Ok, not football at all, but it matters, eventually.

[Francewhite]

Hi Spaldy, don't worry and apology not necessary as maybe we all get a bit over excited at times. It's life!

[spaldy]

I"m too old to be running around acting like a keyboard warrior! I know better.

It will be interesting to see how some of the election outcomes worldwide play out. It will be kind of like a real world economics case study in some cases. Argentina's last election is having major impact on their economy and eventually will likely affect the global economy. They have the potential to be a world power economically.

The UK has gone the other route. They have elected a more government control, free spending government so they could be considered going the opposite direction. China is throwing money around like a drunken sailor trying to re*****ize their economy. The US has 287K of debt per citizen and spends 20k more per citizen than they bring in tax wise. It's a ticking time bomb for many of the world's largest economies and it's not likely to end well for those countries and the world overall.

The outliers such as Venezuela and Brazil are blessed with Natural resources that should put them in the top tier of the worlds economies an they are train wrecks. Some analysis's of Venezuela puts them as the the world richest country natural resource wise per capita and they are one of the poorest countries, per capita, in the world.

[spaldy]

Why would re *****ize be censored????

[spaldy]

r e v i t a l i z e ????

[Orgoner]

There are a few weird glitches on here.

T e e n is one that often applies when I post the PL update, meaning some numbers have to be typed as, well, numbers (e.g. 18).

No idea why!

[Orgoner]

It will be interesting to see how the next US administration pans out from a global standpoint (as much as domestically).

As you say, there are countries heading in quite different directions at the moment.

We shall see, eh?!

[spaldy]

I enjoy watching the real world economic "case studies" but I'm at the stage of life where I can improvise, adapt and do fine. I was not materialistic. Not virtual signaling just wasn't my thing. I preferred to adapt and fix things rather than buying new. If I was smarter at math I would have been an engineer. However, I really worry for my kids and grandkids.

My biggest fear is education and big brother. Many kids don't seem to get educated on math or how to independently verify things. Technology makes it too easy to delegate those capabilities to a machine. That machine is only as good as the person that programs it and is worthless when it does not work. Big brothers ability to track everything we do is really scary but they seem to have little or no concerns on it. Freedom is so difficult to achieve and so easy to lose. it's not always lost by guns and military force.

In the end it does always seem to come down to economics. Almost every activity involves transfer or resources and information. The changes in the worlds economies and politics seems to be speeding up exponentially.

[WTF11]

It will be interesting to see how the next US administration pans out from a global standpoint (as much as domestically).

As you say, there are countries heading in quite different directions at the moment.

We shall see, eh?!

Interesting use of the word "interesting"!

Russian "outlets" (the Kremlin and those in the state-run media), are already taunting Trump regarding his oft-made claim to be able to end the conflict in Ukraine "in a day". We will see if he takes the bait.

Should he do so, most commentators (on all sides) consider that the most likely route to that goal would be to tell Zelensky that US support to his military will be withdrawn unless a cease fire and "peace talk" are entered into. Even if such talks ONLY result in the conflict ending and the new borders are drawn according to the current frontline (not likely to be acceptable to Russia, but I'm trying to be "flexible"), that's unlikely to be the end of matters. Russia would insist on demilitarisation of the remainder of Ukraine and without the level of support currently enjoyed, I suspect Zelensky (or his replacement) would be forced to acquiesce. Nothing would effectively deter Russia from claiming by stealth that which they have proved incapable of winning by military means, installing puppet local governmental organisations across the country (as they have with the territory they have occupied), effectively occupying by stealth, right up to the Polish border.

And Trumps threat to withdraw from NATO? The rest of Europe couldn't withstand that withdrawal, never could in all NATO history (not even if all member states paid the 2.5 of GDP that the likes of the UK, Germany and France provide for their defence budget and NATO contribution). So all those of Polish descent who live in Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Minnesota etc might want to start reconfiguring their homes to accommodate folks from the mother country who don't much fancy Russian neighbours (or worse), they have a history, after all.

"If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk. When you give him the milk, he’ll probably ask you for a straw. When he’s finished, he’ll ask you for a napkin.”. Hitler started out being a mouse wanting a cookie.

Interesting times, yeah.

[spaldy]

Russia is a paper tiger. When you have to enlist criminals, cubans, north koreans as well as pull world war II era tanks out of mothballs to fight a former satelite that was largely demilitarized you aren't in any shape to take on any of the NATO countries, with or without the US.

we have given a minimum of $106,000,000,000 aid to the Ukraine. Most of it without any conditions.

[spaldy]

The UK has given $228,000,000 to Ukraine