Ulti

“Back in our own country, over 20% of Americans struggle to pay their energy bills and roughly 10% have received the utility disconnection notice in the last 12 months. Think about that for a moment. The last administration recklessly pursued policies that were certain to drive up electricity prices, “ While he mentioned part of the price of energy going up is the rapid advancement of AI data centers…… the cost of extra energy consumption being borne by the states residents ( at least in the state of Georgia even with the new very expensive and way over budget nuclear power plant). Legislation has yet passed the republican house and senate in Ga as well as no help from the all republican members of the state PSC. “We have outsourced far too much manufacturing and our allies in Europe have gone much further in this destructive direction” yea we have and this was driven for many years by corporations corporate profits and. cheaper goods for the consumer .(. Not a leftist or rightist policy per say) overall I agree a more rational energy policy … no more windmill giveaways like in Cape Cod where there’s been an environmental crisis from failure https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/environment/2024/07/24/nantucket-select-board-turbine-blade-failure-vineyard-wind-cape-cod-marthas-vineyard-offshore-wind/74506581007/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/03/11/russia-wagner-mali-mercenaries-putin/ meanwhile back at the Russian ranch

https://warontherocks.com/2025/03/exposing-chinas-legal-preparations-for-a-taiwan-invasion/

+1

Good Man! And get that good honey theu Costco when it’s on sale

That’s awesome I’ll have to try… but I’m partial to the green tea shincha …. Especially with all the long term data of the health benefits behind it…… and I admit I cheat a little and add some Manuka honey in the am for a kickstart

Again , progressive policy is only part of the Democrats issue…. If Biden had kept his word about being a 1 term president… if they had a primary instead of forcing K Harris on us …. If they had picked a centrist vp candidate that would have shown a move towards the political middle… none of this happened; That’s why we have Trump ; and until the Dems move to the middle and show they mean it … or a centrist 3rd party is formed….im afraid the gifting to the Trumpican party will continue.

https://www.ochaandco.com all their teas and matcha are excellent… I’ve been a bit of a snob for years and like them very much

One of the biggest I see is the deliberate attempt to destroy the checks and balance system here in the USA that keeps both parties somewhat in line no matter who is in power

I’m surprised no one has mentioned green tea….much better than coffee and alcohol I get 1st cut shincha green tea sent from Japan .. not that expensive.. Taste great and , been doing it for years .. Also have been using an Oura rings since they came out/ tea has no effect on deep sleep / rem readings

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ceraweek-top-oil-executives-reckon-with-downturn-even-trump-cheers-them-2025-03-09/

https://bilello.blog/2025/the-week-in-charts-2-28-25 section 4 has a good chart of Brk cash as % of assets over the years and current and historical cash levels of money managers ( boa survey)

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/george-teddy-kunhardt-on-becoming-katharine-graham/id1234429850?i=1000697505919 fantastic interview with the filmmakers and , in different spots, discuss Mr B

https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5ef3c7300432b40ed865991a/67a4f75703627bd3a927077e_Global Value Investing in Our Era (2024-12-07).pdf Global Value Investing in Our Era Li Lu Speech at the 10th Anniversary Celebration of the Value Investing Course, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, December 7, 2024 Thank you, Professor Jiang Guohua, Mr. Jing Chang, and all the teachers, colleagues, and students who made this course possible! This year, during Professor Jiang's visit to the U.S., we discussed how this course has had a meaningful impact in both academia and industry over the past ten years. The number of online course applicants this year exceeded 1,000, which is a testament to its success. Ten years ago, when we decided to collaborate with Peking University to support the establishment of this course, it was inspired by my personal experience. Thirty-five years ago, when I first arrived in the U.S., Columbia University offered a similar course, which gave me the opportunity to meet value investing guru Warren Buffett. This encounter profoundly changed the trajectory of my life over the next three decades. So, we hoped to bring such opportunities and ideas to young Chinese students as well. Today, many friends and students are participating both in person (in Seattle) and virtually from Beijing. Thank you for being here! Without further ado, let me dive into the topics at hand. In my first talk in 2015, I discussed "The Prospects of Value Investing in China." Five years later, in 2019, the topic was "The Theory and Practice of Value Investing." Earlier this year, Professor Jiang visited Seattle to discuss ideas for the 10th anniversary and invited me to speak again. Today, I would like to discuss "Global Value Investing in Our Era." Over the past five years, both China and the world have experienced many changes, causing significant confusion for investors. Value investing, no matter where it is practiced, must be closely tied to the era we live in. While value investing emphasizes bottom-up fundamental analysis, the companies we invest in exist in a specific era and are inevitably influenced by various macro factors. Thus, we cannot escape the times we live in. With that in mind, I would like to share some thoughts

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ufo-age-of-disclosure-movie-interview-1236154768/ trailer looks pretty cool

No argument from me; I totally agree… Both sides are equally corrupt… one thing being failed to mention ( and I left the ballot blank because of this) …. Was having a mentally challenged president who had promised to be one term …. Running again and not having a democratic primary to allow me to vote for my candidate of choice….instead having a progressive Cali who came in dead last last time she ran and her equally progressive VP pick . A centrist candidate or even if a centrist VP was picked… would have done much to persuade centrist like myself to vote for the Dems

Article in foreign affairs from the Ukrainian viewpoint on how not to em the war… seems like the UK’s are taking their past 2014 histwith Russia into account TETIANA KYSELOVA is an Associate Professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and Director of the Mediation and Dialogue Research Center in Ukraine. YUNA POTOMKINA is a Ukrainian lawyer and mediator. She served as Adviser to the First Deputy Head of the Ukrainian negotiation delegation at the Trilateral On February 18, Russian and U.S. officials met in Saudi Arabia to begin talks to end the war in Ukraine—the first such high-level dialogue to take place since the 2022 full-scale invasion, but one without Ukrainian representatives. Ahead of the talks, U.S. President Donald Trump made concessions to Russian President Vladimir Putin and has since told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he was “gambling with World War III.” Accommodating Russian narratives and positions could turn out to be a provocative yet smart move to bring Putin to the table—but only if Trump sets high standards and demands once negotiations begin. So far, Trump’s steps toward negotiations have too strongly resembled the Minsk process that began after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and occupation of parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014. Negotiated by the so-called Normandy Four—the heads of state from France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine—the process produced two sets of agreements, Minsk I in 2014 and Minsk II in 2015, both of which set out terms for a cease-fire and outlined steps toward a political resolution in the Donbas. These weak agreements were never properly implemented, and as Putin launched his 2022 invasion, he voided them outright. The political and strategic context has changed dramatically since 2014. But the Minsk process’s bitter lessons remain more relevant than ever. Unfortunately, the new U.S.-led negotiations appear to replicate specific weaknesses from the Minsk process, such as excluding major parties to the conflict and rushing toward an undefined cease-fire with little enforcement and security guarantees. Like the current negotiations, the Minsk agreements sacrificed the complicated yet achievable prospect of durable peace for short-term diplomatic gains. If Trump truly wants to be the figure who brings the fighting between Russia and Ukraine to an end, he should not repeat Minsk’s mistakes. IMPOSED DEALS By seeking an agreement in principle and postponing work on the details, in the mid-2010s the Kremlin set a trap that destroyed the Minsk agreements—a trick it appears to want to redo now. The Minsk process was not meant to proceed in two parts. The process was initiated by the Normandy Four through the Trilateral Contact Group, which included representatives from Russia, Ukraine, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). But Minsk I, signed on September 5, 2014, failed to stop Russian advances. After months of continued fighting and a devastating Ukrainian military defeat at Debaltseve, a second agreement, Minsk II, was negotiated and signed on February 12, 2015. Subscribe to Foreign Affairs This Week Our editors’ top picks, delivered free to your inbox every Friday. Sign Up Although the Normandy Four were meant to provide an inclusive format, Ukrainian interests were de facto eliminated from the Minsk negotiations because the country’s military and civilian apparatuses were in very weak positions—and because both Russia’s and Kyiv’s allies exerted intense pressure to rush to a quick deal. The signing of both Minsk agreements followed major Ukrainian military defeats in which Kyiv lost important territories around Ilovaisk and Debaltseve and suffered significant casualties. As a result, Ukrainians perceived the Minsk agreements as imposed on them, and many rejected them outright. For example, in 2019, Ukrainian civil society activists, opposition politicians, and war veterans launched a social movement called “No to Capitulation!” which mobilized mass protests against political concessions to Russia under the Minsk framework. In a poll conducted by the Rating Group and released in mid-February 2022, 63 percent of Ukrainians agreed with the statement that the “[Minsk] accords should be revised, and the new ones signed,” and only 11 percent agreed that Ukraine should fulfill all of the Minsk process’s demands. In part, Ukrainians never accepted the Minsk process as legitimate because Kyiv agreed to untenable compromises. TROJAN HORSE The Minsk agreements also recommended that Russian troops leave occupied parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but only if local elections were held and if occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk were granted “special status” in Ukraine, with the potential right to control their own police forces and to appoint judges and prosecutors—a privilege no other Ukrainian regions had at the time. Russia touted this provision as a step toward a federal model for Ukraine. But although such an increase in regional autonomy could be interpreted as democratic, democracy under occupation does not work. Such an arrangement would have given Russia a Trojan horse to undermine Ukraine’s pro-Western course from within. Although the parties agreed to elections in Donetsk and Luhansk during the Minsk I negotiations, they disputed the timing. In November 2014, the republics, still occupied by Russian forces, conducted local elections unilaterally, claiming that such elections had to occur before troops could leave. But Ukraine, the OSCE, and Western partners viewed these elections as illegitimate and not in compliance with Minsk I, arguing that the troops were supposed to leave before elections took place, and that elections should occur under OSCE supervision. But the territories continued to be occupied by Russian-controlled forces, despite Russia’s claim that it had no troops there, and in 2018, they again held similarly noncompliant elections. Today, Russia also seeks to use negotiations to meddle in Ukraine’s internal affairs, demanding that Ukraine conduct hasty presidential elections (which would likely fall short of democratic standards), return privileges to the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine, and restore the prominence of the Russian language. This time around, Ukraine’s leaders, civil society groups, and citizens have been quicker to recognize and reject such tactics. But if the terms of a cease-fire are again decided by Moscow and other actors—in this case, Washington—without adequate Ukrainian participation from the start, Kyiv will not be able to safeguard its interests or convince Ukrainians of the deal’s legitimacy, dooming its implementation. In a survey the Rating Group conducted in March 2024, more than half of Ukrainian respondents agreed that if they disputed the terms of a possible peace treaty they would “join a peaceful protest”; seven percent said they would join an “armed protest.” FAILED IMPLEMENTATION Because no cease-fire will satisfy Ukraine’s or Russia’s interests completely, any agreement will need strict third-party oversight and enforcement both during the deal’s negotiation and after its signing. Enforcement provisions were fundamentally deficient in the Minsk agreements. Neither text once referred to guarantors or any consequences for violating the agreement. Instead, there were two attempts to implement the Minsk agreements, but both mechanisms were poorly constructed. The first entrusted the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission—a body established in March 2014, before the military conflict really escalated, and later incorporated into the Minsk agreements—with monitoring cease-fire violations and verifying that both sides had withdrawn heavy weapons from the frontline. But it did not attribute blame to any party for the violations it witnessed to any party, let alone restore compliance or apply penalties. As the conflict continued to escalate, the parties attempted to engage more directly and quickly than through intermediaries from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission. In September 2014, Russia and Ukraine established the Joint Center for Control and Coordination, an entity staffed by both Russian and Ukrainian military officers but which lacked any formal founding document. The idea was to allow witnesses to access both sides of the front to better monitor any cease-fire violations. But that body also lacked sanctioning mechanisms, and any capabilities it had to enforce the agreements were kneecapped in 2017 when Russia withdrew its representatives and replaced them with emissaries from occupied Donetsk and Luhansk, again deflecting its own responsibility for the conflict by fronting its proxy actors. With no enforcement or even oversight, Russia could then repeatedly violate the agreements without any immediate repercussions. The Minsk agreements’ implementation was also impeded by ambiguity about who the signatory parties were and which of them had which obligations. Russia manipulated its role and presented itself as a mediator between Ukraine and the proxy republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. Ultimately, everyone who ought to have been held accountable to the agreements was left with little clarity about whether the agreements were legally binding. Neither the Ukrainian nor Russian presidents signed Minsk I or II. And neither Ukraine’s nor Russia’s parliament ratified either agreement. (A UN Security Council Resolution did call on the parties to implement Minsk II in a 2015 resolution, but this appeal had little effect.) These defects could not be remedied by any consequent efforts; there were at least eight documents all together—including protocols, memoranda, addenda, and decisions by the Trilateral Contact Group—and all contributed to the agreements’ failure. U.S., Saudi, and Russian diplomats, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, February 2025Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters Making each sentence of an agreement, even if it is merely a cease-fire, as detailed and carefully worded as possible—spelling out obligations and creating specific deadlines and technical specifications for monitoring and accountability—strengthens accords against manipulation. Any agreement to end the war in Ukraine must more clearly provide for a much more robust enforcement mechanism, too. First, any settlement should include security measures that, in the case of a violation, would be invoked rapidly and independently. Russia will be particularly interested in minimizing security guarantees for Ukraine, and so such guarantees would preferably be agreed on by Ukraine and its allies prior to negotiations with Russia. A cease-fire or peace agreement must also then integrate a monitoring, verification, and accountability mechanism that can objectively and quickly identify cease-fire violations, unambiguously attribute the fault to one of the parties, and most important, restore compliance—if necessary, by imposing sanctions for violations. Given the present lack of trust among the parties, a joint military peacekeeping mission, whose members all negotiating parties agree to, could be a way forward. Technical solutions for enforcing a cease-fire will also need to account for the nature of modern warfare. The frontline in Ukraine currently stretches over 3,000 kilometers, with intense fighting taking place across approximately 970 kilometers. This is at least ten times the size of the front during the Minsk negotiations. Any notion that such a large conflict zone—expanded further by the use of drones, precision-guided missiles, and electronic warfare systems—can be controlled without robust enforcement is an illusion. Finally, Europe will also need to play a large role—and a more disciplined and responsible one than it did in the mid-2010s. During the Minsk negotiations, France and Germany were mediators that brokered the hasty agreements and presided over the Trilateral Contact Group working groups that followed. They did resist recognizing the proxy republics that Russia established in Donetsk and Luhansk, but they erred badly, along with Ukraine, in allowing the proxy republics to sign the agreements, creating no clear obligations for Russia. Today, most European countries seem to have grasped the extent to which Ukraine’s security interests are also Europe’s. The permissive attitude that marred the Minsk negotiations must be avoided—and unfortunately, both Russia and the United States have moved to exclude the very European countries that learned Minsk’s bitter lessons from current talks. Europe needs a seat at the negotiating table; a unified position on the provision of security, military, and economic support to Ukraine; and alignment with Ukraine’s negotiation strategy. LOOKING TO THE LONG TERM Trump has set a time frame for reaching a cease-fire deal in Ukraine of days to months. At the same time, he has made no demands of Putin, and Russia continues to pressure Ukraine on the battlefield and attack civilian infrastructure throughout the country. Rushing an agreement is exactly the wrong approach, because it will allow Russia to manipulate negotiations. Even if Trump imagines that a temporary agreement can later be expanded on, he cannot move so quickly. The war’s frontlines must first be stabilized so that ongoing fighting does not muddy the talks. Then, avoiding Minsk’s devastating ambiguity and enforcement defects will take time. It will require substantial preparation and coordination by parties, including Russia, Ukraine, and Europe, as well as the United States. The Minsk negotiation process did facilitate a temporary de-escalation of hostilities. But ultimately, it undermined the search for a long-term solution, set the stage for a more devastating conflict, and tarnished the legacy of all involved with it. A resolution that applies Minsk’s lessons will be essential to safeguarding U.S. interests, as well as Trump’s

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5094602-a-landslide-just-0-15-percent-of-all-voters-determined-trumps-2024-victory/ I think the popular vote was close… it was the electoral college that was more decisive… other than that I sadly agree with you… and I think it’s going to be worse domestically https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/01/doge-actions-may-cause-social-security-benefit-interruption-ex-agency-head.html Tip of the iceberg

Maybe the Canadian and Europeans on the board can comment… The progressive leadership from Trudeau, Biden and European, I think , is a large reason we are in this mess…. seems like the pendulum, for a variety of reasons, is swinging to the “woke right “ ( and as a centrist I abhor just as much if not more than the woke left) but I’m not sure that Europe has what it takes to change unless 0Putin decides Poland is next..

Meant to be sarcastic… sorry

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/musk-in-your-computers-an-interview Krugman "Like most people paying attention, I was and remain terrified by the predictable power grab by the Musk/Trump administration. But it never occurred to me that Musk’s people would try to seize control of the computer systems that, in effect, cut all the checks the federal government sends out. In fact, very few people realized it was happening. One person who did realize it, however, was Nathan Tankus — an independent expert on the financial “plumbing” at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. So Nathan suddenly became the man of the moment. His blog Notes on the Crises has become crucial reading — and he may have helped steer us, temporarily at least, away from the edge of the abyss."

Probably temporary peace for 50%” minerals”, land and the 20000 Ukrainian kids Putin “ borrowed “

https://dnyuz.com/2025/03/01/trump-is-rootin-for-putin/

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/transatlantic-trade-tensions-looming-us-eu-showdown “Today the picture is far more complex, with the landscape of possible points of conflict spreading over multiples fronts, some commercial and others not. There are at least seven possible fronts of latent transatlantic content—three trade fronts, two regulatory fronts, and two security fronts. The fronts are all significant but also hold options for resolution. “

https://www.timesofisrael.com/tim-snyders-warning-israel-depends-upon-a-functioning-us-trump-and-musk-are-destroying-it/ interesting interview with Tim snyder https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder the interviewer David Horovitz … falls into the Tom Friedman/ George Will category https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horovitz