I was watching a video of Canelo in the gym punching the heavy bag. He was concentrating on heavy hitting hooks to the body, with both hands. Really trying to hit the bag as hard as he could. Punch after punch. What he wants to do with that body punch is plant his feet and get maximum leverage in a hook to the kidney area. That is his power punch (reminds me of Micky Ward). It is Canelo’s game winner, but also his maximum vulnerability. When he plants his feet to throw the body punch, that’s when he is most stationary, and his focus has to be on hitting the opponent’s kidney area, not on his own defense.
Author: Henry Barnard
I am a voracious reader and also enjoy writing. I often have a very different point of view than the popular one. I do see value in debate, and thought it might add to the public debate on controversial issues if I were to express my contrarian opinions. I also started keeping my poems recently (I've written little pieces my whole adult life but never kept any); and I've been a photographer now for over 25 years. So I will be adding an occasional poem and hopefully interesting photograph to the blog along the way, just to spice things up.
Demonizing Fossil Fuels
People who are so very enthusiastic about solar and wind are motivated from their concerns about drastic and accelerating climate change due to greenhouse gases, so they lock onto this simple-minded would-be solution that doesn’t really solve the problem, but instead has terrible economic consequences in reducing the use of inexpensive fossil fuels, especially for the little guy in having to pay horrendous energy costs.
The real — but very difficult — answer to the climate-change issue is carbon extraction through improved soil conservation, among other extraction methods. Re-forestration on a very large scale is another significant method. The focus needs to shift from demonizing fossil fuels (because they are by far the cheapest form of energy and so will be with us for the foreeseable future) to extraction methods for achieving a zero-sum game for the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
We should also look at technologies that can provide various industries with carbon capture where carbon is now just released into the atmosphere. A carbon tax would induce various industries to move in this direction.
Likely Future Terrorist Targets
Nuclear power plants. Not very well guarded, if at all. A nuclear-power plant melt-down would cause massive economic and political repercussions for any country.
Therefore, very practical to accomplish but with maximum and horrendous results.
Nuclear power plants were all built in an age that didn’t consider this kind of terrorist threat — that a team of terrorists would take over a nuclear power plant with the intention of causing a meltdown.
But we do. Shouldn’t the federal government provide protection for all 88 nuclear-power plants in the United States? Wouldn’t that be wise?
American Biological Weapons
Now we find that the US is sponsoring development of biological weapons in labs in Ukraine, as confirmed by Russia’s intelligence services and then by our Victoria Nuland in Congressional hearings.
There are federal laws against the US ever doing this.
Yet another reason why Putin can justify to his electorate his invasion of the Ukraine.
American Hatred of Russia
The hatred of Russia by the US government and the American press has just had the effect of driving Russia into the arms of China. It is the polar opposite, diplomatically, of what Nixon did with his trip to communist China, which was a ploy to separate communist China from the Soviet Union or at least create a small fissure in that relationship.
And so, to any rational person, this virulent hatred is immensely counterproductive, and yet it dominates our State Department and American foreign policy. And Americans, having been drummed into their heads that Putin is this veritable anti-Christ by both our government and the press, never entertain anything that doesn’t fit this narrative — they are brainwashed.
This will not end well for the United States.
End of the World Scenario
Imagine how dangerous — internationally — the current situation would be if Ukraine had been a member of NATO and contained nuclear missiles. Does anyone doubt they would use them?
Reason enough for the country to remain unaligned and a buffer state between NATO and Russia.
But American missiles in Ukraine is precisely the scenario that the fools in our State Department would like to see come about. They no doubt engineered the coup in Ukraine that took place in 2014, and if we let them, will engineer this dire circumstance. The State Departments doesn’t have diplomats; it has blind ideologues who do not see the consequences of their actions.
Ukrainian Discrimination Against Their Russians
The pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia American press never comments against the very active discrimination against Russians who live within Ukraine by the Ukrainian government, and not just in the eastern sections of the country, but throughout the country. Our press never ever comments about this very intense repression. Why?
The true situation in the Ukraine is that, unfortunately, you have two nationalities, if not ethnic groups, living there that despise each other.
Absence of Any Real Diplomacy
What has caused this current conflict in Ukraine is the absence of real diplomacy by the West. Anyone could have foreseen the consequences of the relentless expansion of NATO to the east — that it would eventually cause Russia to react due to their security concerns. The Russians don’t want to see NATO-alliance missiles parked at their doorstep. Who would?
The obvious diplomatic solution to this situation would have been to do the following: guarantee that Ukraine would never be allowed to join NATO, guarantee from the Russians that they would respect the Ukrainian borders, and separate those Russian-majority sections of eastern Ukraine as separate republics.
But the West wasn’t willing to make the prudent compromise of keeping Ukraine out of NATO. So I ask you — who really is the aggressor here? NATO or Russia? Russia invaded, but NATO’s intransigence (and expansionism?) caused the problem.
Ukraine
Putin and Russia are reacting just as Kennedy reacted in the Cuban missile crisis. They don’t want Ukraine to be a part of NATO with nuclear missiles there pointed at Russia and only minutes from hitting their targets. That’s what this is all about.
The relentless expansion of NATO into eastern Europe and ultimately Ukraine is what is causing this crisis, not Russia.
Herbs
One really has to experiment to find the herbs one really enjoys. I’ve found that many herbs leave me wondering why I even bother — they don’t seem to have much taste one way or the other. The two exceptions so far for me personally are mint and basil.
