A Sochi State of Mind,

 I have to admit that I got daunted by the task of checking the mood in the Metro in Kiev this week, while I tend to bump into my friends and familiars bouncing about on errands via the Metro, it is outside the metro, on the snow laden , slushy streets, at the periphery of the positive energy triangles of Kiev's Historical Churches ,  where the down and out,  angry ,  disenfranchised people from Ukraine's Russian occupied East lurk,  who'll take umbrage towards an American who is soon to be represented by Mister Putin's Special friend .
  I guess that the detail is in the Devils hands now. While the argument can be made, that most of the Ukraine conflict is the result of purely human ineptness, it is certainly tempting to succumb to believing these elaborate conspiracy theories. In the link under thee Devil's Hands, the author mentions a "Dulles Plan" some form of decades old CIA plan to destabilize the Donbas, perhaps to sow a viral seed of decay that rots the Russian Federation from the inside out ? I don't think there is enough there, there to actually do any real harm to a substantive, functional society like Russian Federation : it is small potatoes ?  Unless of course, Ukraine feels so badly burned by this entire experience that they decide to become a Nuclear armed state once more, since the incoming President elect has tacitly endorsed that, in passing remarks about other Nations.
If this hypothetical Dulles Plan were true, then it would mean that Russell Bentley A.K.A "Texac" who is now with the Donetsk News Service DONi is actually a deep cover CIA operative. How did he arrive at the forefront of this Anti-Imperialist, pro Communist facade?
Mister Texac is shown posing with a wall mural backdrop of the Good, Bad and Ugly Movie behind him and a small classroom portrait of Lenin. What does Clint Eastwood think of him Hijacking his movie legacy,  for Texac' purposes of furthering his Che Guevara fantasy in the DNR ?

There exists a preponderance of Right Wing,  Oligarch backed, Orthodox Christian forces on both sides of the Ukraine conflict. While there may be some normal ,  Social Democrat oriented types fighting on the Ukraine side,  I'd guess that most guys working the front lines of defense for Ukraine are a mix of moderates and right wingers.  Yet the definition of a "Centrist" in Ukraine today, is hard for me to fully conjecture how they see things, their hopes, aspirations.  Fortunately , there is a nascent middle class, while it is small,  if it grows healthier than that within Russian Federation, a modest victory can be won by example,  that is,  if they can find a path towards Peace and social, economic reconstruction.

as to the inauguration , Like wow, in a few days, in Laredo Texas , will they unveil this  gigantic wall building robotic system ,  that mixes the concrete with the Native dirt directly onsite ? It seems perhaps we have entered a Medieval style wall building era, we have left the bridge building era behind us, I hope  they leave a gate open for the Jaguars to move back and forth, it's going to be an environmental impact study that needs a lot of work !

 I didn't vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger either, but he wasn't all that bad as Governor of California.
He did try to reform Worker's Compensation, but he could only do so much to fix it.

I am half heartedly hopeful that our president elect's  aspirations to be a responsible leader  are properly actualized, so that he can try to steer the changes that they think the Congress and Senate can agree to,   that it will help our collective future. Good Luck with that!

     Well with the hashtag Goldenshowers going around, I hope that any compromising FSB video of the Trump ensemble doesn't push Melania to revisit the terms of the Pool Boy/Girl  clause in their prenuptial agreement. As much as Mister Trump can pull off the "regular guy thing",  I kind of find his press conference commentary that the Intelligence agencies release of the British Memorandum about the compromising FSB dossier  is like a "Nazi tactic" .
The man our president elect highly admires, who seems to have authorized an aggressive hacking campaign to undermine the numerical winner of our presidential election, and quite apparently boost her opponent's chances, is the one that , The last time I checked,   Mister Putin 3 years ago,  seems to have  copied Hitler's launch of  an Invasion during the Olympics 80 years ago, when he seized Crimea, the playbook is nearly identical :
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1936 Having exposed the weakness of the two great democracies on a matter of principle as important as German rearmament, Hitler decided to test further the resolve of Britain and France to stand up to him. He had noted the failure of Britain and France to take firm action against Italy, their ally under the Locarno Pact of 1925, when the fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, launched Italy's army against Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1935. After Mussolini had bombed and gassed that independent country's poorly armed tribesmen into submission, he annexed Abyssinia as a province of Italy in 1936. Hitler observed with interest that relations between Britain, France and Italy had merely been strained by this outrage against a defenseless country. 

Feeling that he had correctly assessed the spinelessness of the British and French governments at this time, on 1 March 1936, Hitler ordered German troops to re-enter the demilitarised Rhineland in a further breach of the Treaty of Versailles. Only a token force of three German battalions actually entered the Rhineland, and they were under strict orders from their nervous generals to withdraw at once if the French responded to this breach of the treaty with military force. The German generals knew that the much larger French army could crush their army at this time, and believed that their Fuehrer was taking a dangerous gamble.

German troops march into the Rhineland in 1936 in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles.

The British were obliged under the Locarno Pact to provide France with military support in such a situation, but when asked by France for that support, the British government refused to honour its treaty obligation. Although entitled to resist entry of German troops to the demilitarised Rhineland with military force, and despite having thirty army divisions at the border in readiness to cross and disperse the three German battalions, the French lost their nerve in the absence of support from Britain. When Hitler cynically offered further assurances of peace, the British government seized on this offer as evidence of his good faith. Winston Churchill, the man who would later be Britain's great wartime leader against the Nazis, was the only person in Britain's parliament to denounce this dishonourable surrender to Hitler and betrayal of France. 

So Hitler had gambled and won again. The Nazi leader had shown that he could flout the Treaty of Versailles with impunity. His prestige and popularity soared in Germany, while France's allies in eastern Europe were forced to review the value of their alliances with her. If France had acted firmly in what would have been little more than a police action, and Britain had fulfilled its treaty obligations to France, the German troops would certainly have been instantly withdrawn, and Hitler's prestige would have been dealt a deadly blow from which it might never have recovered. The last opportunity to bring Hitler to heel, and halt the rise of a militarised, aggressive Germany without risk of a serious war, had been thrown away by weak politicians.
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This could all become some variant of being an upcoming ENRON collapse style of 
political event for the USA. Knowing a person who worked that case, that while much of the evidence was destroyed, there was enough information available to connect the dots. I'd simply say that my gut feeling of any potential culpability of the Trump business empire in improper dealings with Russian business interests would transpire like in some tacit , knowing exchange of favoritism, perhaps sweetheart contracts, going back into 2009 or something , the construction industry is rife with back room horse trading.
 I could just see how some National Labor Relations Board investigator teams up with a mid level IRS investigator looking at the Trump organizations past dealings to discover discrepancies in subcontracted services, worker's Compensation under reporting or the like. 

For it to be a Hollywood grade, Erin Brockovich style story , the IRS or NLRB person would have to be partially disabled person, (feeling still raw and violated by the President's mocking of a disabled reporter ), who then runs up against a massive wall of resistance from their Trump administration appointed boss, but still can get around it anyway, with perseverance, tenacity and the help of perhaps a concerned Republican Congress member.

It could well have been the case that the Trump Organization was close to bankruptcy in the 08/09 crisis. Perhaps  some Uzbek crime boss with a construction side business kicked over a big favor in a sweetheart deal , sent some undocumented crews to finish some stuff. The rule of thumb for labor off the books (without worker's compensation, FICA/ FUTA, etc is about 100%. It's 100% higher in most markets) Of course that is the beauty of subcontract work, deniable plausibility for the developer, or Prime Contractor . It sounds like the Giant mansion in Florida sold to Dima  Rybolovlev had some hidden compartments built into the purchase agreement