First a few newsworthy items: Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen by 16 percentage points . Biden had 4.5% more votes than Trump in 2020.   Mind you, the electoral votes determine who becomes president. If Biden had 45,000 fewer total votes in the right proportion in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, Trump would today be president.  This is a percentage of only 0.05%. Similarly, if Trump in 2016 had 78,000 fewer votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton would have won the presidency.  A percentage difference of only 0.06%. While you sometimes need to appreciate the context of what politicians and their aides say, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reported after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv that  Russia is failing . So on to my topic of the day, read this  Quora  entry to give you some hope about applying to and getting admitted into Stanford University: Ivy Lee Studied   Bachelor of Science in Microb

In one corner we have incumbent President of France Emmanuel Macron and in the other, Marine Le Pen, buddy of Vladimir Putin, and threat to destroy democracy and the European Union.  Is the free world in danger? Well, I don't think so.  While Pen is supposedly in a stronger position today than she was when she ran against Macron in 2017, the Ukraine War essentially destroyed her chances.  Not too many Putin fans in France.  Further,  Macron won the 2.5 hours presidential debate held on May 3, 63% to 34%.    Macron is still only 39 years old, and Pen is 48. Her father was founder of the National Front ( her supporting party ) and regularly tried to become president since 1974.  They are anti-Muslim and said to be creepily fascists.  However, she expelled her father from his party in 2015 for carrying extreme views. Marine is, in too many ways, a  female Donald Trump .  She and her father somehow avoid paying taxes, are anti-immigration, soon after Trump became president headed for T

                              From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):          DAY    USA    WORLD     Brazil      India      South Africa June     9    1093     4732         1185        246       82 July    22     1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12     1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9     1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21     1225      6849         571        703       85 Nov    25      2304    12025        620        518      118 Dec     30      3880    14748       1224       299      465 Jan      14       4142     15512        1151        189      712                  Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398 Mar     2        1989      9490        1726       110      194 April   6          906     11787         4211       631       37 May    4         853     13667         3025     3786      59   June   1         287    10637         2346      3205       95  July   7          251      8

From the  New York Times  this morning; The French government will soon require that people show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test to eat at a restaurant, attend a movie or participate in many other activities. After President Emmanuel Macron announced the policy last week, the number of vaccine appointments surged. Italy announced a similar policy yesterday, The Times’s   Marc Santora   explains. It’s true that these mandates often generate intense criticism. In France, more than 100,000 people marched to protest Macron’s policy. In the U.S., critics sued, unsuccessfully so far, to stop Indiana University’s mandate. Some Republican politicians have also tried to stop mandates, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio. Now that President Joe Biden has snuck in something called budget reconciliation to pass Democratic money bills, ever wonder how he was going to find a way to neutralize the filibuster?  Well, this could well happen to pass the vot