Thinking about retirement? If you have a $1 million portfolio, download “When to Retire: A Quick and Easy Planning Guide” for help retiring comfortably.

How this man didn’t jump off a cliff is beyond me…

Look who is in Berlin. American transgender "Sarah" Ashton-Cirillo now dressed as a man, spokesperson of the Ukrainian army, was seen at the rally of Ukrainian Nazi militias including the Russian Volunteer Corps Fighting for Ukraine. He attacked Ukrainian historian Marta Havryshko because she correctly calls them Nazis. #Ukraine #UkraineNazis

It’s going mainstream. Looks like Q is about to be proven correct. Imagine my shock.

Disingenuous Democrats Connecticut Democrats are panicking because their gravy train may be coming to an end… connecticutcentinal.com/disi…

Vladimir Putin did not wake up on 24 February 2022 and decide, “I think I’ll invade eastern Ukraine today,” nor was the US campaign to expand NATO into Ukraine a last-minute maneuver. (US State Department documents show Ukraine’s future membership was discussed as early as 1994.) The Road to War… in the Russian Borderlands: 9 Feb 1990: In a deal approved by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, as a quid pro quo for accepting German reunification in NATO, Secretary of State James Baker’s pledged that NATO would not expand “one inch to the east.” Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs and Chicago professor John Mearsheimer argue that during the lengthy negotiations on German unification, US, European and German leaders made explicit assurances to Gorbachev that there would be no future NATO expansion eastward. Even if only verbal and not in a formal treaty, Gorbachev understood the assurances as a “binding agreement.” Subsequently, Soviet leaders made decisions on that basis and acted on them - withdrawing the Red Army from Germany and dissolving the Warsaw Pact. 1996 Election Year: With an eye on the Polish and Eastern European vote in northern Illinois, Bill Clinton campaigned on enlarging NATO into Eastern Europe. (Bill Clinton carried Illinois and handily defeated Bob Dole.) 12 March 1999: The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO. A weakened post-Soviet Russia, led by Boris Yeltsin, whose economy was controlled by a bevy of Oligarchs, could do nothing about it. Powerless, Yeltsin was “infuriated” with “his friend Bill Clinton” for breaking with past US assurances on NATO expansion. 31 Dec 1999: After years of heavy drinking and suffering from health problems, Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Vladimir Putin becomes Prime Minister of Russia. Yeltsin’s last words to Putin: “Take care of Russia.” 29 March 2004: George W. Bush is now president, and seven more Eastern European countries join NATO: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - largest wave of NATO enlargement in its history. April 2008: At the NATO summit in Bucharest, George W. Bush announces that Ukraine and Georgia are on an “immediate path to NATO.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “I was very sure that Putin was not going to just let that happen. From his perspective, this would be a declaration of war,” she recalled in 2022. 2008: Bill Burns, ambassador to Russia, sent a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: Across the board, he wrote, the Russian political class told him, “Ukraine is the reddest of red lines” – “Nyet means nyet.” 22 Feb 2014: Just as the Sochi Winter Olympics got underway, the “Maidan” coup in Kyiv erupted in violence. State Department official Virginia Nuland boasted that since the 2004-2005 “Orange Revolution,” the US had spent $5 billion on regime change in Ukraine. NATO rooftop snipers killed both protestors and police, forcing Ukraine’s democratically elected pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych to flee. In response to Yanukovych’s downfall, Putin stepped up Russian support for Russian-speaking separatist rebels in the Donbass, while US accelerated its efforts to arm and train Ukraine’s army. 2 May 2014: The Donbass crisis point of no return: Bussed to Odessa from Kyiv, Right Sector thugs carrying baseball bats confront ethnic Russians protesting the coup in Kyiv. When protestors fled into the city’s Trade Unions House, the building was set on fire. Forty-eight people that day were burned or bludgeoned to death. 11 Feb 2015: Putin and then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko meet with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Minsk, Belarus, known as the multi-year Minsk accords. The leaders agreed to a deal that would have ended fighting in eastern Ukraine - granted autonomy to the Russian-speaking Donbass. Successive Ukrainian governments, however, refused to implement the accord. German Chancellor Merkel later admitted that Minsk was a stall tactic to allow the West to build Ukraine’s army up to NATO standards. 31 Dec 2016, New Year’s Eve, twenty days before the incoming Trump admin, Lindsey Graham, with a bi-partisan group of US Senators, visited Ukrainian troops on the civil war Line of Contact, encouraging them to take the war to Russia: "Your war is our war…" 17 Dec 2021: Team Biden rejects Putin’s proposed mutual security accords that would have left “neutral” Ukraine intact. For years, Russia tried to convince successive US administrations that Ukraine was off-limits to NATO membership, but Russian concerns were brushed aside. In December 2021, Team Biden insisted, “Russia doesn’t say who can join NATO.” 18 Feb 2022: During the Winter Olympics in China, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) documented that Ukraine was ramping up artillery attacks along the Line of Contact. (Since the 2014 coup in Kyiv, the Armed forces of Ukraine, including the Neo-Nazi Banderites, had killed 14,000 Donbass ethnic Russians. 19 Feb 2022: Invited to speak at the Munich Security Conference, Ukrainian President Zelensky said "Ukraine will get and deploy nuclear missiles." 20 Feb 2022: On CBS’ 60 Minutes, final day of the Olympics in China, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said, “Ukraine will never honor the Minsk cease fire.” 21 Feb 2022: Russia captured a Ukrainian soldier, killed five others as they crossed over the border into Rostov. Russia learned the invasion of Donetsk city was imminent and recognized the breakaway Donbass and Luhansk oblasts as independent republics. 24 Feb 2022: With 90,000 troops, Russia launched its limited “Special Military Operation” - not a "full scale invasion." Citing the UN principle, “Responsibility to Protect,” Russia finally intervened in the eight-year Donbass crisis after all prospects for diplomacy had failed. March-April 2022, week six of the invasion, Russia and Ukraine convened peace talks in Istanbul. Ukrainian diplomat Oleksandr Chalyi said the two sides “managed to find a compromise” - and “were very close to finalizing the war with a peaceful settlement.” Later, Chalyi recalled, “Putin tried to do everything possible to conclude an agreement with Ukraine.” But Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, who flew to Kyiv, urged Zelensky to “keep fighting; we have your back.” Under pressure, Zelensky chose to walk away from peace. The future of the world order may not hinge on who wins the war on the Russian steppes, unless, of course, events spiral into a nuclear catastrophe - a scenario that cannot be ruled out; however, right now, for Russia, Ukraine and NATO, there is no escaping the battle, and, as of 3 March 2025, no one is getting ready to back down.