Pres Biden Pushes 30 M1 Tanks in Ukraine Front of Nascent 3rd World War

 One might wonder about the battlefield changes of the Ukraine war brought on by President Biden’s continuing willingness to send weapons and cash to Ukraine. Sending tanks, HIMARS and Patriot Missiles to influence the course of the war is a fairly aggressive posture. Ukraine has already used HIMARS to attack inside Russia. Tanks are a traditional tool for ground invasions, yet thirty won’t be enough to make an attack inside Russia. So why send them?

Russia may still have as many as 10,000 tanks in reserve although some may be rusted out. It has 200 of its T-90s in Ukraine and has lost 27. I believe the U.S has 600 M1A2 tanks in Europe; quite a build up since it had zero in 2018. Transferring some of those should be simple enough.

Russian leadership hasn’t figured out how to use tanks well in an era with drones for attack and surveillance. The U.S. gave Ukraine more than 17,000 anti-tanks weapons and Ukrainians used them well. Russia has Kornet anti-tank weapons and the practical RPG-29 and 30 that are able to take penetrate the reactive armor of M1s. Israel recently made a defense tool against anti-missile systems and it isn’t known if they will sell those to the U.S. or provide them to Ukraine. Perhaps the U.S. will encounter a significant loss of the tanks it gives to Ukraine when they are deployed in the field.

The slow build up of the Ukraine war into a fully western supported total war against the Russian front concentrated in a particular area does seem a bit dangerous inasmuch as it could make a hard choice ahead when the U.S. expect Russia to run out of ammunition in early 2023. Would Russia use battlefield tactical nukes to supplant its ebbing conventional ammunition?

I suppose N.A.T.O. and Russia consider the Ukraine was as the first round of a general western war against Russia that is presently limited to Ukraine. In that case the continuing U.S. build up of weapons in N.A.T.O. countries is designed to serve for that war should it occur. The more weapons Russia uses in the battle for East Ukraine the less it would have for the north and south fronts of round two of the war in its expanded form. The U.S. may have 600 tanks in Europe to deploying tanks to the Ukraine front even operated by Ukrainian soldiers for the time being is a reasonable way to prepare for round two’s advance into Russia and onward to Moscow should round two happen and nukes not.

The U.S. Marines are getting rid of their M1 tanks, or already did, as they seem a bit obsolete on a modern battlefield. Their best use may be to act as mobile artillery for a ground invasion and as dug on, concealed and mobile field pieces in a static war like Ukraine. Probable self-driving platforms to move howitzers around, or rockets to locations quickly would be a faster and cheaper way to get artillery and rockets to the right places quickly. The Ukraine war is an expensive distraction and should be and could have been settled peacefully with just some concessions from the U.S. toward Russia’s claims of a right of recovery of land rightly owned by Russia.

Lakers Positioned to Win a Few Games

 The Lakers are in a good position to win a few games more without damaging their 2023 first round N.B.A. draft position. The Pelicans have the right to swap first round pick with the lakers because of the Anthony Davis trade, and the Pelicans are ranked fourth in the Western Division and the Laker's twelth presently, so winning a few more games won't hurt them at all since the Pelicans will want the swap.

Getting the Wizard's forward Rui Hachimura for three future second round picks was a fair deal since the guy is just in his fourth season and plays reasonably well. It seems as if the Lakers always have too many guards and not enough forwards so Hachimura helps solve the problem although his is no Rick Barry.

Austin Reeves may be the Lakers future point guard at 6'5" with good shooting skills leaving room for the Lakers to find some sort of high end shooting guard someday who can drop in 30 points a game. West and Goodrich, Wilt and Elgin Baylor were good Lakers teams well balanced like the Kareem teams. Lebron James may be an off the bench Laker as long as Tom Brady started at QB, and Anthony Davis signed a long term contract in 2022 so he will be an occassional starter when not injured the other half of the year at forward-center, so the Lakers still could use that Larry Bird forward, Shaquille O'Neal center and unselfish Kobe shooting guard to return to lasting number one ranking. Short of that paradigm the Lakers can solve one of three problems at about 60% success for each of its future draft years with a first round pick. With some long-term players already on the roster its not a bad position to be in- provided they don't slip into their old habit of trading away great young players to get a grass is greener old guy they believe will immediately make them great again.

Perhaps the Lakers have two of four positions of their future team set presently (Reeves and Hachimura). The Lakers need to fill in their future team around young players rather than James and Davis who are better regarded as icing on the cake that win championships. Thus the Lakers need three more pieces of the future team and have three years to get them. Thomas Bryant might be an adequate long-term interim center until the big guy arrives- I am not expert on centers. Dennis Schröder could be the interim shooting guard on the cheap with good point production until the dead-eye three point shooter graduates, and the new tall power forward star is the primary deficit- a Michael Jordan, Larry Bird kind of guy that draws the defense to a lop-sided asymetric position on the court.

Why UKNEA Didin't Get Any Action

  UKNEA was Britain's national environmental assessment. It was made and not given a screenplay and used as a five year plan or whatever the House of Lords and Commons might have made if they were particularly inspired one day by Vladimir Illyich Lenin. Not being a Brit, its challenging for me to say why the nation that invented the industrial revolution doesn't go whole hog for neo-socialism- after all Britain also invented homosexual marriage for the planet, and much of the ecosystem services officialdom seems to be caught up in promoting divisive social agenda as riders with ecosystem services. Incidentally democracy and political pluralism include free speech and different opinions- that isn't corruption at all. If Brits are more concerned with riots, the Ukraine war and football when not buying up foreign markets should poor and downtrodden Brits be expected to act like King Canute and order the ecosphere magically repaired straitaway?

If the ecosystem services approach hopes to evolve to be a rational use of ecosphere movement and/or its conservation I would think that defining meta-structure parameters concerning the needs that the ecosphere must meet for humanity should be made, found, discovered or whatever. Since people can and have used about every material thing they can get their hands on for economic purposes, an ecosystem services approach that is continuously ad hoc and reactive to contemporary demands to use the environment and seeking to serve as a dumbed-down Solomon apportioning half of the baby to various claimants will be presented with contemporary values and axiological criteria evolving regularly. As Parmenides and Heraclitus could discuss if a river ever or never changes, ecosystem services could consider comparative values of commodities locally and neolocally on a vary unstable scale with subjective values. Setting values for things humans demand yet don't need probably occurs within traditional paradigms of supply and demand. For sustaining a healthy planetary ecosphere the entire planet need be considered instead of billions of arguments and demands over portions of the ecosphere.

If the quantity of food needed to sustain ten billion people is F, and the area required to produce F is F divided by area A at a certain rate of production, then ecosystem servicing of F need be hypothesized and located in the minimally disturbing area A of Earth. When the area is determined then the economic policies and methods to produce F within A can be considered. Other non-food use of an ecosystem inclusive of all empirical material should be determined and quantified too. With the quantification surveyed, and necessary locations with Resources R plotted in the least disturbing locations the combined areas of F and R could be added up and set aside for humanity to develop in the most efficient way possible.

The remainder of the planet should be made into a park with a natural ecosphere and people would live within artificial mountain ranges; hollow inside and vegetated outside. People would be free to live in space of course, at a faster pace if electro-magnetic linear accelerators were developed to replace chemical rockets for heavy lift as frequently as a machine gun fires bullets down a fifty mile tube to reach orbital escape velocity.

Without a macro approach humanity will defeat itself in detail like as not, as it wars upon itself and its environment through consumption. Each nation probably should develop a theoretical optimal approach of land and ecosphere resources for sustainability just to have such data for comparative purposes with the real world.

In Piketty's book Capital in the 21st Century a point was made that as private capital increases public capital tends to decrease. The total value of U.S. government debt is more than 30 trillion dollars presently; are all of the resources held by the public sector today even worth 31 trillion dollars? Problems like that tend to undermine public power to control the ecosphere as parks and land areas owned publicly are reduced.

Piketty also pointed out that Brits had vast public debt from the American Revolutionary war that weren't paid off until near the start of the First World War. Since Piketty also noted the well known fact that capital increases faster than wages and tends to socially concentrate- Britain had 1% of the subjects owning 99% of the wealth until taxes rose to finance the Great War to End all Wars it may be that the woke set are hand waving on the idea of gay government bureaucrats running the environmental services of a decadent world socially and ecospherically. Plutocracy may let the nominal democracy play with that to serve its politically controlling agenda.

In Farley and Daley's book Ecological Economics explanations of the way natural resources can be said to equate to natural capital was explained. I think it can be a danger though to forget he ideas of Edmond Wilson and his students about the interdependence and co-development of the biosphere- especially well exemplified on how some Arctic Islands evolved from bare rock to places with plants and animals living when the ice receded. The entire ecosphere is a complete living mechanism, perhaps biological fractalized in some respects of dittoing services at scales great and small, yet there are numerous irreplaceable parts.

If people have good comparative surveys of the way things are and what is actually required to sustain human life then people can look at that and make dead reckoning kinds of volunteer judgments and works to get some of that done. I don't believe there is a systems approach that could be politically enforced today in any nation without a dictatorship, and who wants that, ants?

Ecosphere and Ecosystem Services

 I started a new course on Ecosystem services that has a game in it to illustrate points about the costs of selecting or using land for producing food for humans with agriculture and ranching. Ecosystems provide free services to the human economy that may or may not be sustainable. They provide free grass for grazing and water for watering yet overuse can reduce the service.

Ecosystems sustain human life and biologically speaking all of the life on Earth is embeded within the ecosphere. As the ecosphere is destroyed, insulted, reduced in extent so is human security to exist in a viable ecosphere. The ecosystem trade off game in the course lesson one has the player select land squares to locate ranches and farms. The land selections have cost values for water, carbon sequestration and so forth rated from low to high and values for producing income from low to high. The combination of values alltogether determines the productivity of land selections.

I suppose one wants the lowest possible ecosystem costs and highest possible income. I wrote a comment on the game and how to improve it...

Agriculture in some areas with ranching seemed to reduce income or vice versa. Ecoservice regions with low value tended to have low income too, yet not always.

Maybe clarifying productivity and income would be useful; are they the same? Does maximizing productivity invariably equal maximizing income? In real economics doesn't over-production reduce price per unit sometimes?

Sometimes in the game the symbol for ranching or agriculture would disappear when working on the other and one would need to quit the ranching or agriculture and replace it after going into the other mode. The symbols should be immutable when working in the alternate mode (ranching vs agriculture).

The old game of battleship had players picking out squares they couldn't see rather randomly to try to locate and sink enemy ships. The trade off game round one reminded me of that. There didn't seem to be much information about how to get positive scores, and that is time consuming in regard to opportunity cost. Some information should be provided a priori in order to maximize the score through making informed decisions/choices of squares, acres etc to exploit for producing food.

Aesthetic values of wild areas should be valued too. Making ecosystem slums has very negative value too. It may be that ecosystem services is an area where sensibilities of good art and human survival coincide.

When assigning paradigms to evaluate the ecosystem for its value to the human economy on a sustainable basis (for it is too obvious that to use and destroy the ecosphere entirely might snuff out all human life on Earth) one must wonder how politically one would implment the value system and set its parameters. Would one intitialize the system by calculating the total food production requirements needed to sustain the human race and them find the least harmful acres of the planet to host production? Alternatively would it be possible to use a trial and error, piecemeal private sector, free enterprise approach to production and land use and gamble on the outcome?

https://www.coursera.org/learn/ecosystem-services/home/welcome

Depleting and overusing natural capital is like creating vast public debt that will likely never be repayed. Planetary Boundaries of natural capital illustration below. I should note that the oxfam source of the illustration also has many politically highly charged and divisive measures that are entirely part of the post-modern, Democrat Party moral relativism agenda such as homosexual marriage and the promotion of homosexuality politically. Those are completely irrelevant and external to the paradigm of producing enough food and manufactures for humanity while keeping the ecosphere and biodiveristy intact. Unfortunately the time lost to the divisive platform solidly retards the difficulty transition to a sustainable economy.

A New Phase of the Ukraine Conflict

 The war in Ukraine that began with a Russian invasion of land areas that were part of traditional Russia; in example, Crimea and later into areas claimed by Ukraine and supported by the Democrat Party and select European nations appears to have entered a new phase with the appointment of General Gerasimov to lead the war. Gerasimov is also Army Chief of Staff and one of three Russian with a nuclear football- nuclear codes, able with discretionary powers to use nuclear weapons.

After the Crimean conquest and years of increasingly tight sanctions with no end in sight Russia apparently choose to go whole hog and enter the dragon of full scale war on Ukraine. After the western response with loads of high tech military weapons and cash, information and all of its propaganda engines lined up in a row of resupplying Ukraine the counteroffensive occurred driving Russian forces back and away from the Dnepr and some eastern regions toward the edge. Notably Ukraine attacked point targets inside Russia. Winter developed and the realignment from what may be viewed as the warm up to the serious fight has shaped up.

Some say that Russia begins its war battles rather slowly. It is good to take them out in the opening rounds of the fight because over time their determination and stamina for battle may win out. Such analogies have limited value yet western leaders may need to set aside rose colored glasses about the war of attrition where the Ukraine wins with so much support from the west with HIMARS, tanks etc and Russian supplies are depleted and consider what Russian leadership might do in an existential conflict with the west.

Gerasimov has a philosophy of total control apparently that became eponymous for a doctrine somewhat reflected in American social media and the Democrat Party; the importance of controlling the information space and the real-time coordination of all aspects of a campaign, in addition to the use of targeted strikes deep in enemy territory and the destruction of critical civilian as well as military infrastructure."-Gerasimov. That is much like the Obama doctrine promoting homosexual marriage and social media attrition of conservative writers in social media.

The new phase of the war may be a more dangerous time- even as Russia may have internal conflicts and competition for leadership exacerbated by covert and overt support by the west. The entire affair reminds me a little of the true story of a skydiver whose parachute and reserve didn't deploy and yet photographed himself and the ground as he fell to Earth.

Democrat Post-Modernist Build Dictatorship of the Proletariat

 I realized that the Democrat party's forceful approach in government infused with the convenience of post-modernist moral and truth relativism; with an intolerance for dissent or respect for political pluralism, is what Karl Marx meant when he invented the term Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

In a Dictatorship of the Proletariat individuals may have any opinion oif they don't publically express it and those ideas expressed need be sycophantic verbiage reinforcing the values of the ruling party. Even if the Dictatorship of the Proletariat's political agenda is set by puppet leaders such as party elite or plutocrats, nominally the ideas reflect those of the Dictatorship that are the only moral and authorized opinions.

Rebuilding History for Video Games with a bowl of Hair of the Dog

 If there was an ice cream named Hair of the Dog that would make for innumerable Humphrey Bogart comedy lines. If playing video games built with accurate historical settings, scripts. reconstructions and movements one could take a break in game play with a bowl of Hair of the Dog.

I would think the coursera.org course I finished recently named The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem would be a good source material for a video game with vast people movements between Babylon and Judah, wars, evolutions of empires (Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian/Achaemenid), dynasties like the Hasmonean (Maccabees), interesting dynamic politics between kingdoms and empires, purges, slaves and so forth. Reconstructing the Temple some time after the destruction of the first and razing of Jerusalem would make great video too. The more historical knowledge on has the more full, complete and instructive the game could be inclusive of numerous false historical lines to take that result in somme sort of corrective action.

Ukraine War Exemplifies Ultima ratio regum

 The United States is funding a war in Ukraine with billions and billions of dollars and equipment going to that nation to prop up its military power. When all that required for peace is to recognize Russia's historical and arguably valid claims to be the real owners of much of Ukraine would the rational thing be to just cut the baby in half like Solomon and give each party a large chunk?

So Russia gets Crimea and the far east of Ukraine, a demilitarized zone is established of some thirty miles in width- although civilians can live in it, and both parties of the contested divorce are happy for Valentine's day with love and balloons instead of more massacres. Unless the west did intend and continues to intend to beat down Russia until it has immoral values of the Democrat Party and Plutocrats, a peace settlement with free trade and maybe no taxes on businesses located in the demilitarized zone from anyone for twenty years will make the issue of national ownership of piddling importance.

Europeans and leftists forever have descried nationalism as the source of wars (in error I.M.O.); now would be their opportunity to prove it and quite supporting Ukrainian nationalism to own all of the formerly Russian regions of Ukraine.

The war is a perfect illustration of the rule of law meaning the rule of force. Because the west supports total annexation of Ukraine from Russia in regard to the end of the Cold War 1.0 and there is no appeal to any higher, non-western power for Russia, the logic principle of Ultima ratio regum- the logic of kings, is bared; with Russia fighting against the west side to retake its former land. 

Repubs Unify with Democrats on Drag Queen Leadership

 Democrats are up in arms over N.Y. Rep. George Santos election and placement by House Speaker McCarthy's steering committee to a couple of low burning committees. Santos who lied on his campaign qualification resume to help get elected recently also has been named as a fierce competitor in Brazilian drag queen competitions several years ago and a leading homosexual power player. That he is being reinforced by Speaker McCarthy is mildly surprising, that Democrats are attacking Santos is far more so. Santos' actual resume as a lying drag queen should make their guy. Post-modernism in politics could be said to be personified by lying drag queens of the Democrat Party allied with feminazis to form a political majority.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/embattled-us-rep-santos-was-drag-queen-brazil-pageants-say-associates-2023-01-19/

Rep. Santos has denied ever being a drag queen as reported an hour ago. Yet he could be lying about that as well as killed politicians do.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/19/santos-denies-having-been-a-drag-performer-00078515

There are other charges that have been made against Rep. Santos including one from some New Jersey veterans that he absconded with money given for surgery on a dog that could have saved its life. I recall when old Americans were said to eat canned dog food to stay alive some decades ago. Today some people pay more for cans of dog food than people spend on canned human food. If Santos did redistribute money meant for surgery on a dog some people couldn't care less except for the deceit, for dogs are animals and on the menu of some people anyway.

It is good to know that the nation can be confident in their political system with Democrats and Republicans moving closer together in the effort to provide corrupt, queer leadership supporting escalation toward nuclear war to create nuclear winter to end global warming and bury the national public debt under the mass confusion of political collapse and a debt-free Phoenix like reorganization. Maybe dogs shall be included in Medicare for everyone and cats can pay the bill. Maybe the nation needs a new, non-drag queen party.

https://www.axios.com/2023/01/17/george-santos-committee-assignments-congress

Could Tom Brady Fly with the Seahawks?

 Tom Brady might have a few good games left in the tank. The Seahawks have a great receiving corps without a quarterback who is good all the time. Geno Smith had a fine half a season in 2022, and is 31 years old and is likely to resign with the hawks for less than the sort of bundle than Russell Wilson got. Tom Brady may have a few clutch performances remaining for the right team (and that may be Seattle). There is likerly to be salary room for Brady and Smith to share the job if Coach Carroll would like to use that situation.

Some people would like to throw a Wilson league bundle to Ravens QB Lamar Jackson who might be looking to camp in a different nest and look offshore for new pickins, yet Jackson is a runner-passer rather like a big Michael Vick and that style tends to be shorter lived before fumble-itis sets in after as many hits as running backs take. Passes become more wobbly and knee injuries recurrent. Lots of cash involved too, although jackson might put the Seahawks in the Super Bowl directly.

With the 6th pick in the 2023 NFL draft the Seahawks could draft a greaat developmental prospect from Florida Anthony Richardson. No one better to train the young QB as an example than Tom Brady. There isn't anything wrong with being loaded at the QB position; that worked for the 49ers with Joe Montana and Steve Young and probably remains a valid paradigm for winning.

Its great to have a great edge rusher too. Yet it might be easier to find one than to have a great quarterback with a decade in the tank of stellar play. The Seahawks are strong enough that with a surfeit of 2023 draft picks to reinforce their defense and offense they can afford to pick a quarterback of the future who doesn't need to play right away. If Brady can be a non-kicking George Blanda who plays now and then to charge an offense in a slump, and mentors Anthoiny RIchardson for three or four years, Geno Smith may start week to week and find relief fron Tom Brady when he is less than 100%.