And it gets worse

 It appears that the rare earths that President Trump wanted an "agreement" (extortion) for in Ukraine exist mostly in the pages of a Soviet era evaluation that really didn't examine extractability at reasonable cost (which makes sense, it was Communists after all), and four of the six deposits are actually in areas controlled by Russia, while the remaining two are perilously close to the war zone.  Geologists who have been there note that there is no clear evidence that the deposits can actually be developed.

So the supposed basis for peace is, put gently, a chimera, technologically, and a likely albatross around Ukraine's neck.  Chalk it up as yet another example of Trump acting in haste, whereupon the world will get to repent at leisure.

I pulled the lever for Trump because I felt that it was a less disastrous choice than Harris, and I stand by that, but the scales are a lot closer to balanced today than they were last November.

Not an auspicious sign

Talks between Russia and the United States regarding the resolution of the war in Ukraine (and Russia) not only exclude Ukraine, but are also being facilitated by the same guy believed to have ordered the hit on Jamal Kashoggi in a country with one of the most repressive regimes in the world.  Worse yet, rumors are going around that the price for peace will be a huge portion of Ukraine's mineral wealth.

The ugly reality here is that not only do we seem to be kowtowing to neo-Soviet dictators, but we appear to be doing so in the same basic way that the Versailles Treaty paved the way for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.  At the very best, an impoverished and humiliated Ukraine becomes susceptible to the very totalitarianism that we theoretically want to avoid, and could very likely become a Russian puppet state.

I hope I'm wrong, but I would hope that we would have the basic maturity to realize that sometimes we have to pay a price for freedom, and nations like Russia (Iran's biggest sponsor) are not likely to leave us alone if only we withdraw from Europe.  To that effect, Putin's minions have already been talking about taking Alaska back.  Their ambitions do not stop in the Donbas, or with the Dnipro.  They likely cross the Bering Strait and extend to the Vistula, Elbe, and even the Rhine in Europe--if not further.

Bloat, or flat out edema?

The University of Michigan, already infamous for its approach to football, apparently has 1100 DEI employees.  To put things in perspective, the "school" has 8426 academic staff at their flagship campus in Ann Arbor, but nearly 25,000 administrative staff.  In comparison, my alma mater had 5703 instructors in 2023, but only 7365 administrative staff.

Suffice it to say that easy student loans and grants have created a world where too many "leeches" are sucking the financial lifeblood from financially vulnerable students.