Pragmatically Distributed

The main reason for still entertaining the idea that Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine is, in reality, a negotiation ploy is simply because of how destructive a Ukrainian insurgency would be for Moscow, even if Ukraine can only rely on indirect logistical and weapons aid from NATO instead of a direct intervention.

Just fighting the Ukrainians by themselves would mean that up to half of the Russian Army would be indefinitely drawn into very fierce urban combat with Ukrainian Nationalists, potentially for years while simultaneously trying to repress a hostile population and administer this newly annexed territory.

The risk of insurgent warfare was actually what deterred Putin from advancing further into Ukraine when Russia occupied Crimea.

Although Russia’s military is better prepared than it was at that time, the Ukrainians are also much better armed by NATO to inflict high casualties on the Russians.

Continue reading “If Ukraine Cannot Technically Join NATO Then America Should Test if Russia is Interested in Negotiations”

The simplest definition of game theory is that it is the mathematics of how different actors in a given scenario can act to achieve their own priorities with each actor’s most highly valued priorities having the greatest mathematical impact on their decisions, on down to their lowest priorities which have the least impact.

In general, the value of every risk and opportunity in a game theory scenario is a subjective value unique to each actor because of the tendency of different actors to value the same risks and opportunities differently because of each actor having a different hierarchy of priorities.

One of the many advantages of learning game theory is that if one becomes skilled at it they gain a significantly better ability than average to understand how others in a competitive, cooperative, or mixed competitive-cooperative situation are likely to react in it – and over a wide array of situations, everything from business negotiations to nuclear deterrence to hostage negotiations. It can be used for almost any situation involving decision making. Of course this depends on understanding the thoughts of someone else, which will always be somewhat off because one can never be entirely sure what someone else is thinking. But so long as one is in the ballpark of another actor’s intentions then practicing game theory enhances one’s ability to understand and anticipate the actions of someone else.

Continue reading “Using Game Theory to Decipher Putin’s Military Buildup Near Ukraine”

The biggest winner of the withdrawal from Afghanistan turned out to be the US defense industry because it scared the hell out of all of America’s First World allies.

When our wealthiest allies in Europe and Asia looked at the withdrawal in horror they were not so much horrified by our exit from Afghanistan, in and of itself.

What they were really visualizing was not the future of Central Asia but, instead, what an American withdrawal would mean for stability in their own neighborhood, no matter if we withdrew in a perfectly orderly military operation.

To Asians an American exit from the Pacific would be guaranteed to mean the new, replacement, hegemon over all of Asia would be a government that just released a biological weapon on the entire planet.

No matter what issues the First World has with American diplomacy the negatives of US hegemony are trivial (and fairly predictable) compared to the universe of risks and dangers associated with Chinese world hegemony.

Chinese dominance is as clear an example of a small (or zero) reward/extremely high risk option as has ever existed.

Low reward/sky high risk options are, of course, options that nobody takes.

Even Putin has good reason not to want America to withdraw from Asia because Russia benefits if America and China are balancing the other in a deterrence posture.

If the US and China are focused on eachother, that reduces the amount of resources America has to make trouble for Russia.

But if America simply packed up and let China take Asia over, that would free China to start thinking about new initiatives that could involve Russia’s oil and resource interests in the Arctic, Russia’s oil-rich “near abroad” allies in Central Asia, or perhaps even Siberia itself.

For America’s part, and no matter how badly the exit from Afghanistan was managed, little was lost since Afghanistan (after bin Laden was killed) is of little economic and strategic value.

Afghanistan is a mountainous operation in the “badlands” which the military-industrial complex can live without.

But as a (very unintended) consequence of withdrawing from a nomadic basket case with little to offer us if we had remained, we accidentally terrified our much more strategically important First World allies with the prospect of American Isolationism.

This made them more eager than ever to seek out strategic partnerships and weapons deals with America to counter China (and, by extension, to lock America more deeply into a military alliance system that will make it harder for the US to retreat from) than they otherwise would have been.

Hence the nuclear attack submarine deal with Australia was pushed forward so quickly by Britain and Australia that the deal’s official announcement looked less like an American initiative and more like Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison were taking America’s Asia policy into some sort of joint British-Australian custodianship.

Which may very well be for the best considering Biden’s limited cognitive powers and the fact he will probably be a lame duck President before Christmas.

If anything, the planned production of these attack submarines should be doubled from eight to sixteen.

I would also recommend giving four nuclear submarines to New Zealand, except that Jacinda would only use the ships’ cruise missiles to slaughter any New Zealanders caught ordering fried chicken.

This submarine deal with Australia is just the beginning of what is sure to be a wave of more multi-billion dollar defense contracts, military exercises, and basing rights with Australia, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, India, and others threatened by China – and all of these deals will, presumably, be voted against in Congress by the same members of Congress who against assisting Israel with the Iron Dome missile defense system.

When the FDA voted 16 to 2 that coronavirus booster shots are not needed for anyone vaccinated under the age of 65, the FDA also voted (without realizing it) that masks are unnecessary for those vaccinated under 65 because the vaccines are substantially more effective at preventing coronavirus infection (or getting serious virus complications) and superior at preventing asymptomatic spread of the virus (I had my second dose of Moderna back in late May) than masks are.

But if the FDA thinks the best, widely available, weapon against the virus (vaccines) are not needed for those under 65 because their risk of getting or transmitting the virus is still low 6 months after their second dose, then there is no point in their still using a far less effective weapon against the virus (masks) since their vote means, by implication, that they are not seriously worried about the double vaccinated either catching or spreading the virus.

If they were concerned, then they would have recommended booster shots instead of keeping masks which offer statistically much less protection to society.

I myself never wore the mask outdoors once during the entire pandemic even though it was mandated to wear it outside in my locality.  Based on a coronavirus blood test I took one week before my first Moderna shot I never got the virus because I tested negative for the antibodies.  I also haven’t had any flu-like symptoms in 3 years.

Currently I am not wearing the mask either outdoors or indoors, despite my area having reinstated the indoor mask mandate and despite nearly all of the statistically illiterate dummies in my neighborhood wearing the mask indoors, and in many cases, outside.

This kind of ridiculous logic is what happens when so called “scientists” like those at the FDA become voodoo witchdoctors instead of scientists.

The golden age of out of control bureaucracy has led to countless, unsavory, outcomes.

And this age is surely the age of the bureaucrat because so much of the public has been brainwashed into having complete, unwavering, cult-like religious faith in what bureaucrats tell them to do, no matter how ridiculous their orders are.

If Fauci told the public that coronavirus can be prevented by standing on their heads at least 40% of the country would immediately obey.

Continue reading “‘Irony’ is & ‘Irony’ is Not – A Darwinian Perspective on the Age of Insincerity & the Golden Age of Out of Control Bureaucracy”

The advance of the Taliban on Kabul has revealed America’s foreign policy crisis, and it has nothing to do with the Taliban’s progress.

The potential takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban is not a strategic failure because America’s involvement in Afghanistan was mostly a success given the constraints that we cannot terror kill civilians in order to suppress a hostile population as previous world powers did when facing insurgencies: If the Romans were in America’s situation on 911 they would have simply nuked Afghanistan from the face of the earth on 912, and never thought twice about it afterwards.

For the most part the only military mistake was that the withdrawal occurred about 5 to 8 years later than it should have.

Otherwise the mission went about as well is it could have with only 2,400 US soldiers lost in 20 years; a fraction of the 20,000 Americans who died in the relatively brief War of 1812.

The military objectives of defeating Al Qaeda and eliminating Bin Laden for 911 have been achieved.

In that context the withdrawal of American forces and the return of the Taliban is nothing to be concerned with, except for the possibility of some other terrorist organization gaining a foothold in Afghanistan and launching attacks on Western targets. But in that case, we can simply retaliate again or threaten the Taliban to eliminate the organization or face new military action.

What failed are the foreign policy analysts and the Afghanis.

Analysis of the Afghanistan situation is overwhelmingly stupid because the supposed “analysts” are confusing the military objective of attacking Al Qaeda with the completely unrelated topic of nation building.

This failed pundit class is never going to create quality assessments until they get the idea through their thick heads that nation building is not a military objective because the success of nation building ultimately depends on the willingness and capability of an occupied foreign nation to rebuild itself primarily on its own; and this willingness is, ultimately, out of the control of the US military.

The situation in Afghanistan today is roughly similar to what would be the case in Japan 20 years after WWII if the Japanese had been unable to create political stability and wound up reverting into civil war with a revival of Shogun warlordism.

If they had descended into feudal Japanese warlordism that would not have changed the fact that America’s military objectives during the Pacific war had been achieved.

The failure of nation rebuilding would have been the fault of the Japanese.

Likewise, the failure to prevent the Taliban from retaking Afghanistan is the fault of the Afghans, not the US military.

Ultimately, nations occupied by the United States have to rebuild themselves.

The Marshall Plan was more of a public relations stunt, with only small economic impact, to convince Western Europe to keep itself within the sphere of NATO. For the most part, Western Europe rebuilt itself after WWII, not America.

While South Korea managed to make “South Koreanization” work to keep South Korea free from North Korea after the Korean War, South Vietnam failed to make “South Vietnamization” work for South Vietnam after the Vietnam War.

The ultimate success of rebuilding South Korea was to the credit of the South Korean people, and the failure to rebuild South Vietnam was the failure of the South Vietnamese people.

Despite Vietnam, the United States won the Cold War anyway, and having the Afghans lose the peace in Afghanistan is much less of a military problem for America because Afghanistan today is less strategically important than Vietnam ever was in the 1960s and 1970s.

It is long past time for the concept of military objectives to be completely separated from the topic of nation rebuilding objectives because when the US acts on military objectives the outcome is under our control.

Consider the following military objectives –

•  Trump’s ordering the military to destroy ISIS.
•  Eisenhower’s Overthrowing Iran’s pro-Soviet Mossadeq and replacing him with the anti-Soviet Shah Pahlavi.
•  The expulsion of Iraqi military forces from Kuwait during 1991’s Persian Gulf War.
•  Reagan’s using Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a proxy military force to attack and weaken a newly pro-Soviet Iran following the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

All of these military missions were successful because they were objectives that were not dependent on the outcome of a nation building mission.

Yes, it is true that the Shah was ultimately overthrown by the Ayatollahs. But in 1979 there was only one decade left in the Cold War.  For 26 years Operation Ajax prevented the Soviets from gaining further ground in the oil rich Middle East and Reagan shrewdly neutralized any advantage the Soviets could gain from Iran flipping to the Soviets in 1979 by diverting Iranian resources into a very destructive proxy war with Iraq.

If America had not stopped the Soviets from controlling Middle Eastern oil supplies with the Eisenhower Doctrine the Soviets might never have collapsed because of the enormous oil revenue and diplomatic leverage they would have won with Middle Eastern hegemony.

Because they did not rely on nation building, the outcomes of these missions  were under the control of the US military and/or intelligence agencies, not the political decisions of Islamic civilians.

The lesson is that foreign policy analysts need to treat military action and nation rebuilding as completely different topics, with completely different requirements and America’s military interventions should be (unless there is absolutely no alternative) restricted to missions where there is a clear military objective and either has no nation building component, or, if there is a nation building component, that the nation being rebuilt has some capacity to become self-reliant on its own.

About three years ago I injured my shoulder after slipping on ice.

In two months my shoulder seemed to have healed.

But a year later I developed pain at the original injury site. I went in for x-rays and my doctor said the cause of the pain was arthritis.

The conventional medical wisdom is that arthritis cannot be reversed with any medical intervention, although it can reverse for unkown reasons on its own in rare circumstances.

Not satisfied being told there was no way to regenerate cartillage damaged by arthritis I went about trying multiple different supplements that supposedly had the power to rebuild cartillage.

Nothing I tried worked until I began supplementing with a plant sterol called ecdysterone.  I have been taking it about 30 minutes to 1 hour before having a meal with meat because meat contains leucine which ecdysterone synergizes with.

It is most famous for being a body building supplement that has muscle building effects similar to the most powerful known steroids, but without producing any of the side effects of steroids, probably because it technically does not belong to the family of steroidal chemical compounds and seems to act through different pathways.

Ecdysterone also has a less known reputation for having cartilage restoring properties.

I began supplementing with it after I read a study which said ecdysterone regenerated cartilage in laboratory mice.

After two months of taking 2 grams of ecdysterone a day the constant pain in my shoulder faded. Four months later there was no pain at all at the site of injury, nor was there any sense of grinding at any contact points between joints. Six months after starting ecdysterone supplementation I went back for more x-rays. The doctor said the arthritic damage looked like it was reversing.

I continued using 2 grams of ecdysterone for the next year, although at a reduced frequency than before. Instead I took 2 grams a day for two weeks, then two weeks off.

Over the past year I have further reduced my use of ecdysterone to 2 grams for one week every 2 months, with x-rays taken every six months to track progress.

My most recent x-rays in March of this year showed there was almost no sign of any arthritic damage and I have continued to be able to move my shoulder and arms as easily as I could before the injury.

The cartillage restoring effect of ecdysterone seemed to be enhanced by using stretches to target the ligaments, muscles, and tendons around both of my arms, both shoulders, upper back, and neck.

For some reason the more thoroughly I did stretches around a larger area of my body the more rapidly ecdysterone supplementation seemed to reverse the arthritis compared to when I only used ecdysterone without stretches.

Sometimes I would feel unusually tired when taking ecdysterone. The reason for this is that ecdysterone uses methyl donors as fuel, but so do other body processes such as the citric acid/krebs cycle.

I corrected this by sometimes taking ecdysterone with 1.5 grams of the methyl supplement trimethylglycine (TMG) AKA betaine anhydrous.

I then slowly reduced the TMG supplementation because, although safe for short term use, the constant use of methyl supplements like TMG or other methylating supplements (like vitamin B12 methylcobalamin supplements) can cause damage to DNA and mitochondria if used for long periods.

However short term use is safe for someone who is undermethylated (like those with dysfunctional citric acid cycle processes) or those using a supplement that burns methyl groups for fuel like ecdysterone and the NAD+ boosters Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) and Nictoninamide Mononucleotide (NMN).

Over the past year I have been able to use ecdysterone without needing any methyl donor supplements, possibly because I have used ecdysterone less frequently as my arthritis has finished reversing.

Based on my experience ecdysterone could be a significant treatment enhancement for those suffering from arthritis or any kind of cartilage degeneration such as degenerative disc disorders.

Based on my knowledge of the mitochondrial fission/fusion cycle, my personal theory about rheumatoid arthritis is that it is caused by defective mitochondria in the cartilage triggering the immune system to clear out bad mitochondria, as the immune system is prone to do when it encounters defective mitochondria elsewhere in the body.

The problem with clearing out bad cartilage mitochondria in is that cartilage has relatively few mitochondria compared to other parts of the body.

Therefore, when mitochondria in cartilage tissue is damaged it becomes harder for new, healthy, mitochondria to replace the defective ones that are cleared out by the immune system. Without functioning mitochondria, cartilage tissue cannot regenerate.

This is why the trigger for the onset of arthritis can be old age (because of the normal accumulation of bad mitochondria in the elderly) or the result of injury to a joint – cartilage is more vulnerable to a sudden injury because it has relatively less mitochondria to use to recover with.

This would also explain why fission-inducing supplements such as NR, NMN, pterostilbene and resveratrol can sometimes cause joint pain in those who supplement with them excessively – the mitochondrial fissioning properties of these supplements fission too many mitochondria located in cartilage, unless they are followed by fusion supplements to recombine the mitochondria strands into healthier ones.

My hypothesis is that there may be a potential way to reverse arthritis in those with more advanced stages of arthritis that would be worth investigating in a clinical study.

The first step would be to rebuild as much cartilage as possible for a period of months by supplementing ecdysterone and combining the supplementation with stretching exercises around all of the surrounding ligaments, muscles, and joints of the primary site of arthritis.

Stretches should be done slowly at first, broadly around as much of the body as possible, and then stretching can become more frequent as cartilage is restored.

Stretches should be done broadly around the body because the joints form an interactive system with muscles, ligaments, and tendons throughout the entire body, not just a single area of the body.

Because the mitochondria of this restored cartilage would likely be damaged due to arthritis, after a period of time on ecdysterone (probably months of supplementation to a year, depending on how advanced the arthritis is) those in the study should stop for about two weeks and then go on a mitochondrial fission/fusion cycle every day for a month that would include stretches during fission days.

If patients feel tired they should probably experiment with small doses of TMG to add a methyl donor to fuel the ecdysterone, and then gradually taper off using TMG. If they can later take ecdysterone without feeling tired they can drop the TMG completely.

For those who never feel fatigued on ecdysterone they will never need to use TMG.

The new, but possibly weak, mitochondria generated by the ecdysterone would be fissioned and fusioned into stronger, healthier, mitochondria which would make a return of arthritis less likely if I am correct that arthritis is triggered by the immune system trying to clear out damaged mitochondria in cartilage.

I don’t recommend using ecdysterone for someone with cancer, despite some older ecdysterone studies actually showing it has anti-cancer properties.

The reason is that those studies are older and there have been relatively few studies about ecdysterone for any medical condition over the past twenty years.

Since ecdysterone hasn’t been studied much in cancer research I cannot recommend using it for cancer patients since I don’t know what the effect might be until more studies are done.

Over at the great longevity and medical advice forum, Longecity.org, the commenter Turnbuckle outlined an idea that deserves a Nobel Prize in medicine because it has the greatest quality that any idea, of any type, can have, which is that it just flat out works.

His hypothesis is that many age related diseases – everything from weaker eyesight, arthritis, to muscle wasting, to reduced kidney function, to general lethargy – are frequently caused by, or, are exacerbated by older bodies becoming overburdened with weak mitochondria.

In order to correct this accumulation of bad mitochondrial function to improve overall health even into older ages he created a supplement protocol that greatly enhances the normal mitochondrial fission/fusion cycle that the body uses to destroy weak mitochondria and generate stronger ones.

During mitochondrial fission the body breaks mitochondria into two strands at which point the body searches for weak strands to destroy.

Afterwards mitochondrial fusion occurs which recombines the remaining strands of mitochondria into new ones that are healthier than before.

Turnbuckle, and other commenters at the site, have used to good effect a supplement stack that more efficiently accelerates this fission/fusion cycle of destroying weak mitochondria and replacing them with stronger ones.

I know this works because I have been trying myself (with very good results) a variation of Turnbuckle’s fission/fusion supplement stack for over two years, even though I am only in my mid-30s and Turnbuckle is over 60.

My most up-to-date supplement formula for 1 day of fission is –

500 mgs of Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN)
600 mgs of Nicotinamide Riboside (NR)
1 gram of Alpha Ketoglutaric Acid (AKG)
20 mgs of Pyrroloquinoline (PQQ)

I then do a moderate amount of weight training on fission days after taking these supplements because exercise helps the body target weak mitochondria for destruction.

My supplement formula for 1 day of fusion is –

1 gram of AKG
20 mgs of PQQ
50 mgs of Sulforaphane (From the supplement produced by Thorne Research)
1 gram of yellow mustard seed extract (which chemically activates the sulforaphane)

Usually I do not do weight training on fusion days.

I alternate between one day of fission and then one day of fusion two or three times a week, two weeks in a row, once every three to four months.

Turnbuckle uses only 1 gram of NR to promote mitochondrial fission, but I cut the amount of NR and added NMN because NMN reaches different parts of the body that NR cannot reach, such as muscle tissue.

My thinking is that by combining NR with NMN I can get fission more broadly promoted across more of the body than with just NR.

Turnbuckle also uses stearic acid to promote mitochondrial fusion, but I use sulforaphane (activated by mustard extract capsules) to promote fusion instead.

The reason is that sulforaphane is able to cross the blood brain barrier, which stearic acid cannot do.

Sulforaphane has also demonstrated some very interesting anti-cancer properties, including the ability to harm cancer stem cells which are usually involved in cancer recurrence.

The only downside is that sulforaphane can reduce blood pressure, so it shouldn’t be used in combination with blood pressure lowering medications.

But since I don’t have a blood pressure problem I go with sulforaphane since it seems to have more benefits than stearic acid.

Otherwise my fission/fusion cycle is the same as Turnbuckle’s.

I have nothing but positive results to report from using this fission/fusion cycle.

It is great for weight loss. I don’t need to eat as much as I did before I started mitochondrial fission and fusion. This indicates that my body is using energy more efficiently. In fact, it is difficult to eat more than I need to. Overall it cuts my food intake (without any feeling of hunger) by about 20% to 25% whenever I am on the cycle. The effect is long lasting enough that months after I finish a cycle I am still eating about 15% to 20% less than previously.

It is great at getting rid of body fat that I never seemed able to eliminate with exercise alone.

I also keep muscle toned with less exercise than before I had ever heard of mitochondrial fission/fusion when I exercised for longer periods of time.

Energy and sleep all seem better, even when I have been off the cycle for months.

Turnbuckle also has a stem cell rejuvenation cycle using C60 oil which also seems to work well according to those who have tried it but he doesn’t recommend it for anyone under 65 because it could exhaust one’s native stem cell pool early.

As for the mitochondrial cycle, he doesn’t recommend anyone with any recent wounds to use it until after the body has healed normally.

He also doesn’t recommend it for anyone with a virus problem or cancer.

Viruses replicate faster under conditions of mitochondrial fission.

However, I think one might be able to keep this under control for most viruses by using certain anti-viral supplements.

The most effective anti-viral supplement that I am aware of is lomatium root extract. If one takes lomatium capsules on fission days the anti-viral effects of the supplement should be able to disrupt viral replication.

Other anti-virals that one could possibly combine with a fission and fusion cycle are olive leaf extract, PABA, and oregano oil capsules.

For those with cancer the fission/fusion cycle is not recommended because mitochondrial fission temporarily increases glycolosis throughout the body and glycolosis can benefit existing cancer cells.

However, the fusion part of the cycle might be beneficial as a cancer prevention protocol or to help those with cancer in combination with other treatments.

Mitochondrial fusion is known to be harmful to cancer cells because it disrupts glycolosis, which cancer cells need to compensate for having reduced access to oxygen.

Turnbuckle mentioned on the C60 thread for stem cell rejuvenation (see here and here) that senescent cells can be eliminated with a variation of his mitochondrial fission cycle. He also says that this same fission protocol can be turned into a cancer preventative one by biasing the supplements from fission to fusion.

Senescent cells, by the way, are not the same as cancer cells. Senescent cells are old cells that functioned properly but which have been programmed to be destroyed by the body, whereas cancer cells are malfunctioning. Usually there are millions of sensecent cells in the body for every individual cancer cell. Although they are not the same type of cells, an excessive accumulation of sensecent cells can indirectly create an environment where cancer can develop.

Therefore it makes sense to periodically clear out senescent cells with senolytic supplements like fisetin and apigenin during a senolytic/fission cycle and then use a fusion cycle as part of anti-cancer protocol.

The way to know if senescent cells or cancer cells are being destroyed is if flu like symptoms develop. Flu like symptoms indicate those cells are being killed off by either the fission or fusion supplements and the immune system is working to clear them out of the body.

If one does not get any flu like symptoms then one probably had few senescent or cancer cells to begin with.

Based on what Turnbuckle has mentioned I have created my own senolytic and cancer prevention protocol as follows.

Because I eat lots of red meat, and because Western diets for the past couple of decades have been far, far too high in iron fortified foods (especially in cereals) I use 500 mgs of IP6 four to five times a week on an empty stomach in the morning and donate blood three times a year in order to keep my iron levels at lower, healthier, levels (See the comments from Longecity commenter Dorian Gray here and here about the many health benefits of maintaining lower iron levels).

Also, every two weeks I will combine 1000 mgs of IP6 with 1000 mgs of myo-inositol for three days because the combination of IP6 and myoinositol is harmful to the signalling of cancer cells. The reason for not taking myoinositol every week is that it can lower testosterone levels if used excessively, but for cancer prevention using it briefly every 2 weeks should not have any noteworthy sideffects.

After I donate blood I wait two weeks for my blood cell count and iron levels to return to normal.

Then I use 1000 mgs of IP6 and 1000 mgs of myo-inositol a day for three days.

After that I try three days of fusion followed by one day of senolytic/fission, then two days of fusion and one day of fission and end with four days of fusion. The idea is to use this fission/fusion cycle after I have donated blood and my iron levels are lower because cancer benefits from high levels of iron. By using the cycle after donating blood, when iron is low, the fusion cycle is occurring at a time when its anti-cancer effect should be maximized.

The modified fission/fusion supplement list is –

Senolytic Fission –

1 gram of Tributyrin (a more stable and bioavailable version of sodium butyrate)
1 gram of Fisetin
1 gram of AKG
1 gram of Quercetin
10 mgs of Bioperine (to enhance the absorbtion of quercetin, apigenin and fisetin)
250 mgs of Pterostilbene (a better absorbed relative of resveratrol)
100 mgs Apigenin

Tributyrin, fisetin, and apigenin all promote the activity of anti-cancer genes such as P53 and P21, in addition to promoting other anti-cancer activities and their demonstrated senolytic properties. Unfortunately, fisetin and apigenin both encourage fission so it is better if they are sandwiched between fusion processes.

Quercetin synergizes the anti-cancer effect of fisetin and apigenin.

AKG helps protect DNA from damage from excessive methylation and synergizes with the P53 anti-tumor gene. AKG is often deficient in cancer patients, but shouldn’t be used more than occasionally throughout the year because the body needs some degree of methylation for various processes such as the citric acid cycle. One will know if they are taking too much AKG if they suddenly get a craving for lemonade, or anything tangy.

Bioperine should also only be used occasionally because although it can enhance the absorption of supplements it can also make it easier for the body to absorb pollutants that are otherwise blocked from entering the body in the intestinal track.

Pterostilbene also promotes mitochondrial fission.

The modified fusion supplement list is –

1 gram of Tributyrin
1 gram of Curcumin
1 gram of Quercetin
10 mgs of Bioperine
50 mgs of Sulforaphane
1 gram of Mustard Seed Extract (to activate the sulforaphane)

In keeping with our analysis of how to write real history the standard we will judge Republican Presidents by is how close they came to bringing the Republican Party back to its Federalist Party origins.

We will certainly not use the Progressive “historian” approach to grading Presidents which is nothing more than to rank Presidents exclusively on whether or not they mindlessly expanded the power and wealth of bureaucracy.

Once again, we exclude Gerald Ford since his tenure was too short, quirky, and unremarkable to be fairly judged relative to the others.

Trump – Trump tops the list (and, by combining both of his scores on domestic and foreign policy, he comes out as the best overall Republican President since the New Deal) because he perfected the tentative steps Reagan took to bring the GOP back to the Federalist Party  by taking Reagan’s economic, military buildup, and foreign policy platforms and adding Hamilton’s infrastructure, trade protectionism and immigration restrictionism. In a way what is called ‘Reaganism’ was an early, incomplete, attempt at the ideological perfection of Trumpism. Trump really should have been Reagan’s Vice President because he would have continued as President what Reagan got right while taking the issues Reagan did not get around to in the proper, Federalist, direction.

Reagan – By breaking with the Rockefeller wing of the GOP and rebranding the Republicans as a clearer alternative to the Democrats Reagan foreshadowed Trump and paved much of the road Trump took on the 45th President’s even more historic political journey. Reagan proved that a Republican could not only challenge the New Deal economic consensus, but could thrive on doing so. Reagan’s economics were so effective that the next Democrat President, Clinton, did not dare to challenge Reagonomics in any meaningful way. Obama tried to but ended up with no lasting changes except for a brittle Obamacare system that is little loved, and generally creating the immediate series of policy failures that led to  the election of Trump who, as we have seen, forms a seamless continuum with Reagan.

Nixon – Today Nixon’s domestic policies like establishing the EPA and price controls seem strange, even a little bizarre, for a Republican. But keep in mind that during Nixon’s time there wasn’t an appetite in the GOP to take on the New Deal economic consensus because FDR’s coalition was wobbling but not yet ready to crumble. Basically, the standard Rockefeller Republican platform of the time was to promise to manage New Deal bureaucracy better than the Democrats, not to change it except for around the edges. Indeed, Rockefeller Republicans have always been better at managing the Progressive machinery in DC than any Democrat President. Since Nixon wasn’t really expected to revolutionize Republican economic policy he doesn’t get marked down too harshly for not trying.

George Herbert Walker Bush – Unlike Richard Nixon, Bush version 1.0 was expected to at least continue Reaganism, if not improve on it after he won in 1988. Instead he pointlessly revived governing on an intellectually bankrupt Rockefeller Republican domestic platform and by removing Reaganite advisors from the White House as soon as he was sworn in, which in turn pointlessly antagonized GOP voters. The best thing he did for Republican domestic policy was lose to Clinton in 1992 which led to the election of a more solidly Reaganite GOP Congress in 1994.

George Walker Bush – Once again we see how the Trump and Reagan Presidencies synergize with eachother from a Federalist Party perspective by looking at how 12 years of two Bush Administrations tried to navigate the Party away from the incomplete steps Reagan took to restore the GOP back to its Federalist Party origins. Their collective misgovernance later backfired spectacularly (with Reagan winning posthumous revenge on the Bush clan) when a fedup Republican voter base embraced Trump who went on to destroy the Bush dynasty and then improve significantly on what Reagan did by doing what not even Reagan was brilliant enough to do on trade and immigration. In many ways the second Bush unintentionally setup a future environment favorable to Trump by continuing to antagonize Republican voters on immigration and trade, as well as treating the Reaganite members of Congress of the time with more hostility than he ever treated the Democrats with. His few positive domestic policies, such as tax cuts, were puny compared to the more substantive Trump and Reagan rate reductions. George W. Bush also left the Party in a significantly worse condition than his father did after he left office because he was succeeded after 2008 by Democrat supermajorities and an ideologically pure Progressive President, while his own Party was left in ideological turmoil. Trump, by contrast, in a single term left the Party in a strong position at the state and Federal levels in terms of both numbers and in terms of moving the GOP towards a winning election platform.

Eisenhower – Surprise! It turns out that the worst modern Republican President on domestic policy was not George W. Bush, but Ike. The reason he ranks dead last is because of his confusing all segments of the American Right for 70 years by his warning about the wrong industrial complex. Instead of warning about the military-industrial complex he should have warned about the multitude of Progressive-industrial complexes such as the academic-industrial complex or the regulatory-industrial complex. While the military-industrial complex is not perfect, it is less objectionable than the Progressive industrial-complexes. Furthermore, unlike the Progressives, it actually brings some value to the policy table: The Soviets could not have been defeated without the military-industry relationship that Eisenhower foolishly condemned, and, after 1991, the military-industrial complex was and is the only thing standing in the way of Chinese world hegemony. Beyond the policy error of condemning the military-industrial complex, his speech contributed to the long-reigning confusion on the Right over what is the proper agent-principal relationship by which the Federal Government should be run on.

Establishment Republicans continue to this day to think Hamiltonian governing institutions – such as the military-industrial complex – can coexist as subordinates to Progressive institutions. Meanwhile the American dissident “Right” took Ike’s comment as proof that both the Hamiltonian and Wilsonian institutions are illegitimate because they think the very existence of the entire United States Government after 1865 is illegitimate compared to their (largely imaginary) concept of what the United States is supposed to be . The problem with this is that if the existence of Hamilton’s institutions are illegitimate because Lincoln saved them by fighting and winning the Civil War, then the dissident “Right” has no political system to counter the Progressive institutions with.  Notice that Progressives never, ever, attack the legitimacy of their institutions such as the university system.

The correct, Nationalist system engineering framework to go with is to subordinate the Progressive institutions back into servant institutions of Hamilton’s structures just as Progressives always endorse subordinating Hamilton’s institutions to their own Progressive institutions. But this cannot be done by these pseudo-Nationalists because, by definition, if they do not believe Hamilton’s political infrastructure should even exist in the first place, then they cannot even agree on what are the Nationalist governing institutions that they would like to see be the centers of power. They somehow expect a new Nationalist government to create policy, Ex Nihilo, of any governing institutions.

So we ended up (until Trump) with the establishment wrongly thinking that the true, Nationalist, Hamiltonian institutions can continue to be servants of Progressive institutions because they don’t mind it, and the “Nationalists” refusing (because of Lincoln) to advocate for Hamilton’s Nationalist institutions that should be bringing the Progressive industrial-complex back into servitude. By wrongly labeling the military-industrial complex as something for Republicans to be primarily concerned with (relative to other industrial-complexes) Eisenhower helped throw Conservative strategy off course for decades.

The only President on this list that acted with the appropriate attitude (if not execution) to the agent-principal relationship was Trump because the he did not run to destroy Hamilton’s institutions. Instead Trump wanted to govern from Hamilton’s institutions because Trump simply wanted the great power Hamilton and Lincoln vested Nationalist system, like the military-industrial complex, with.

American history is one of the most unexplored fields of study because very few post-New Deal “historians” know anything about it.

Consider the example of “foreign policy” historians.

The entire problem with this discipline, as it is with all Progressive institutions, is that it is concerned exclusively with the question of whether any person or event expanded the power and wealth of Progressive bureaucracy, with one of the most prominent of these institutions being the sprawling, crooked, bureaucratic apparatus known as academia.

Progressive ideology is nothing more or less than the totalitarian ideology that power-crazed Progressive bureaucrats must have dictatorial power because they are “trained” in something pretending to be “science.”

Naturally, Progressive “historians” write “history” on behalf of the ideology that says bureaucrats, a class which includes the bureaucrats populating college history departments, deserve absolute, unquestionable, power and infinite sums of tax money.

Which means “historians” cannot be trusted to write history that is anything more than propaganda on behalf of themselves.

Interestingly, one does not see them commit many errors of fact.

Their errors really center around the interpretation.

Now, it is true that historians have always been politically biased (even those who strive to be the most objective) and history is open to interpretation.

However, there has never been a previous time when historians gained political power more directly from their interpretation of history than today: To advocate for giving dictatorial power and money to academic bureaucracy is directionally no different than advocating for giving dictatorial power and money directly, individually, by name, to the historians themselves.

Which means the conclusions of the “best” historians of the Progressive era are inherently less trustworthy than those of any of the best historians of previous eras.

Yes, past historians curried favor with elite decision makers. But this was done without their having any expectation of becoming more than advisors to the powerful.

But in this Progressive era – an era defined by the unprecedented historical mistake of creating government by bureaucracy – historians for the first time ever are creating history with the unwavering, religious certainty, that they, the bureaucrats of the history departments, are heads of state: Communist ruling classes, who are looking more and more like Nazis the more genders Progressives invent out of thin air, generally did not choose bureaucrats for leadership positions. Senior posts went primarily to members of the military, intelligence agencies, industrial managers, or members of the founding revolutionaries.

To be sure, Communist bureaucracies (with the sole exception of the military) could never set policy independently of senior Communist leaders because they were controlled by Communist leadership.

Nothing like the Progressive system where completely unaccountable (non-military) bureaucracies, of all kinds, can independently set policy, with or without the support of Western heads of state, would have been tolerated for a second by Stalin under his system, or the post-Stalin oligarchical system of the Politburo.

By definition Stalinism was government by Stalin.

Which means, by definition, Stalin and only Stalin, in his infinite wisdom, was permitted to set policy. Policy could certainly not be set by Soviet bureaucrats independently of Stalin’s will.

Stalin’s “Monarchical” attitude to bureaucrats – as agents who were strictly advisors for, completely servile to, and whose employment was entirely at the mercy of either a glorious head of state, like Stalin, or, to a numerically limited, and largely well-defined, group of senior oligarchs – was exactly the same attitude of Mao, the Kim dynasty, Fidel Castro, and every Communist government that ever existed.

Notice that the difference between Communist governance and Progressive governance is NOT the fact that their respective bureaucracies are “Deep.”

Both systems, and their immediate successors in Russia and China, had “Deep States” in the sense they had large/expansive government bureaucracies.

The difference, the difference that makes Progressive governance orders of magnitude more dysfunctional than Communist governance, lies in the fact that the Progressive state sets policy independently of the (nominal) leadership of “Democratic” Western nations, whereas Communist governments exercised strict, absolute, unquestioned, Monarchical or Oligarchical control over the policies their bureaucracies were tasked with.

By politically advocating for their own personal, unaccountable, power to set policy, the modern foreign affairs historian is also the first foreign affairs historian to not rank historical figures on the success or failure of their foreign policies.

Instead they are only ranked by how much power they gained for Progressive bureaucratic institutions, with barely any thought given to whether their diplomatic policies were effective or not.

This wrong way of thinking can be illustrated by how historians rate US Presidents on their positions towards UN peacekeeping operations.

The success of the purported policy of US peacekeeping is never, or only in passing, judged on standard of whether the peacekeeping was succesful or not.

UN peacekeeping operations are riddled with corruption scandals such as cases in Africa where UN personnel sold female refugees and children into sex slavery.

But the Progressive “historian” never does what an actual historian would do, which is judge the value of UN peacekeeping by factoring in the wide-ranging corruption that frequently accompanies UN operations.

This is because the foreign policy of peacekeeping is not what Progressive historians are judging when they review UN peacekeeping.

In reviewing US Presidents and their relationship to the UN these “historians” only care if a President gave unaccountable power and power to the UN, regardless of how poorly the UN performs at its purported mission.

Their attitude of little to no interest in the policy outcome of peacekeeping so long as the UN bureaucracy is strengthened is exactly the same mentality Progressives take to every one of their purported policies.

For example, assuming their climate models are correct, the fact that Progressive energy policies cannot mathematically stop global warming with carbon reductions in the West when the absolute increases in Chinese and Indian carbon output dwarf the absolute reductions from Western nations (the total amount of carbon sent into the atmosphere by all nations is what affects world temperatures in Progressive climate models, not where the carbon output geographically originates from) never deters Progressives from pushing for carbon reductions in the West which, by the Progressive’s OWN climate models are incapable of affecting temperature.

This is because Progressive environmentalists do not care that their temperature reduction policies are mathematically impossible to achieve because of the enormous carbon output of China and India.

The actual purpose of Progressive climate policy (as with all of their policies) is really about enriching Progressive bureaucracies with tax money and the bureaucratic power to distort, and interfere with, and control, the lucrative dollar energy market.

As long as Progressive regulators can control the energy market and prop-up politically favored, multi-billion dollar renewable energy corporations that could not exist without Progressives distorting the market with anti-carbon regulations (the “renewable” industry does not have the technology to produce reliable, carbon-neutral, energy that avoids California-like power blackouts and “Flex alerts”, except for nuclear energy, which Progressives also oppose) then Progressives could not care less if the climate warms anyway.

Rejecting this mainstream-crackpot approach, the ranking of US Presidents on foreign policy – to the genuine historian – must be ranked on the quality of the policy outcomes.

In that spirit, here is an assessment of post-New Deal US Presidents using the standard of how consistent their diplomacy was with Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist foreign policy.

Which is a biased standard, but is never the less a foreign policy standard, not a pseudo-foreign policy standard that judges foreign policy by how well it expanded the wealth and power of Progressive bureaucracy.

Gerald Ford, of course, has to be excluded out of fairness since his time was simply spent as a caretaker in the aftermath of Watergate. While he did what he could under the circumstances, and though he made no serious foreign policy errors, his decisions simply weren’t important enough to judge him alongside the other Republican Presidents.

1)  Eisenhower – Ike takes the top spot among 20th century GOP Presidents because he pioneered a new American foreign policy that balanced new strategic concepts of containment and nuclear deterrence, vigorous rollback of Soviet expansion primarily with the use of proxy wars, as well as alliance building with client dictators who were willing to become aligned with NATO in exchange for America adopting selective neutrality towards any domestic oppression our client dictators engaged in. The example set by Eisenhower in the 1950s created the foundation of Republican foreign policy realism for the rest of the Cold War and later culminated in the Condor Principle and the logical successor to Cold War realism, Hamiltonian Regionalism.

2)  Trump – Although Trump did not create realism like Ike did, he did bring strategic coherence to Republican foreign policy (which was adrift and purposeless after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991) by adopting Cold War thinking for the modern era. Whereas Ike, Nixon, and Reagan were each pursuing some variation of containment and deterrence policy that was already the Party consensus in their times, Trump signlehandedly redefined and clarified the purpose of Republican foreign policy. Trump’s realism correctly identified China as America’s primary opponent and he linked strategic competition with China to Hamilton’s economic policy of trade protectionism. He further demonstrated the interrelationship between American Capitalism with American diplomacy by reviving the Condor Principle with foreign dictators and focusing the military only towards conflicts where American economic and security interests were involved (Take the oil!), and wisely downplayed defending “human rights.” Beyond this, Trump simply applied all of the traditional tactics of foreign policy realism (tactics which are complex and varied) when and where they were best suited: Trump contained when containment was the right policy, he used force when force was the right policy, he waltzed beautifully with Kim Jong Un along the entire Korean DMZ when waltzing beautifully with Kim Jong Un was the right policy, he applied the Condor Principle when the Condor Principle was the right policy, and he withdrew when withdrawing was the right policy.

3)  Reagan – He broke the Cold War stalemate by restoring Eisenhower’s aggressive policy of rollback and containment of the Soviet Union, continued the successful tradition of the Condor Principle of Ike and Nixon whereby America declared neutrality concerning human rights abuses so long as foreign nations stayed out of the Soviet sphere, and combined it with a novel arms buildup that overstretched the Soviets. Contrary to the opinion of many power hungry “historian” bureaucrats there was no guarantee the USSR would have collapsed peacefully without Reagan. North Korea and Cuba both limped on after 1991 (modern China has adopted a classic Fascist economic model which combines aspects of traditional Socialism with corporate cronyism). The Soviet Union could quite possibly still exist to this day if Reagan hadn’t pressured its weaknesses when Progressive “historians” of the time insisted the USSR was going nowhere.

4)  Nixon – Although Reagan was needed to break the stalemate of Nixon’s détente, détente in its time was a badly needed break from the multiple proxy wars America and the Soviets fought from 1948 to 1968. No, Nixon did not start the Vietnam War as Progressive “historians” would misdirect people into thinking. That was the fault of a Progressive, Lyndon Johnson. He did end the Vietnam War about as well as any President, Republican or Democrat, could end a conflict that had (at most) moderate strategic importance to the outcome of the Cold War. For some reason “South Vietnamization” did not work to prop up South Vietnam like “South Koreanization” propped up South Korea after the Korean War, but it isn’t clear if a different President would have done better on this aspect than Nixon. Nixon also gets, somewhat, bad marks from some Republican pundits for opening China to the US and the subsequent, failed, policy of exporting Western industry to China. But Nixon’s mission to China had little to do with an economic agenda. The point of his going was diplomatic. Primarily to split China away from its alliance with Soviet Russia, which was successful and forced a number of Russian concessions after Nixon’s visit. Secondarily, Nixon went to either stabilize or resolve multiple Asian conflicts America had been involved in, or could become indirectly involved in, such as setting the stage to wrap up Vietnam, the status of Taiwan and the (at the time) presence of US troops on Formosa to defend it from it from the Chinese mainland, the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, and the stalemate on the Korean peninsula. Economics were not a concern because no Western business in 1972 would have dreamed of outsourcing manufacturing to China considering the economic basket case Mao’s China was then. In fact, if I recall correctly, it was technically illegal under Chinese law of the time for most foreign businesses to even operate in China. Nixon’s visit was diplomatically one of the great successes in American foreign policy, and none of the outstanding issues America had in Asia at the time could have been managed well without involving communications with Beijing in some form or other.

5)  George Herbert Walker Bush – He doesn’t get nearly enough credit for overseeing a peaceful end to the Cold War everywhere, except Yugoslavia. Progressive “historians” largely take for granted the Soviets would have wrapped it up without taking much of the world down in flames with them. But it did not need to all end peacefully in 1991. Indeed, the Soviet Empire may have been the only world empire to ever close shop peacefully. The credit for this uniquely stable outcome must go to the first Bush for managing relations with Moscow in a skillful, reassuring way, at a time when the Russians could have been at their most unstable. Bush also gets Federalist Party merits for the successful execution of the Gulf War, which was a textbook use of Hamiltonian foreign policy: On Hamiltonian grounds the war was entirely justifiable on the economics of America acting to secure Kuwait’s vital oil fields (Take the Oil! perfectly encapsulates Hamiltonian justification for armed force), the use of force was appropriate to the mission of expelling the Iraqi military from Kuwait, and as soon as our ends were achieved we moved back into a containment posture against Iraq. The diplomatic maneuvering before, during, and after the War was also very well done with the White House handling a complex diplomatic balancing act with friends, enemies, and frenemies in the Middle East and with European and Asian states that had a strong economic interest in seeing Kuwait’s oil fields return to normal. The only flaw, arguably, was that the military coalition assembled by America was somewhat unwieldy – fewer allied troops with more of a regional interest in seeing Iraq thrown out of Kuwait, and therefore with more of a combat capability and willingness to engage in combat instead of being “multilateral” decoration, would have been preferable. Otherwise, it was a perfect operation.

6)  George Walker Bush – Not only far and away the worst foreign policy President on this list, he is also the worst of all Republicans including among the Federalist and Whig precursors to the GOP. Out of all Presidents, only Lyndon Johnson was clearly worse on foreign policy. It is arguable that Obama was worse than the second Bush for destroying Gadhaffi’s reign over Libya (because of the terrible precedent it sets for nuclear arms agreements) after George W. Bush convinced him to give up his nuclear weapons. Another point in favor of this argument is Obama’s allowing ISIS to sweep across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States because – for completely inexplicable reasons that cannot even be guessed at – Barack Hussein Obama did not order the US military to attack ISIS aggressively no matter how terrible their terrorist attacks were. There were surprisingly few airstrikes against ISIS strongholds during Obama’s Presidency, whereas it is quite likely G.W. Bush would have at least gone on the attack against ISIS. Nevertheless, even if Obama were objectively a worse foreign policy President, that doesn’t speak much in favor of Bush. If Bush had any positive diplomatic legacy it was that he (unintentionally) paved the way for Trump to revive the Condor Principle used with great success by Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan due to Bush showing how Democracy cannot be imposed on nations not suited for it. By backing a military dictator the Condor Principle averts the time and resource investment needed to prop up a fragile Democracy by simply installing a military dictator who can impose harsh measures against civilians that the US military would not want to directly implement itself during a military occupation.