedly been assuring people he will. Kamala has only been VP for a year , but why do you think her numbers are so low compared to Biden’s? Biden has been in the media more (hes done a lot more negative things than her) while Kamala basically fades in the background. Do you think democrats should be worried about her approval numbers, in case she’s the nominee in 2024? Even among democrats, Harris scores a lot worse than Biden.Well, her approval rating is in the toilet, which isn't surprising since she comes across as phony and was the first Democratic presidential candidate to drop out of the race with similar stories of discord in her office. Biden hasn't helped by tasking her to solve unsolvable problems like the immigration issue, which Washington doesn't really want to ever confront.(6)>>I think if the Democrats run her in 2024. Joe Biden and the Democrats have many more priorities to deal with today than already thinking about the 2024 presidential election. If Joe Biden cannot get his agenda back on track, then there will be no point in talking about 2024, because the Republicans will be in an ideal position. Joe Biden's priority is therefore to keep his promises.She has the lowest approval rating of a VP in the history of America - an amazing 28 percent - she was behind Yang in her home state, and then she dropped out of the primaries polling single digits. The question is who will stop Kamala. I think the answer is Biden simply by running again. But in the unlikely event that he doesn't run, who would it be? The consensus seems to be Mayor Pete which I think is just insane. This poll shows his support among black voters right where it was in 2020. The argument has always been that once black voters get to know Pete, this would change. Well he's been one of the most visible members of the Biden administration and the support hasn't gone up at all. So who could challenge Harris... some names come to mind: Corey Booker, Eric Adams, and if, she were to full of an upset in Georgia, Stacey Abrams. Warnock too. Obviously they are all black but I could see also see someone like Osoff playing that RFK role and leading a mutli-racial colaition. Point is black voters are key. No one had Biden as their first choice. The support for him was very apathetic, as opposed to anti-Trump sentiment which was very motivating. He was just the only one palatable to enough. However, you make the first debate more like the second and Trump doesn't get covid? I don't think Biden wins.I'd say if Biden doesn't run, Harris is the most likely nominee. Say Biden runs in 2024 though (and I think he will). He has a good shot to be re-elected but even there, I think 2028 will be tough for Harris. So many people could run at that point

CONSPIRACY TIME a SATIRE

Naw but the Illuminati would still be the silent hand

Countries like the USA, Russia and China have teams of paid trolls to spread disinformation about each other and sow chaos on social media to destabilize each other, including on this very sub.Big Book of Conspiracies"(highly recommended to those who like a graphic novel with KICK) that we are all part of  (1)>>The Conspiracy, in one way or another.  (1.2)>>NOW with COVID running loose , you have to throw rationality out the window. Do you believe some world leaders orchestrated the pandemic in order to take control of the global economy? Because that's 'The Great Reset' conspiracy theory. The words (2)>>'The Great Reset' on an official letter isn't exactly a smoking gun. Unless you think that's what they mean.  If you are among the lucky few with wide knowledge and good recall, take every opportunity to educate everyone you know by delivering long monologues on any topic they think they know something about; this works best when they want to tell you about an intriguing fact they've learned or an interesting  (3)>>book about ATLANTIS  they've just finished. Not only do you get to bean authority, but you deprive them of the pleasure of sharing something they like, perhaps even making them wish they'd never heard of it at all! The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to  (4)>>secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know. I’ve wondered if all of the political upheaval and drama has actually trauma bonded the public to the ones creating the trouble? As in they are using the things they learned on individuals on the whole world now. BUT  presumably, the focus on CNN as a source of "world news" comes from a contract between PointCast and CNN. It seems highly unlikely that PointCast will ever bother seeking contrasts with the alternative news sources that present news stories with more content than O.J.'s latest court fiasco, such as Mother Jones or In These Times or any number of alternative press publications. It isn't hard to figure out who Adbusters was attacking when they printed their commercial spoof which stated. Are we ready to have a serious discussion about the influence of the WEF? (5)>>The Great Reset can no longer be dismissed as a conspiracy theory. They’ve released their manifesto via websites, videos and books. The plan is that by 2030 “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.”

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>>The Conspiracy, in one way or another. How exactly did world leaders agree on this when they can't agree on anything else and then convince the entire world's medical profession, media and civil servants to go along with their hoax?Depends on who you believe are the worlds leaders, do you believe it is Members of Parliament and the like?? If so do yourself a favor, turn off your TV and start again because the next gen of kids and what they will suffer is partly down to you .They own the global economy already. More over taking CODID situation as a windows of opportunity for a general experiment on globalist policies with no democratic election. (1.2)>>NOW with COVID running loose . Depends what you mean by orchestrated? Did they invent covid, no. Although the origin is up for debate. Have they used covid to their advantage towards their end goal, absolutely! It's happening in front of our own eyes. This was never a conspiracy theory - it was just people not willing to accept that there are people planning that ‘they will own nothing and be happy’. It’s cognitive dissonance and easier to just live in a bubble. I’ve been banging on about this for 2 years! (2)>>'The Great Reset' .So now that the “Great Reset” cat is out of the bag for all of the normies out there, what are we gonna do about it?What CAN we do? MSM is already doing damage control, changing the definition of the term and obfuscating the facts. Normies will only look as far as the BBC article, Twitter summary, or Buzzfeed regurgitation . (3)>>book about ATLANTIS . The “Atlantis” theory is becoming more and more plausible as more evidence comes out that a global cataclysm wiped out a super advanced civilization. The survivors from this civilization then spread out to various smaller communities of people that also survived and passed on their knowledge the best they could. A possible Atlantis society is way more plausible to me than Aliens.  (4)>>secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.  These wealthy powerful elites have been around since Babylon transferring their wealth through bloodline for centuries. God gave them the "Mark of Cain" about 5000 years ago referred to in Babylon as the "Mark of Anu". These people are Jesuits (Secret Society of Jesus) who historically have worshipped Satan and they've ALWAYS been around, remember they were given the Mark to RULE by God himself but they now have forsaken god. They overstep their power at the end of every civilization from Egypt to Rome until Divine Intervention eventually strikes them down.It happened in Babylon, it happened in Egypt, it happened in Rome, and it's happening NOW. The pope worships the Anti-Christ and the Roman Catholic Church is the most POWERFUL place on earth. The "Black Pope" heads this secret society. Jesuits are in control of American education, media, government, and have educated all American Presidents at Georgetown University in Washington. Anthony Fauci himself went to a Jesuit School and University and he's on video talking about it. The Roman Catholic Church has engaged in pedophillia, human sacrifice, and satanic rituals for millennia. The world power resides in Rome, never forget it. They want a one world religion under Satan, and that has been their goal since the beginning (to smite god). That's why they corrupt the youth, that's why they push the disease and sell the cure, they lead people astray, and push and advertise the LGBT agenda. Jeffrey Epstein was just one of them, Bill Clinton is one of them, Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates are Jesuits, the Rothschild's and Rockefeller families rule the world.(5)>>The Great Reset can no longer be dismissed as a conspiracy theory. Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, believes there will be no “getting back to normal” after COVID-19 subsides, saying the pandemic represents a global inflection point. These philosophies were updated earlier this year in “the Davos Manifesto 2020” which called for a “better kind of capitalism.”  The set of conspiracy theories around the Great Reset are nebulous and hard to pin down, but piecing them together gives us something like this: the Great Reset is the global elite’s plan to instate a communist world order by abolishing private property while using COVID-19 to solve overpopulation and enslaving what remains of humanity with vaccines.And yet search for the term “global reset” and you will be bombarded with breathless “exposés” of a secret globalist cabal, headed by Schwab and Bill Gates, that is using the state of shock created by the coronavirus (which is probably itself a “hoax”) to turn the world into a high-tech dictatorship that will take away your freedom forever: a green/socialist/Venezuela/Soros/forced vaccine dictatorship if the Reset exposé is coming from the far right, and a Big Pharma/GMO/biometric implants/5G/robot dog/forced vaccine dictatorship if the exposé hails from the far left.In an October 2020 open letter addressed to President Trump that has since become a cornerstone for the Great Reset conspiracy, the Catholic Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote:“A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.”

Joe Manchin's Machination .

Sen. Joe Manchin great filibuster 
slowed down another American 
government scam .

This bill is basically a big bailout of the growth ponzi scheme to keep it going for another decade.(1)>>West Virginia senator just killed Democrats' agenda.The bill, which proposed $1.75 trillion in social and climate spending, has been on shaky ground for a while. Despite the measure being a key part of President Joe Biden’s agenda. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) dashed his party’s hopes  by announcing he wouldn’t vote for the Build Back Better legislation. AND WHY I ASK ? It' simple , its nothing but  (2)>>"pork" and taxes on every American . Most of the "pork" is catering to blue states like California . Now  Manchin perhaps may have seen what was really behind Build Back Better. You might say a "uneven distribution of wealth" .I've never been sad about my country before. Yeah it always had some horrible flaws, but the war on the impoverished is what did it for me. I just struggle to understand why. I don't understand what the point in keeping us poor and bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts does to make America better. First off many of the past infrastructure plans of the past US Presidents,  as I have called them,   are nothing but  "SCAMS" that promise jobs , may be a little tax cut, most of all most of the money of these build back better plans don't go to better medical healthcare for the American people ,  (3)>>but most of the money is on sustaining the military industrial complex.  [ I give a good rundown on why US Infrastructure plans are SCAMS . see shorturl.at/wzEPX ]   NOT TO misunderstand. Manchin thinks is gross to spend money on drugs. If you’re classy you, for example, get your cocaine for free from Mitch McConnell. It’s a disgusting propaganda of class warfare that that wealthy don’t use drugs that are illegal for the working class.  (4)>>Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, according to two sources familiar with the senator’s comments. (5)>>Continuing the child tax credit for another year is a core part of the Build Back Better legislation that Democrats had hoped to pass by the end of the year. The policy has already cut child poverty by nearly 30%. Manchin’s private comments shocked several senators, who saw it as an unfair assault on his own constituents and those struggling to raise children in poverty.The ultra rich donor class owns a lot of the so-called "moderate" Dems, as well as nearly the entirety of the GOP. Ultimately, the rich want to make sure whoever in power does their bidding, or at the very least, doesn't threaten the status quo that got them so rich.I’m starting to think this is exactly the Dems role.  (6)>>Pretend to be for the working class but in reality they are Republican light. This is why they risk throwing Biden/Hillary against Trump because it’s win win for the corporate Dems. They either are in in power or they benefit from the regressive tax cuts that keep them and their donors happy. Just remember the Dems would rather have Trump president than Bernie.This is probably the nail in the coffin for Dems for mid terms and the general election. They do nothing to get their constituents motivated to vote for them.  (7)>>Student loan forgiveness, even a small amount, would absolutely help them get Millenial votes. Idk what the economic impact would be, and I'm assuming doing it now with inflation where it's at would be a short term L, but I can't believe much they've fumbled the bag.

It's about CLIMATE rather than the American People .

But if the bill truly is a goner, it will be much more than a political setback for the Biden agenda.US government to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels this decade with major legislation like this bill, to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The bill also contains funding for adapting to climate change and helping the most vulnerable communities;  (8)>>without it the "bulk" of the pork is  hardly about the American people . The headline is that Build Back Better includes more than $500 billion for climate and clean-energy measures, but keep in mind that the already-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill included $150 billion for clean-energy baubles such as electric-vehicle chargers ($7.5 billion) and electric school buses ($5 billion), so the grand total of both bills would be about $650 billion.What are we actually getting for that eye-popping sum?Some of the infrastructure bill targets worthy improvements, such as $65 billion for upgrading our creaky electricity grid and $50 billion for “climate resilience,” which includes common-sense steps such as building more robust defenses against flooding and better managing national forests to reduce wildfire risk.The bulk of the Build Back Better bill, on the other hand, consists of large tax credits and subsidies for special interests with marginal benefits — and, incredibly, still more tax breaks for the affluent on top of the reinstatement of the state and local tax deduction that will deliver more than 90 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of income earners.Sounds like it’s designed that way on purpose to drive public sentiment away from supporting getting anything in return for the taxes they pay. The government takes like a third of all the money you make, but what exactly have we gotten in return for it over the past 40 years?  (9)>>Everything that tax dollars are supposed to go toward has crumbled because the government and media present proposals to use our tax dollars in ways that help us in the worst way possible while presenting things that only benefit the ruling class, military industrial complex, and surveillance state in the best way possible.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

This is a note about " Notes and Comments " . The Notes below are my comments to expand on the article above . Each paragraph in bold letters expands , or gives more information. Also as in "notes" they are not mostly about sources to the above article , some will contain links when provided or sources quoted  .

(1)>>West Virginia senator just killed Democrats' agenda."Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced on "Fox News Sunday" that he will not vote for President Biden’s “mammoth” climate and social spending bill, essentially killing the White House's top legislative priority. "I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation, I just can't. I tried everything humanly possible, I can't get there" he told host Bret Baier. " Not a coincidence Manchin chose FoxNews as the platform to deliver this message.They fumbled it intentionally because the Establishment Dems agree with the establishment Republicans on more things than they want to admit.(2)>>"pork" and taxes on every American.  Biden's plan as EVERYONE KNOWS tried to sneak a way to tax people by expanding IRS powers to look into peoples bank accounts for transfers over 600 $ . This I think BLEW Manchin to go against the BBB .  Milton Friedman observed years ago. “You’re pushed up into higher brackets of the income tax,” Friedman explained. “The Congress, again, is in a marvelous position. It can vote to lower tax rates when in fact taxes are going up.”U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) may not have Friedman’s credentials, but he does have a better understanding of inflation than the average layman and is speaking out about the dangerous inflationary potential of the Build Back Better Act. In addition to being an obvious boondoggle, the so-called Build Back Better Act is a classic example of a bill whose (intended) inflationary impact is going to be more onerous than the cost of the bill itself. Yet, members of Congress have the gall to say that it’s not going to cost anything at all, that it will somehow “pay for itself.”(3)>>but most of the money is on sustaining the military industrial complex.  The families of 61 million children received their final payments under the expanded Child Tax Credit. This credit has kept 10 million children above the poverty line, but it is expiring as the Senate delays a vote to renew it through the Build Back Better Act.Instead, on the same day these last payments went out, the Senate voted to approve a $778 billion military spending budget — four times as much as the annual cost of the entire Build Back Better plan. Yet we've heard endlessly about how it's Build Back Better that needs to be gutted so we can skimp and save. BOTH PARTIES are for the military build up , its never about the American people as we are learning now.While the numbers are massive -- a trillion here, a trillion there -- U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, a Madison Democrat, tried to put some perspective on it all with this Oct. 3, 2021 tweet:"The annual Pentagon budget hovers over $750 billion annually, twice that of the much debated Build Back Better Act that costs about $350 billion annually as currently proposed. And the Build Back Better Act is PAID for, unlike the Pentagon’s budget (which we don’t even audit!)." After two decades of war—and nearly two years into a pandemic that just won’t end—it feels like our country is at a fork in the road. Down one way, we reinvest in our families and communities. Down the other, we follow a status quo that’s left too many Americans vulnerable.Then there’s the sprawl. The U.S. maintains more than 750 military installations around the world. Rather than keeping Americans safe, these bases—and the ships, planes, and troops that accompany them—are 20th-century relics that antagonize rivals and make armed conflict more likely. Even military officials have advocated cutting back. (4)>>Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats . Manchin put out this statement [ see >>>[ https://www.manchin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/manchin-statement-on-build-back-better-act ] One thing he said : “My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face. I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard-working American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills with no end in sight. “The American people deserve transparency on the true cost of the Build Back Better Act. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office determined the cost is upwards of $4.5 trillion which is more than double what the bill’s ardent supporters have claimed. They continue to camouflage the real cost of the intent behind this bill.    But no matter how you slice it, giving a huge tax cut to the super-rich is a weird thing to do when you’ve been claiming that the solution to our problems is simply getting the rich to “pay their fair share.” It’s even weirder when you consider that this tax break would be even bigger and more regressive than former President Trump’s tax “giveaway” that was so reviled by progressives — which the House version would keep. Benefits from the Democrats’ regressive giveaway would largely go to taxpayers in the top 20% of the income scale and would overwhelmingly benefit the top 0.1% of earners, specifically in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California.(5)>>Continuing the child tax credit for another year is a core part of the Build Back Better legislation.  This is a extremely trying problem . Given any tax credit for extremely low poverty " Americans " , this one should be worked on by both parties of Congress . BUT the child tax credits is overrun with a problem , The question has to be asked of republicans, did they agree with the 3.5 trillion tax break given to the ultra rich? How did they expect that to be payed for? Did it help them personally in any way?The worst thing, which I just learned last  on Pod Save America, is that spending bills are reported by the top-line spending number over 10 years without accounting for increased revenues while tax cuts are reported as a net figure that accounts for increased revenues. So, the media is essentially driving taxes and spending down because we negotiate those bills based on those numbers. In this bill, for example, there are plans to raise capital gains income taxes on the upper brackets, but that isn't accounted for in the $3.5 trillion. Biden: we have cut child poverty in half, Cutting the number of children would be detrimental to the overall economy. Let's ask ourselves: what's the point of a tax credit? To incentivize behavior. Why would the government want to incentivize people having children? Because the labor market relies on a certain number of people to ensure "full" employment. How can you offset retiring members of the labor force? Through childbirth and immigration. Are both of those incentivized through taxes? Yes.(6)>>Pretend to be for the working class but in reality they are Republican light. Yet I feel ever since 2016, Identity Politics has become the cornerstone focus on the Democratic Party. Their slogan was "With her," instead of "with you." I feel like identity politics is a way they can appeal to the Left (by making a show of speaking out against inequality and racism) without actually having to do anything substantial (like abolish Bush Era tax cuts or put forth a Carbon Tax). If they can make their main campaign simply speaking about Leftist issues and finding candidates who check off the right demographic, they don't actually have to bring any meat and potatoes to the political process. I think other Democrats also got tired of this charade, just like I did, and didn't even bother going out to the polls. Despite what the media portrays, I think the vast majority of Americans don't care about identity politics. "Identity politics" is really just the polite term for a movement which denounces "white privilege," the entire purpose of which is to put white people in the same moral position that Hitler put the Jews in, and the same position that communists put the "capitalists," the same position that socialists place the wealthy. The purpose, transparently, is to try to create and leverage envy of white people.By embracing this rhetoric of white privilege, and the idea that all white people are guilty of "implicit" racism at least, the Democrat party has not merely abandoned the white working class , the black working class as well . They have openly declared themselves their enemies, and the enemies of all white people generally.Whether you're willing to admit it or not, deep in your subconscious that is the reason people are uncomfortable with "political correctness" and "identity politics." It's all about demonizing an entire race of people. (7)>>Student loan forgiveness, even a small amount.  Democrats have playing a game with "student loan forgiveness" since Obama , it keeps coming up all the time , nothing is ever done .Reminder: Biden can forgive all federally held student loan debt by executive order, but has decided not to. Instead, Biden has announced plans to unpause loan payments at the start of the new year, forcing desperate people trapped in the low wage US economy into even more desperate circumstances. Honestly I don't think it has to do with that. Maybe I'm a crazy conspiracy nut but I think both parties only care about themselves and their lobbyists. They just appoint a person or two to be the scapegoat. They make a ton of money while in office and eventually the game switches sides when they eventually get voted out.It used to be that the Democratic party's lobbyists were unions, so catering to them helped working people. Now working people have no significant representation in Washington and it shows. BUT , So, weirdly enough, yes some millionaire's children are actually taking out student loans instead of cashflowing it. Their parents have the credit/assets to take out private student loans at rates <3% so it's better for them to keep their cash in investments instead of pay for the super expensive private schools in cash. As Insider has previously reported, experts and lawmakers disagree on whether Biden actually has that authority, and Biden himself wasn't so sure either and asked the Education Department to prepare a memo on his legal ability to broadly cancel student debt — a memo he has had since at least April but has yet to release it. So there is a memo but it's being kept secret for some reason. AOC should push for it to be made public.(8)>>without it the "bulk" of the pork is  hardly about the American people . The Build Back Better Act has nothing to do with infrastructure…that’s a separate bill that passed late LAST Friday night. The BBB Act is basically a Democrat wish list of items and pork barrel spending. I agree with another post above…this bill is DOA. [ The BIGGEST ARGUMENT AGAINST IS FOUND HERE >>shorturl.at/bgnFG  5 Major Problems With Biden’s Infrastructure Plan ] In short, contrary to his campaign promises, by reducing the value of money, Biden has inflicted a huge new tax on all Americans, which falls most harshly on the poor and middle class. Of course, the stock market, which adjusts more quickly to inflation, Remember Obama’s shovel ready jobs? The trillion dollars appropriated for that all went to Wall Street banks who fired their American IT staff and hired Indian H1-B workers. Remember all the highway work we had then.(9)>>Everything that tax dollars are supposed to go toward has crumbled . The math doesn't add up. The amount of economic growth generated in the short term is a drop in the bucket compared to the long term costs of maintaining America's roads and bridges.This bill is just like the ARRA - more bullshit road expansion projects. It's a bad deal for our country and does nothing to address the insolvency of ever expanding road networks and car dependent low density suburbia What infrastructure is needed the most?!? You can use this report to justify ANY spending. Road, train, or dam. So that road widening project that you know sucks "but we need to invest in infrastructure." Also this is a protection if we spent $0. It says we need to spend $13 trillion to save $10 trillion in GDP. The problem is we've had infrastructure cash for shovel ready jobs and it went to practically inventing ways to spend it rather than pinpointing the overdue upgrades. We'll get a lot of landscaping and not a lot of replacing power poles.The utility delivery systems in many cities that remain in use today were largely built in the 19th century and the opening decades of the 20th, the modern power grid was built in the 1950s with a 50 year lifespan, and in 2016 an infrastructure survey found an absurd number of bridges were structurally unsound, something like 26k. I have zero faith in Biden’s ability to deliver on any of this because frankly the people he’s beholden to (Wall St. fully backs the Obama-Pelosi axis which controls the Democratic Party) have little interest in restoring American infrastructure. They just see dollar signs, same as they did when Obama had his brilliant infrastructure plan. Oh yeah only 10% of that actually was spent on infrastructure. Just look at John Kerry’s recent climate speech where he declared that “no government will solve climate change.” 

Biden's UKRAINE PROBLEM.

Biden should use prudence in 
dealing with Putin .
America should use diplomacy ,
dialog , invite all
parties to talk about
Ukraine .
Avoid WAR at all costs !

 In 1992 Bill Clinton promised Ukraine NATO Alliance if they gave up their Nuclear Weapons. Too bad Clinton lied to Ukraine.They detested the Soviets, and were still bitter about WW2 and the damage done....But the only "loss" for Russia if Ukraine joins NATO is that Russia cannot afford to invade Ukraine any more after that. Are we still pretending that there are any Russian forces there? (1)>>Personally I wish the United States would stay out of Ukraine , seek a dialog to solve the problem with the Russians. But we have a problem that is brewing ,  (1.2)>>In December 2015, Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the vice president, appeared before Ukraine’s Parliament with a two-pronged message. The United States would defend the country from Russia, Mr. Biden said, but lawmakers in  (2)>>Kyiv also needed to fortify their own democracy with real progress on anticorruption reforms. Now there is a massive Russian troop built up along the border of Ukraine , and pretty much everyone else asking if Russia is about to invade Ukraine — again.During the call, Biden told Putin the “US and our allies would respond with strong economic and other measures” if Russia pursued military escalation, according to the White House, and called for a return to diplomacy. To be clear, a military option is not among the “other measures,”  (3)>>as Biden said  sending US troops unilaterally was “not in the cards right now.”While Mr. Blinken’s trip was a demonstration of renewed American commitment to an independent, democratic and Western-leaning Ukraine, for many longtime watchers of U.S.-Ukraine policy, it was a depressing reminder of how little has changed in a country that has become ground zero for a renewed power struggle between  (4)>>Washington and Moscow.It is not that one part would like to be Russian and the other would like to be part of the EU. One part of the population is more Russian orientated while the other is more anti-Russian orientated, but they have the same nationality. This is the effect of a history of Russification, cultural repression and bad leadership.So the issue is not how to split space, since they live in both places and they need each other for stuff like transportation and resources. But how to have a functional nation anyway.While  (4.1)>>Moscow legally annexed Crimea,  (5)>>it has not moved to annex Donbas. It appears instead to want to use a simmering conflict in that eastern Ukrainian region as a means to put pressure on, destabilize and disorient the corrupt government in Kyiv, with the goal of making it harder for the government to build a successful Ukrainian state and draw closer to Europe. (Moscow has interfered elsewhere in the post-Soviet space to try to maintain a Russian sphere of influence.)There are many nationalities in Ukraine.  (6)>>Russians and Ukrainians are close enough ethnically and culturally so that you can't put clearly defined borders there. There are very many people in Ukraine who consider themselves Russians just as many who consider themselves Ukrainians. Almost all Ukrainians speak Russian. Splitting makes no sense. Without the Kremlin’s cooperation, Kyiv on its own cannot resolve the conflict in Donbas, and Crimea poses an even harder question. 

The US Needs to stay out of Ukraine !

First, Russia's national security/military leverage relies heavily on nuclear capacity.  (7)>>They simply have to ensure no NATO anti-ballistic missile system on Ukrainian soil, for whatever price they could afford---kinda like Russia version of Cuba Missile Crisis.And last, maybe least, EU wont cooperate with US in long term on this issue, as EU does not want to make Russia fully hostile towards them. Like China,  (8)>>they need gas from Russia. More importantly, a war between Russia and NATO will inflict heavy damage on Europe(geographically close to Russia,connected by land), but not US.Ukraine should go back being some kind of satellite state of Russia, like always was. It's the only stable solution.Looks like to me that  (9)>>Putin is putting in place the perfect plan to invade Ukraine this winter or the winter after... ? I'm no specialist whatsoever and even though I have a "hobby" interest on the history of the WWII and other wars, I'm far from having read enough about it. However, there are some signs for this plan:EU contries, particularly Germany, stupidily phased out many coal and oil powered energy stations, becoming more dependant on Russian gas. (10)>>The Nordstream pipeline, fiercely defended by Merkel, is a symbol of this foolish mentality.As far as the territorial situation is concerned, Russia is winning, but only to a limited extent. It has seized parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, and they are clearly able to hold onto it.It might come as a shock to Kiev’s strongest supporters, but Ukraine is not the center of the universe. It’s obviously important to those who live there, as well as those with family or friends there. The ill humanitarian consequences of the ongoing conflict should be of concern to people of good will anywhere. But Ukraine is largely irrelevant to American security. Those areas where part of Russian territory for 200 years .Ukraine sealed its own fate when it took the CIA bait and embraced the Maidan coup, spearheaded by the violence provided by Right Sector and other neo-Nazi groups back in 2013. Since then, its GDP/capita declined by 1/3 in real $ terms, millions of its young citizens left the country in desperation, setting it on the path of demographic disaster. Living standards tanked and there are few real prospects of improvement.   (11)>>The idea  that Russia fears a "prosperous", "successful" Ukraine? It really has nothing to fear in that regard! Now it is close to losing the lucrative gas transit business, which will make things even worse.The next reason enough: Ukraine isn’t important geographically; Russia matters more than Ukraine to America; blame is widely shared for Ukraine’s travails; Washington never guaranteed Ukraine’s security; Vladimir Putin is not Hitler and Russia is not Nazi Germany (or Stalin’s Soviet Union); and there’s no genocide.

Using the Diplomatic Leverage on Ukraine .

War has to be avoided at all costs with Russia over Ukraine . Despite uncertainty about Russian military plans and the outcome of Ukrainian military operations against the rebels in their remaining redoubts, it is not too soon to consider how to lay the foundations for a negotiated solution. (12)>>This must involve the EU and UK , the US , Russia and Ukraine . Biden’s video call with Putin  night is important for both clarifying intentions and cooling tensions regarding Ukraine. To encourage Biden to accept this responsibility, Russia has been staging military drills close to Ukraine’s borders, with enough troops massing there to launch an offensive. As Putin seeks a final formula for the configuration of the post-Soviet space, the signal is clear:  (13)>>if the Minsk agreements aren’t being implemented, the alternative is military force.Russia proposed including the United States in the Normandy format, but that Germany and France refused, as well as Putin’s calls for firm guarantees that NATO will not expand further east: something only the United States can promise. Although this may look like an unreasonable negotiating position now, it clearly sets out the strategic horizon of Russia’s demands.In December 2019, as French, German, Ukrainian and Russian leaders met in Paris to hold their first Normandy Format meeting to advance the Ukrainian peace process in three years, there seemed to be cause for hope.Even though NATO and Russia no longer have diplomatic representations to each other, this does not mean that all contacts have been severed. In Brussels, Russia keeps an embassy to Belgium (and a mission to the EU, although it is not relevant for this purpose); all NATO countries keep embassies in Moscow. It's still possible that some historic agreement could be made with all parties involved .

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>>Personally I wish the United States would stay out of Ukraine .  American hooliganism to enter a conflict with out using a diplomatic solution first is vary worrisome . More worrisome than Putin reasons why he would invade Ukraine . While Biden's video conference call with Putin should have had the Ukrainian leader included . My question here is , with all the militarily weapons the US sold to Ukraine , its a cold war tactic .The U.S. has made a habit of promiscuously meddling around the world. The results rarely have been pretty. Thousands of Americans have been killed, tens of thousands have been wounded, hundreds of thousands of foreigners have died, and a multitude of international furies have been loosed. Putin is right that any NATO troops , weapons in Ukraine is a threat to Russian territories . His build up of troops along the Ukraine border is justifiable .  No one wants a war with Russia , I don't . But the US NEEDS to hold talks with Russia , invite the Ukraine side as well.(1.2)>>In December 2015, Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the vice president. 1. Viktor Shokin was investigating Hunter Biden and Burisma in 2016. Ukrainian news sources and the NYT reported on the 2 open investigating into Burisma at the time. Latvia had reported to Ukraine (and confirms) that money being funneled to Hunter Biden was being laundered through Latvian businesses and Shokin was investigating that situation. This directly jeopardized Biden's multi-million dollar "job" of staying home and smoking crack.2. Viktor Shokin had seized property belonging to Burisma's owner in Feb. of 2016 (again, this can be sourced to Ukrainian news agencies at the time it happened).3. Just a week or so later, Burisma contacted the US state dept. and requested their assistance with the investigation into them, naming Hunter Biden as a reason they'd want to help. The emails that this request was being discussed was gotten via a FOIA lawsuit and they are available to view on the web.4. A few weeks after that, Joe Biden told Ukraine that if they didn't fire Viktor Shokin within the next 6 hours, they weren't going to get the billion dollars in aid appropriated by Congress. This can be sourced to Joe Biden himself, as he bragged about this at CFR meeting and it's on Youtube.5. After acquiescing to Biden's extortion, Biden's personally approved replaced started to work. Not long after, he exonerated Burisma and all of it's team of all charges.6. Joe Biden however claims that he extorted Ukraine because Viktor Shokin wasn't investigating, which is demonstrably false, and ironic given that the guy Joe Biden approved to replace Shokin completely let the corrupt Burisma off the hook for anything. Would you like educated on anything else that you aren't aware of?"Let's see - Ukraine fired their corrupt prosecutor Shokin because he wasn't investigating corruption of politicians"A complete lie. NO ONE has been able to show that Shokin did ANYTHING corrupt, and he hadn't even been in office a year at that point. In fact, the President of Ukraine complained bitterly to Joe Biden in a phone call about the fact that Biden could not provide any just cause for Shokin's firing. This phone meeting was even recorded: President Porshenko to Joe Biden 2/28/2016: "Yesterday, I met with the General Prosecutor Shokin, and despite of the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong … I especially asked him to resign.""Contrary to your inept thinking - the US doesn't have ultimate authority to remove foreign country's officials"But corrupt US officials do have the ability to use a billion in tax payer funds to extort foreign officials to do their bidding, just as Porshenko claimed in the phone conversation he had with Biden.There's been ZERO evidence of any actual corruption by Shokin, and you'll find no evidence that any third party had any complaints of corruption during Shokin's time in office as chief prosecutor until Jan/Feb of 2016 when the investigations into Burisma WHO WERE BRIBING OFFICIALS started to heat up. No one said a peep over any of this until Joe Biden decided action needed to be taken, and the evidence showed this only happened after Burisma contacted him and complained about Shokin and name dropped his son. Sorry. (2)>>Kyiv also needed to fortify their own democracy with real progress on anticorruption reforms. For years, U.S. officials have implored Ukraine’s leaders to deliver on promises to drive out political corruption, a main cause of the 2014 popular revolution that pushed out the country’s Russian-backed president —The revelation in the leaked Panama Papers that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, on assuming office in 2014, had passed ownership of his major chocolate business, Roshen, to an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands may not have exposed anything illegal. But the move was at the very least politically insensitive on the president’s part and will have confirmed the impression of many ordinary Ukrainians that their leaders have managed to stay part of a global wealthy elite while the country’s average standard of living has fallen.Kiev must also contend with a growing problem behind the front lines: far-right vigilantes who are willing to use intimidation and even violence to advance their agendas, and who often do so with the tacit approval of law enforcement agencies.Many of the National Militia's members come from the Azov movement, one of the 30-odd privately-funded “volunteer battalions” that, in the early days of the war, helped the regular army to defend Ukrainian territory against Russia's separatist proxies. Although Azov uses Nazi-era symbolism and recruits neo-Nazis into its ranks, a recent article in Foreign Affairs downplayed any risks the group might pose, pointing out that, like other volunteer militias, Azov has been “reined in” through its integration into Ukraine’s armed forces. While it’s true that private militias no longer rule the battlefront, it’s the home front that Kiev needs to worry about now.When Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea four years ago first exposed the decrepit condition of Ukraine’s armed forces, right-wing militias such as Azov and Right Sector stepped into the breach, fending off the Russian-backed separatists while Ukraine’s regular military regrouped.  (3)>>as Biden said  sending US troops unilaterally .No, we don't lie about our intentions like cowards. US soldiers are in Ukraine and they are training Ukraine soldiers.The consequences of an invasion would go beyond sanctions, however. Biden said he told Putin he would likely have to increase US troop presence in Europe to reassure NATO allies of the United States' continued support if Russia went ahead with an invasion.Putin has long complained about the presence of NATO troops along Russia's border, alleging they are a threat to his country's security.Ukraine has been seeking membership in NATO for several years, but is not in the final stages of entering the defense bloc. Biden has said previously the country must first do more to scrub out corruption before joining.White House is relying on Germany to dissuade them by leveraging the pipeline. There likely isn't much of a "plan B" as NATO won't be joining in the fun.Since there are no US troops in ukraine, the untimely demise of those new arrivals of unknown origin would be regrettable, but certainly not a casus belli. When one waltzes into the middle of a warzone, s/he should be prepared to end up in a crossfire....... what exactly do you think they're going to do in Ukraine if "shit hits the fan?" Nothing. Countries around Ukraine that are in NATO are an ENTIRELY different situation.(4)>>Washington and Moscow. Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticized the American move."The participation of instructors and specialists from a third country on the territory of Ukraine, where an unresolved intra-Ukrainian conflict remains, where problems persist in carrying out the Minsk agreement, is far from helping resolve the conflict. To the contrary, it enables destabilizing the situation," Peskov said.See, the problem here, Mr Peskov, is there shouldn't be a second country --specifically, your country-- on the territory of Ukraine. Your country invaded Ukraine, and now you're all butthurt because the US brings in some help for the Ukrainian side. So, tell you what: seeing as you were the first in, why don't you go first in pulling your troops out. Once your troops are back in garrison, perhaps the US will think about reducing its footprint.Sound good? --or was this the proxy war for which your country was asking?(4.1)>>Moscow legally annexed Crimea. Crimea has historically been Russian though. Most people who live there are Russian speaking. I think people miss the big picture, not much different than Serbs and Montonegrians. Prior to the invasion, Ukrainians generally had a positive view of Russia. Maybe the hope was that by taking Crimea, the Ukrainians would recognize that their government is incompetent and can't protect them, and it would be better to either join Russia or be their closely aligned puppet like Belarus? Whatever the case may be, Russia basically blew up all their good will and shifted Ukraine decidedly to the West. I don't really see a clear cut way they can get a "win" out of this. (5)>>it has not moved to annex Donbas. Kremlin TV chief Margarita Simonyan was the headline-grabbing highlight of the recent Russian Donbas Forum, which took place in Occupied East Ukraine on January 28 and signaled a fresh escalation in Moscow’s seven-year hybrid war against Ukraine. Simonyan’s words carry significant weight. As chief editor of the Kremlin’s flagship television network RT (formerly Russia Today) and international news agency Rossiya Segodnya, she occupies a position close to the summit of Putin’s propaganda apparatus and is widely recognized as a trusted regime insider. While Simonyan does not officially speak for the authorities, it is highly unlikely she would have traveled to the war zone in eastern Ukraine and made such provocative statements without having first received a nod of approval from the Kremlin.(6)>>Russians and Ukrainians are close enough ethnically and culturally.Many observers have suggested that since most Crimeans were ethnically Russian, they were therefore loyal to Russia, and therefore welcomed annexation. But is it true? Would Crimeans have voted to join Russia if the referendum had been legal, free and fair? Back in the 1990s, Crimean separatists had tried to secede from Ukraine, in part to be closer to Russia. They were able to organize a referendum in 1994, which Kiev declared illegal. This referendum showed mass support for a “treaty based” relationship between Kiev and Crimea, and for allowing dual Russian and Ukrainian citizenship, which was banned under Ukrainian law. Russian President Vladimir Putin says he believes Russians and Ukrainians constitute one nation and that the countries should find a way to integrate.Putin made the comments in an interview with the American film director Oliver Stone ; material from the interview was used in a Stone film about Ukraine and the full transcript was published by the Kremlin on Friday.“I believe that Russians and Ukrainians are one people ... one nation, in fact,” Putin said. “When these lands that are now the core of Ukraine joined Russia ... nobody thought of themselves as anything but Russians.”VERY surprised that 41% of Ukrainians would agree with this statement. Thought it would be much lower. In the east of the country and among the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate such an opinion is shared by more than 60 percent of respondents. The thesis of "one nation" is shared by more than 80 percent of the electorate of the pro-Russian Opposition Platform. In the west of Ukraine, on the contrary - more than 70 percent disagree with this statement.In a recent article, Putin argues that "Ukraine's true sovereignty is possible in partnership with Russia." He also repeats an opinion he has expressed many times that Russians and Ukrainians are "one nation." (7)>>They simply have to ensure no NATO anti-ballistic missile system on Ukrainian soil.In addition to training, this declared presence of US troops serves as a potential trigger mechanism for major escalation. Russia has described the U.S. anti-missile shield in Europe as a “threat” and says it is taking “protective measures” to guard against it, the country’s state news agency TASS reported.Similar to US troops near the DMZ in Korea or NATO troops in west Berlin. They would have no chance of doing something practical defense-wise against a full scale Russian attack, but their loss would immediately ignite american outrage, guaranteeing a major American response/retaliation. This is how you can just send a few Americans or NATO troops into a country and have them serve as an effective deterrent. Biden said “no unilateral US troop deployments to Ukraine.” Bit of a moot point since there are already NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine, so he’s telling the truth - the US troops already there won’t be deployed unilaterally, they’ve already been joined by other NATO troops. I’m not sure it’ll take much for someone to invoke Article 5 if SHTF.The second thing is, I wouldn't call threatening the big investment that Russia has been pouring its influence behind to revive its struggling economy, namely, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, just a Horny Bonk. If Putin invades Ukraine and as a result the Americans and Germans begin dismantling the pipeline, Russia can't sell gas. Which means that the Oligarchs who make a lot of their money off of oil and gas will lose tons of money, and Putin may find himself falling down the stairs of his home in a "tragic accident that all Russians should learn from."(8)>>they need gas from Russia. So when Russian President Vladimir Putin stepped in , offering to increase Russia’s gas supplies to Europe, regional gas prices (up a staggering 500% so far this year) fell and markets breathed a sigh of relief.Experts warned that Russia’s offer demonstrated that Europe is increasingly vulnerable to Moscow’s ability to turn on — and off, more importantly — gas supplies as and when it wants.Gas prices have risen this year because of factors including low gas inventories and increased demand following the economic recovery since the easing of COVID-19 lockdowns, as well as tighter-than-usual supplies from Russia. In Britain, some energy companies have gone bust, consumers face much higher energy bills and companies in many sectors including food production and agriculture have felt the pain.(9)>>Putin is putting in place the perfect plan to invade Ukraine this winter or the winter after... ?  Do I believe Putin wants to invade Ukraine ? I think you have to give him first the justification for a invasion. ANY kind of NATO troops or US weapons in Ukraine would constitute a security risk for Russia . I do get and understand the reasons why Putin would react . What's going on in Ukraine is similar to the Cuban missile  crisis , except this time NATO is encroaching on Russia .  I also don't think  Putin's gonna go in, but something about this buildup has got US intel spooked. Whatever they're seeing is apparently alarming enough that the rest of NATO seems to be united in countering this buildup.There's nothing to "pull out" of, Russia isn't at war with Ukraine. It's a civil war in a small region in east Ukraine, a region that wants to secede. That conflict has precisely nothing to do with any NATO dealings Ukraine has or has not. I would understand this discussion if Russia was marching on Kiev, but they aren't and the war isn't anywhere near the capitol.(10)>>The Nordstream pipeline, fiercely defended by Merkel, is a symbol of this foolish mentality. Former President of the European Council Donald Tusk called the decision to build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline the biggest mistake of outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, during a conference on Sunday."From the perspective of EU interests, Nord Stream 2 is a bad project," Tusk said, as reported by Polish news outlet PAP.Tusk also stated that Merkel had recognized this in a conversation the two had had. He added that Merkel had been 'helpless' in the face of the lobbying of German business interests."I've done everything I could to make the EU less reliant on Russian gas, including establishing an energy union," said Tusk.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been vocal in his opposition to the pipeline, calling it a "dangerous geopolitical weapon of the Kremlin". By bypassing Ukraine, the pipeline deprives the country of gas transit fees.Poland has been one of the most vocal critics of the pipeline, arguing that it hands Moscow influence over Central and Eastern European countries. Tusk has previously voiced open criticism of Merkel over the project.According to Tusk, the Netherlands, Austria and Hungary were in favor of the project, whereas the Czech Republic expressed neutrality. (11)>>The idea  that Russia fears a "prosperous", "successful" Ukraine?Moscow's leverage in places like Ukraine is one way to preserve that influence. But there are other reasons why Ukraine is of deep interest to Russia — reasons that have more to do with history, faith, economics and culture. Ukraine, along with Georgia, has been the primary battleground, literally and metaphorically, for this struggle. Ukraine shares a common historical heritage with Russia. Its leaders both competed and worked together with Russia for centuries. Both Russia and Ukraine initially managed the breakup of the Soviet Union and the reemergence of Ukraine as an independent country reasonably well, but tensions over what Russians call their “Near Abroad” were present from the start. Those tensions grew over time as Russia sought to reestablish its hegemonic control over an increasingly assertive and nationally conscious Ukraine.Many consider Ukraine to be the birthplace of the region's Orthodox Christianity. Ukraine then became part of the Russian empire, and later part of the Soviet Union, where Ukrainian men were pivotal in the Soviet defeat of the German army in World War II. (Ukraine was perhaps the most important Soviet republic after Russia).(12)>>This must involve the EU and UK , the US , Russia and Ukraine . But for there to be any chance of progress toward resolving the Donbas conflict, itself necessary for improving relations between Moscow and the West, the parties will need to address certain core areas of disagreement relating to implementation of the Minsk agreements.  Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden set out their opposing positions on Ukraine in a video call on Tuesday and agreed that Russia and the United States should keep talking, the Kremlin said.Putin said he wanted clear international legal agreements that would exclude any further Nato advance to the east, and the removal of weapons that threaten Russia in neighboring states, primarily in Ukraine. He added that Russia was preparing clear legal documents to support its demands.Still, with Russia reversing its troop build-up and Washington interested in a June  2022 summit with Moscow, the EU and its member states may have an opportunity to work with the U.S. and UK to develop a joint deterrence strategy and revive the peace process.(13)>>if the Minsk agreements aren’t being implemented.  All sides agreed that it was solid enough to proceed with next stages of Minsk 2.It is particularly interesting to see that the article advocates a change of sequence and timing of actions that are already a part of the Minsk Agreement. This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, quoted by RIA Novosti.“We, of course, will very clearly state our approaches to the Ukrainian settlement, to the need to force the Kiev regime to fulfill its obligations written in black and white within the framework of the Minsk package of measures,” he said. According to Lavrov, the Ukrainian side will only listen to the United States.