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Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast today is Friday March 4th, 2022.

I'm John Poghord, the editor of commentary magazine inviting you if you are or want to be or will be in South Florida on April 6th to join us for commentary second live podcasting event where you will be with me you will be with no a Rothman you will be with a greenwald you will be with Christine Rosen and one of the first of our special guests Dan Cinoir at commentaries live podcast in the afternoon of February 6th in Palm Beach.

Florida to find out details go to commentary dot org slash live podcast that's commentary dot org slash live podcast you can be present as we do a podcast right in front of you can ask questions will have some fun who knows it will do maybe we will do commentary podcast trivia we might have a drinking game you never know commentary dot org slash live podcast and yes they are here with me again today as they will be on April 6th executive editor is going to be in the next week.

So we are going to be on April 6th executive editor a greenwald hi a hi John senior writer Christine Rosen high Christine hi John and associate editor and all Rothman high Noah hi John.

So good news this morning, rare piece of good news these days really great job numbers building on last months really great job numbers so it's not only clear that we have that everywhere in the country people are moving past the pandemic to some degree.

Clearly hiring and employment are are moving past the pandemic as well as the workplace repop continues to repopulate itself and people continue to go back into the workforce it should be noted that while we are talking about an amazing surge of jobs.

We are still a couple million jobs under where we were before the pandemic started and so if you hear Biden administration apologist talk about how he has brought happy days here again.

He might deserve some of that credit were worthy job numbers actually wildly greater than they are now but right now we are just somehow getting back to par and we are not even at par yet and so.

We should resist the temptation not that I don't think that people who listen to this podcast aren't capable of resisting the temptation of giving credit where credit really isn't due and some ways you could say that some of this is happening despite behavior in actions of the Biden administration nonetheless.

It's you know can hurt Biden could may not help but it couldn't hurt and it doesn't hurt at least in at a time of incredible international uncertainty to know that at least domestically we are somehow we are we are getting back in some sense to some kind of macro economic equilibrium even as inflation remains a huge problem and.

Other other things are going wrong domestically.

So we keep waiting for the we hear on the crushing morosity podcast keep waiting for the you know the other shoot a drop in the form of things turning pretty badly against Ukraine in the unfolding war with Russia and.

It looks like that is beginning to happen as the as the not only the Russian convoy but as the as various Russian forces start converging on key from from the east from the west from the north and from the south and with the possibility of really encircling the city and then.

Choking it off and then who know doing what who knows what kind of damage know what where you what what are you what are you seeing in your.

In your study of the maps generally your impression is correct although I think you've attributed a little too much momentum to the northern advance northern advance seems pretty well stalled out but the southern advance is moving rapidly and the city of Mary upal is well encircled.

And then the car song has fallen and all eyes are on a desu which is essentially the last major port on the black sea and would ultimately cut off the Ukrainian state from the ocean.

But the heroic resistance by Ukrainian fighters continues to stall their advance out in the north and particularly in the in around Kiev and to a lesser degree in the in the eastern part of the country actually last night if you were paying attention to the to the war.

The people were transfixed by this assault on a nuclear facility in the south central part of the country that was on camera there was a some live security camera that caught the whole battle live and it was a rather harrowing thing to watch ultimately it has fallen.

And the fog of war is just too thick to even know what's going on there's reports that the the place has been wired to explode there's reports that the nuclear technicians that are manning the facility are making statements on and under duress literally at gunpoint so we don't know really what to believe there we can ultimately conclude that it has fallen but American commanders do believe that Ukraine still maintains.

And the last time we had a test zone airspace that Russia has not fully taken control of the airspace that Moscow has committed 92% of the forces that it amassed along the borders of Russia over the course of three or four months to the to the battle so there really aren't many reserves available to introduce into this conflict without calling them up from you know who knows what hither to for portion of the country is you know where they're stationed.

We're we're not achieving stalemate Russia has the momentum.

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