> the price of oil has gone up considerably (that may have been an actual objective)

Even Trump isn't that dumb. There's a reason he dialed the tariffs back so much; price hikes lose elections.

If there's one highly visible product of whose price all Americans are keenly aware, it's gasoline. And on top of that, it affects the price of pretty much everything else too.

I thought the tariffs would be his undoing but jacking up the price of gas is even worse for him.

Why would he care? He's not going to be up for re-election anyway and besides he's not paying for his own gas. But the price of oil going up helps russia in a considerable way and that could well have been one of the drivers (and apparently carrying water for Netanyahu).

> He's not going to be up for re-election anyway

I would not assume that he won't try to run again, nor would I assume that his party would not support it if he did. Though I do agree with the rest of what you wrote.

(1) he has to stay alive until then

(2) he has to overcome an absolutely massive approval deficit

(3) he has to be able to run a credible campaign

(4) he has to get around the term limits

(5) I would expect there to be a fairly large number of people to be very upset if he did

All in all I don't think his chances for re-election are > 0. But I agree with you that he might try, by hook - or by crook - to hold on to that chair.

> 3) move the copy to it's original location

Copy and edit do, but move (aka rename) generally does not, and that is the part that is problematic.

I don't think the described sequence of operations is all that unusual. Not the most common case for sure, but hardly unlikely in the grand scheme of things.

I know of a dentist named Dr. Payne.

> a populist demagogue who was promoted by russia

American voters witnessed this demagogue incite a riot in an attempt to steal an election, and after that 2/3 of them still couldn't be bothered to vote against him.

As an American myself, blaming Americans for this situation seems pretty fair.

The federal government can basically print money. The only reason they "need" your tax money is to limit inflation.

You’re not wrong, unchecked inflation is bad for most people though. Stable currency is pretty important for trade and economic stability. Unless you prefer heating your home by burning stacks of cash

Oh, I agree. I never said unchecked inflation was at all desirable or even ok.

My point was that local and state governments do need your tax dollars, in the sense that that is literally their income. But for the federal government it's different. If federal tax revenue declines, they can just sell more treasury notes and continue to spend as much as before. In that sense, federal tax revenue has no direct effect on federal spending.

The price of oil isn't just about the "cost of gas at the pump". It's about how much it costs to transport anything. There aren't many products that don't need to be transported or that don't depend at least partially on something that does.

So yeah, when the price of oil goes up, oil companies make more money, and prices go up for pretty much everyone.

Maybe some of them don't remain employed for very long.

If they're living in NK then maybe their alternatives for making a living are mostly much worse than this?

In that example it would be more common to describe the watch as a "fake Rolex", for the reason you give (it's a real watch).

He said "holding on to it any longer benefits nobody", implicitly including himself. He may believe that it's to his advantage for the patent to be more widely used.

Which makes sense--I don't doubt that he is a subject matter expert where this patent is concerned. If this algorithm continues to be widely used or its use increases, then that would be likely be good for him.