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China can do what it likes, Russia can do what it likes, Trump is going to be President. he Recount has been called off, if not restarted by December 13, it is over! the election is over, you don't have to like it, but it is a fact. I had the same problem when Obama got elected twice! Now its your turn I suppose. I suggest you just give Trump a chance, he may surprise you!

I have Polish members of my family, and believe me, they do not consider themselves Russians! I do not feel inclined to abandon members of my family to the Russians. My father in law was forced to work in a coal mine by the Russians because he owned too much land, in other words he was a slave.

Greeks aren't Russians.

Yes an irrevocable decision, just like the sale of Alaska to the US was.

So we split the country, the Russian annex their part, and we bribe the Western Part of Ukraine to accept this arrangement by giving them nuclear weapons, since they started out having nuclear weapons and gave them up only upon condition that the Russians respect their borders and they have not, so if Russia reneged, then we give Ukraine nuclear weapons, to guarantee that Russia doesn't try for a further land grab in the future.

It was Ukraine's decision, because strangely enough, they did not want to be Russian puppets.

Okay so the Western half gets nuclear weapons as a successor state to the Soviet Union, which the UN recognized as a nuclear power, they should also get a permanent seat on the Security Council just like the Russians have. This is the price the Russians should pay to keep the land they took. No one need die, there doesn't have to be a war, I want peace just as much as you. if the Russians don't pay a price, there won't be peace.

 
Too bad, if the want the land, they are going to have to pay a price for it, that is all I ask, it cannot be a straight robbery, because then the Russians will be tempted to rob again and their won't be peace. if you like, we can bring all the Western Ukrainians to the United States and the Russians can get all their land empty of people, do you think they would like that? We would gain all the talent and skills of those Ukrainian immigrants and they can become American citizens, an Russia gets a little bigger, would that be okay?

 
Most of the Europeans agree that they don't want to be invaded and occupied by Russia, the only one who disagrees with that is Russia itself. Russia is all alone in the World, it has no friends, not s long as it acts like a brute and a bully. Most Europeans would like the Russians to change their behavior, and they would be happy to trade with them. Look again at that map of Russia, it is huge! You can fit several Europes within the existing territory of Russia!

You know what Russia really needs? A lot of immigrants, there is plenty of land there, Russia could be the land of opportunity, it just needs to provide the right incentive to get people to immigrate there, just like the United States did in the 19th century. Why does Russia need to grab these little countries on its periphery, it has more land than it can use! Instead of grabbing other people's countries and forcing the people that live their to become Russians, why don't they just try to incentivize people to immigrate there and start a new life? I'm sure there are plenty of people would would choose to go if provided the opportunity?

What would the United States do if it was the "United States of Eurasia" and it had that land instead of Russia? Do you think we would invade Ukraine? All the immigrants who would go to North America would instead come to us. We would get a lot of Chinese and Indian immigrants. What the Russians need to do is act in a peaceful manner and stop invading its neighbors! "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I believe the Russians have that in their bible. Here is the Russian translation: Делаете другим, что бы вы их делать вам.

But you see Europe is part of our family, and we do not abandon our family. Do you have family members in Europe, do you want the Russians enslaving them as they did my father in law during the Cold War?

We annoyed Hitler. We couldn't help it really, Hitler wanted to be master of Europe, Great Britain said no, it could have said yes, and London would have been spared the bombing it received, World War II would have been over, the Japs would not have bombed Pearl Harbor then, there would have been nothing FDR could have done, unless he wanted to start another war, and I don't think the US Congress would have supported him if he did. The Jews of Europe would have been as good as dead, there would be no rescue for them.

If the "Near Slavs" come out of the Western Roman tradition, they therefore don't belong to the Russians, by protecting them, we are simply protecting our own culture. Russia is a great empire, it has a lot of land. much more land than it has people to fill it.

This is a huge country, and look at the rest of Europe sitting next to it, it looks small compared to Russia doesn't it? Why should Russia feel threatened by our protecting that? the countries we are protecting begin with Georgia and go all the way up to Norway, the whole area west of that line is in essence, Western Europe, and as you can see, Russia has the Eastern half plus a huge swath of Asia as well!

 
Who do you think is smarter, Trump or Putin? If Trump was easy to manipulate, he would have lost his family fortune to some scam artist a long time ago. Have you ever heard the expression, "A fool and his money are soon parted?" Trump is no fool!

 
Not all Russians are supporters of Putin, just like not all Germans during World War II were supporters of Hitler, that is an over simplification.

 
How many resorts does Trump own in Russia? Its very simple. In order to win an election, you need to find differences with your opponent in order to argue you and not her! Trump used the worsening relations with Russia as a wedge issue between himself and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now that he's won, Trump doesn't need to do anything for Putin, he owes few people anything, about half of the Republican Party did not support him, he got elected with some blue collar Democrats crossing the line to vote for him instead of Hillary!

 
Donald Trump is soon to be commander in chief of the most powerful country in the World, his America First policy will not always serve Russia or Putin. There is little that the Russian mob can do to him that will not start a war with the United States, after all assassinating a head of state is considered an act of war! I don't think Russia will do that. If they supported Donald Trump, and expect to take advantage of him, then I think were mistaken.

I don't see how Trump counter punching Russia is an advantage to Russia, its generally not a goo idea to bait a guy with his finger on the nuclear trigger! I think they will give him a wide berth!

That is an overgeneralization, some political ideologies do work and others do not, you judge them by their merits and their results. The results indicate that freedom works ad tyranny does not, the United States has outlasted Napoleon, Hitler, and the Soviet Union, these other ideologies did not stand the test of time, American freedom has! You need to be objective, the Soviet Union is no more, it has been replaced by a fascist dictator, so Russia still has some distance to travel before they get I right.

 
What chaos, the appointments Trump has made to his cabinet have proceeded apace, the Sore Loser Press has reported on chaos, or so I've heard, because I have not really read any of it! Trump received a phone call from the leader of Taiwan, congratulating him on his election, the Chinese Government was outraged, Trump doesn't really care!

 
Same people that contributed to Clinton's campaign, so? You appoint successful people if you want a successful Administration. Would you rather see me as Treasury Secretary instead? I can go to Trump Tower and see about getting myself an Administration appointment, I could use the fact that I am not a billionaire as a major selling point, I could argue that he has too many rich people and that he should appoint someone like me instead. How do you think that would work?

 
If they think that, they are fools indeed! Just because they think they can manipulate Trump doesn't mean they can! Sometimes Trump wants you to think he can be manipulated, that is how he operates, he want people to underestimate him!

But Trump has no record in government, Hillary Clinton has! You are making assumptions about him that cannot be proven or disproven until he has had a chance at being President, he has held no political office before!

Don't worry, if Trump turns out to be a liar, I am sure there will be plenty of Republicans willing to challenge him in the next primary, starting with Ted Cruz!

It is interesting how Canada, until recently because of its Conservative Government, stood to the Right politically of the United States under Obama. now with the election of Donald Trump the US and Canada have just switched places on the Political spectrum. The main difference between Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama, is that Justin Trudeau doesn't have the antipathy towards Canada that Barack Obama has towards the United States. I think it was unfortunate when he expressed his regrets at the passing of Cuba's late Dictator and longest serving President Fidel Castro. I think Puerto Rico would make a great 51st state, and its sister Cuba would make a great 52nd state, I think there maybe an opportunity for just such an occurrence coming up shortly, we'll see, he model is East Germany's reunification with the rest of Germany. Cuba will be in pretty poor shape when they finally get rid of the Communist government, Raul Castro is very old, I'm not sure how long he'll last, maybe Trump will be President when he finally kicks the bucket, I hope he takes advantage of whatever opportunity arises and makes a deal. As I said before, we need to make the United States a more attractive place to join, that means weakening the Federal Government on most things besides Defense. I say we make Cuba an offer.

Oh I quite agree! But I also see them supporting countries like Iran and North Korea, part of what motivates the Russians and the Chinese is their rivalry with us. In China, their rivalry with is getting in the way of their doing mutually beneficial business with us. In Russia, their wounded pride at "losing" the Cold War has gotten in the way of their having beneficial trade relationships with the rest of Europe and the United States. I say "the rest of Europe" and not Western Europe  because there is no "Western Europe" if there is no "Eastern Europe" and right now Eastern Europe doesn't exist, it is only one country called Russia! West and East are meaningless geographical distinctions in the Europe of today, geography doesn't determine their outlook. What was once Eastern Europe was the result of the way World War II ended, it ended with the Russian Army occupying more than half of Europe and holding these other Eastern European countries captive, they determined their governments and their government's foreign policies and defense postures. The people of those countries had little say in what those Russian controlled governments did, now they do, and so now there is no longer any Eastern Europe. When Russia calls a country, such as Poland, an Eastern European country, that just means it wants to conquer them. We need to convince Russia that their is more benefit in trade than in conquest. Russia has more land than it needs, what it needs to do really is convince foreigner to immigrate and become Russian citizens, and Russia's economy can grow.

If Hitler didn't exist, Russia might have started World War II, and if Russia was defeated, Russia as a defeated country would probably be better off today than it is now, much as Germany benefitted by losing World War II! Since Russia wasn't defeated in World War II, it wasn't reorganized by the victorious allies, it wasn't set on its feet by a new democratic government, it received no aid from the Marshall plan. The average Russian citizen would have been wealthier than they are now. The funny thing is, what the Russians want isn't necessarily the best thing for them.

Why would Russia want to help Trump? Seriously! You would think they would want Hillary to win, because then they could have a weak President that they could take advantage of, they could invade more countries, take more land, and as they do that, they would make the US President look foolish and weak. Now if Putin tries to take advantage of Trump, he will quickly burn up Trump's good will towards Russia. You have to remember, Trump has a big ego, if Putin invades a country, an makes Trump look weak and ineffectual, Trump's popularity will go down, this will make Trump look foolish, and he is not the sort to take a gut punch and shrug it off! Trump will retaliate against Russia because of his hurt pride. Trump does not take insults sitting down! So what are the advantages to Russia in Trump being President? Nothing! There are more advantages to Russia having a weak Jimmy Carter like President, who doesn't mind the slings and arrows the Russians throw at him, so there is no reason for Russia to hack into the election and affect the voting results in Trump's favor.

The EM drive was brought up again on the John Bachelor Radio show, it seems this doesn't go away. You know what this reminds me of?
Flubber.

In the movie, a type of putty was invented, that when shaped into a ball and dropped would bounce and with each subsequent bounce the flubber ball would bounce higher gaining energy. The professor even developed a type of propulsion system using flubber balls bouncing around in a chamber. What would you suggest are the similarities and differences between say the flubber ball propelled flying car and the EM drive?

Exactly the point, we won't live to see any of it happen, unless we get nanotechnology and indefinite life extension. I think some underestimate the difficulty of terraforming Mars. Venus by the way would have shallower oceans than Earth, and much of the mass for its oceans would come right out of its atmosphere, after all carbon dioxide is mostly oxygen, each oxygen atom requires two hydrogen atoms to make a water molecule.

There is one American Union already, it is the one soldiers in blue fought for against the Confederacy during the Civil War, The United States of America is a Union of states, its constitution was designed to protect states rights against a Federal Government which seeks too much power, but citizens must be active in making this happen. I don't think we need to create a whole entirely new creature out of whole cloth, we have a North American Union already, and we have a mechanism to accepting new states, although it hasn't been used much recently. Canada can join the Union as either one state or many, as one state it would have the population of California, as many states it would get more representation in Congress. No need to write a new Constitution, we can use the one that was written in 1788, it has an amendment process and has worked pretty well so far. We don't need to reinvent the Federal Republic every time we propose a larger union. We have one that works quite well right now. Now lets talk about the differences between the three North American countries, the people of Mexico are called Mexicans, the people of Canada are called Canadians, but the people of the United States are called simply Americans, America is the name of the Continent in which the United States are of, in a sense Canadians and Mexicans are also Americans because they live on that continent. We Americans didn't bother naming our nationality so we just too the name of the continent instead! Maybe that's because we were the first independent country of the Americans while the rest were colonies, every other country that got their independence afterwards needed a name to distinguish themselves from us, we didn't. So one path would be for other countries to join our Union, each addition would change us as a people, adding Mexico would add a whole lot of Hispanics, adding Canada would add another 30 million people to our population, it probably would not be noticed as much. Then there are other countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the UK, put those together and we have the entire Anglosphere in one political unit, I'd invite Ireland to join as well.

The simplest course is to let the States worry about their environments and get the Federal Government out of the business of regulating the environment. I'm sure if the EPA ceased to exist, and the States would all want dirty air and dirty water, naw quite the opposite in fact, so why not trust the states t regulate their own environment? The EPA was created by the Nixon Administration after all, the United States had parks before he Nixon Administration. The Federal Government is concerned with the whole country, but individual states are concerned with themselves. The Federal government does no care if some backwater state suffers because few people live their, but the government of that same state does! Its time we got back to being a Federal Republic, and stop the Federal Government from subsuming all the functions of state government, and allow those states to develop.

But the gravity makes it more earthlike, all other factors can be adjusted including the amount of light it receives, but gravity can't be changed. You can make Mars as Earthlike as its gravity will allow, but even if you adjust all other conditions, just taking a few steps will tell you that you are not on Earth!