Ukraine, Ground View, War Leaders, World Support, Post Post, US , Donate

  • Vladimir Putin’s escalation of his invasion into Ukraine – bombing residents and medical facilities – has been accompanied by his escalation of rhetoric, issuing nuclear threats against the outside world. Those of us who spent part of our school aged life in hallway drills on floors, heads between knees, pretty much practicing at kissing our asses goodbye, might have concerns.
     
    Infidel753 has uncommonly good sense and does his homework on international affairs of consequence. He provides two reasons for unpanicked calm.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice governance and policy scholar Michael Blake contrasts leadership styles of Zelenskyy and Putin. Seems you don’t need to be a strongman to be a great leader.
     
  • Sarah Cooper asks the one question Putin seems not to have considered:
     

  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has four photos illustrating how the world puts their support of Ukraine into lights.
     
  • Getting serious: The Journal of Improbable Research takes a moment from their constant search for strange studies and, instead, points out a whole lot of prominent scientific, religious, and political leaders in support of Ukraine.
     
  • John Scalzi at Whatever dates the Post-Cold War Era as beginning on November 9, 1989 when the USSR became the gone-USSR. Now, as the world reacts to Putin madness, John sees any number of demonstrations of the beginning of a new Post-Post-Cold War Era.
     
  • driftglass points to Russian assets we are not yet freezing, but should.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life suggests that, here in the US, some destructive political divisions are artificial, promoted by a culture that regards politics as a contest between sports teams. Otherwise sane citizens reflexively act as the fan base for a sports franchise. Even going so far as to undermine Biden and support Putin.
     
  • Green Eagle watches as a famous political personality, often referred to as a one time president, is asked about Ukraine and bravery. The large green bird contrasts the fellow’s answer with the answer had he been truthful.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged is unsympathetic to the view of former Trump advisor Douglas MacGregor, as aired for Fox viewers. MacGregor thinks America is being way too harsh, that we should stop demonizing Vlad Putin.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil does not think highly of Tulsi Gabbard. Well… Tulsi may not be perfect. But who among us has not attacked America as responsible for Putin’s invasion and opposed any sanctions on Russia’s economy generally or Putin’s friends specifically?
     
    Okay, okay, she’s acting like a bit of a crud. But she still has a ways to go before surging ahead of Tucker Carlson or Ted Cruz for the title of Jerk of the Year.
     
  • Hackwhackers takes on Ted Cruz, exposing him to his own comments in which he lavished praise on superior-to-US Russian troops.
     
  • Any funding effort has the potential to attract grifters. If you want to contribute safely to some aspect of the Ukrainian relief, tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has done the hard research and provides useful guidance. Good trailblazing from a wonderful blogger.

Continue reading “Ukraine, Ground View, War Leaders, World Support, Post Post, US , Donate”

Putin Invasion, Ukraine Courage, GOP, NATO, Polls, Cyber War, Covid, Protests

The Empire State Building, NYC, lit in the colors of the Ukrainian flag:

Shamelessly stolen from Hackwackers

Continue reading “Putin Invasion, Ukraine Courage, GOP, NATO, Polls, Cyber War, Covid, Protests”

Truck It, COVID, Pump Price, Privacy, Super Bowl, Biden, SCOTUS, Ukraine

Let’s start with rare and graceful talent:

@kyleswingsarah All this all day #queen @Ball Cecilia Deonna #handdance #westcoastswing #soul #improvdance #dc #groove #rnb ♬ Gooey – Glass Animals

Continue reading “Truck It, COVID, Pump Price, Privacy, Super Bowl, Biden, SCOTUS, Ukraine”

Joe Biden, Never-Trump, Ukraine, Deficits, Legitimate Political Disgrace

  • Various right-wing media are accusing mainstream reporters of hypocrisy -> replaying Joe Rogan using racial epithets – like the “N” word – while ignoring Joe Biden’s use of the same word in 1986. Tommy Christopher is a target.
     
    Tommy carefully explains, as he did decades ago, that the use of that offensive word, is qualitatively different, when it is used in a quote from a racist in order to criticize that racist for casually using that word.
     
    That was what Joe Biden was doing in 1986. Tommy provides comparative videos.
     
  • Never-Trump types seem bent on explaining how they, the conservative adults, will show leftist hippie Democrats how real opposition is done. Hold my beer, Sonny.
     
    It is all a bit too arrogant for driftglass, who responds that
    The enemy of my enemy is my friend
    is not the same as
    The enemy of my enemy is my Supervisor.
     
    He suggests those folks stop bossing or get off the boat.
     
  • The Financial Times editorializes. Seems the real problem in America, one that should be President Biden’s priority, is cultural overreach by the left. M. Bouffant at Web of Evil, looks at book banning by the right, armed intimidation by rightists, a various continuations of January 6, voter & voting suppression, and Republican state legislatures picking and choosing whose votes are to be counted. For some strange reason, M Bouffant regards the Financial Times observation as an absurdity.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit remembers what most of us have at least half forgotten: How our once-upon-a-President went beyond mere democracy and endangered the world in a nuclear way. And that the danger continues.
     
  • Andy Borowitz reports that former President Trump is using a written excuse from a Podiatrist during the Russian invasion of Ukraine to avoid being drafted into Putin’s armed forces.
     
  • Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson hates to be a broken record, so Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson explains just who broke the record (note FY 2021 was passed in 2020 and signed into law by then President Trump):
     


    and elaborates:

  • So what if, right after the election, the Trump campaign called law officials in Michigan with orders to seize voting machines and turn them over to the campaign?
     
    Well… the Palmer Report says a story pretty much drowned out this week might turn out to be very ugly news for Rudy Giuliani.
     
  • Part of that gawdawful conservative activity happened when an election official illegally turned over voter private data to a conservative activist.
     
    It is always a joy to see a do-you-know-who-I-am type encounter honest law enforcement. Watching Republican Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters handcuffed, kicking and screaming her how-dare-you’s, can bring tranquility to a troubled soul.

  • In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson contrasts the overwhelming treatment of the relatively minor story in 2016 of mishandled but unimportant Clinton emails with underwhelming coverage of massive Trump document destruction as well as unmistakable theft.
     
    One accurate and telling comment from Aaron Rupar:
    If two prominent reporters broke news that Joe Biden was flushing documents down White House toilets, [Fox News Channel personality Sean] Hannity would anchor special Fox News coverage that would last through 2024. Trump flushing documents down WH toilets has been mentioned twice on Fox News today, once in passing.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors detects a pattern during the waning days of the Trump administration; in addition to the illegal shredding of records, flushing of records, dining on records, stealing of records; there seem to have been phone records that illegally disappeared from official logs.
     
  • We’ve all heard about legitimate political discourse, words used by the Republican National Committee to describe the January 6 MAGA riot. But are the words as reported really reported in context? Is that how national Republicans really view the attempt to pull down our democracy, the attempt to find and assassinate Senators, kill Members of Congress, murder the Vice President of the United States?
     
    Nojo helps us out publishing the entire context in the form of the entire resolution condemning 2 Republicans for investigating the crime as if it was …well… a crime.
     
  • Of course, denizens of the internet have been having fun with it:

  • Republican officials have begun responding to criticism. The RNC resolution only endorses non-violent legal protest. Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara, always skeptical of liberal press reporting, wonders about all that legitimate political discourse talk. Are national Republicans really, truly, endorsing the violence at the Capitol? He decides to look at the RNC resolution itself.
     
    He reads, and analyzes, and considers, and decides that they, sure as hell, are doing exactly that!

Continue reading “Joe Biden, Never-Trump, Ukraine, Deficits, Legitimate Political Disgrace”

Biden, Jobs, China, Vlad, Ukraine, Hawley, Trump, Jan 6, GOP, Psaki

Outrageously wonderful:

  • Everyone knew the January jobs report was not going to be good. Pandemic and all. Tommy Christopher watches financial people pick up their teeth from where they fell on the table, as Biden policies produce jobs creation at multiples of what those analysts had predicted.
     
    It isn’t just January. Biden’s first year’s jobs report was the highest in the history of jobs reports.
     
  • News Corpse watches the gleeful anticipation on the Fox Network of a horrible jobs crisis. When record smashing, massive, jobs creation emerges instead, the televised disappointment is palpable. Fox anti-American hopes are crushed as pundits discover that, no, the numbers were not a misplaced decimal.
     
  • Of course, the economy is not all that is at stake:

  • At The Moderate Voice Professor Amitrajeet A. Batabyal of Rochester Institute of Technology explores one great weakness of dictatorships and how that flaw applies to China’s future.
     
  • In the Palmer Report, our own Josh Hawley, Senator from here in Missouri, goes all Tokyo Rose, coming an inch or so from explicitly defending Putin’s right to invade Ukraine.
     
  • At the Borowitz Report, Vlad Putin claims the Ukraine as consolation for losing the White House.
    That was parody.
     
  • This is not:

  • In Letters from an American, renowned historian Heather Cox Richardson takes a look at two stories this week.
     
    The more widely reported: The carefully planned battle in which US forces killed terrorist leader of the Islamic State militant group – ISIS, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.
    As Biden announced, it sends “a strong message to terrorists around the world: We will come after you and find you”
     
    The less reported story, potentially as significant to the Republic, was a Trump administration proposal after the election to use intelligence agencies illegally to target the private information of individual voters. The idea was to generate disinformation about fictional vote interference by foreign governments.
     
    The Trump attempt to overturn our democracy is now documented to have been more developed and detailed than is generally recognized.
     
  • In Hackwhackers, it turns out that then-President Trump actually went a little further than inciting an insurrection. He plotted to seize voting machines.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger points out how Donald Trump has always been a control freak, trying to micro-manage pretty much everything. Should we be surprised that he was behind so many details of the Jan 6 insurrection?
     
  • Dave Dubya watches Trump rally in Texas, promising that if criminal laws are applied to him he will have his mobs tear the country violently apart.
     
    Too big to jail.
     
  • I admit this made me chuckle:

  • CATO Institute’s own Julian Sanchez gives Mike Pence semi-applause. Okay, maybe applaw:
     

  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has a word for Liz Cheney:
     

  • What we have known for a while is finally official. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has the details. In addition to condemning Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney for investigating the coup attempt, the Republican National Committee has declared last year’s January 6 violence to have been legitimate political discourse.
     
  • Green Eagle also reads the Republican manifesto on the legitimate insurrection and explains the really frightening part.
     
  • Seems violence and insurrection are becoming acceptable through much of contemporary conservatism. Scotties Playtime tracks a Republican candidate for Michigan state senate who tells backers to bring guns to voting places.
     
    …if we can’t change the tide, we need to be prepared to lock and load.
    That’s a quote.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, has a suggestion for Florida Governor DeSantis. Nazis are bad, very bad, and it doesn’t hurt to say that again and again.
     
    In the interest of fairness, I suppose I should point out that DeSantis did have a brief lapse early this week, mentioning during a Monday session that some jackasses had done something on an overpass and would be held accountable for anything criminal. That’s about as far as he would go.
     
    At least he didn’t travel into good-people-on-both-sides territory.
     
    So why the reticence from some Republicans? Why the difficulty in saying the obvious: that what is truly and obviously evil is truly and obviously evil?

Continue reading “Biden, Jobs, China, Vlad, Ukraine, Hawley, Trump, Jan 6, GOP, Psaki”

Joe Biden, Polls, Media as Massage, Vote Wise, Vlad the ImPutin, Breyer

Jack Benny honored at Carnegie Hall, 1961
Quoting another honoree – this one possibly fictitious;

Continue reading “Joe Biden, Polls, Media as Massage, Vote Wise, Vlad the ImPutin, Breyer”

Gorsuch, COVID, Jan 6, Investigate, Biden Press, Voting, Gay M&Ms

Let’s begin with showmanship:

  • Well, let’s see. NPR reports that Chief Justice John Roberts was concerned that fellow Justice Sonia Sotomayor had health problems and so was especially vulnerable to the newest variants of COVID.
     
    So, says NPR, the Chief Justice, in some form, suggested that all the other Justices maybe, perhaps, ought to take the minimal precaution of masking up to make her safer during their sessions.
     
    Sure enough, the other Justices agree. All those usually on the liberal side of issues agree. Conservatives do as well: Clarence Thomas wears a mask. Samuel Alito does too. Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett mask up. It’s just simple courtesy, right?
     
    Except Justice Neil Gorsuch refuses! Hell no, he won’t go wearing a mask. The Chief Justice can suggest all he wants. Sonia can participate by video if she’s so damn concerned.
     
    NPR reports, it all goes public, and everyone goes onto lets-all-get-along mode.
     
    Did John Roberts, in some way, suggest everyone mask up? Gorsuch says Sotomayor did not ask him to wear a mask.
     
    Uh-huh.
     
    But did John Roberts suggest everyone mask up? Sotomayor, all in the spirit of comity, confirms she did not ask Gorsuch to wear a mask.
     
    HEY, Come ON! Did or did not John Roberts suggest everyone mask up?
     
    The Chief Justice himself says he did not ASK everyone to wear masks, then he says he will not comment further.
     
    Max’s Dad reviews the conduct of Gorsuch, considers the context, and finally concludes Justice Gorsuch is one hell of a real jerk.
     
  • Tommy Christopher has the sad report. Folk singer Hana Horka of Czechoslovakia hears news that natural immunity will protect her, so she deliberately catches COVID, celebrates, and dies a horrible death.
     
    Her son has a few terrible details of gasping and choking, as well as some harsh words for those whose disinformation tricked her into her fatal actions.
     
    This seems to apply:
     

  • Novak Djokovic has been expelled from Australia and prevented from participating in this year’s Australian Open tournament after misrepresenting his vaccination status. MadMikesAmerica suggests the tennis star’s doubles partner is not who you might think.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has a question about anti-vaxxers who file suit demanding the right to infect other people’s children.
     
  • Reductress carries the sad tale of a family of six who receive only four COVID rapid-tests and are compelled to fight to the death. Yeah, it’s satire.
     
  • Satirist Andy Borowitz speculates that if enough Republicans begin seeing Trump as Fauci-lite, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis may be betting that voters want a stupider version of Trump.
     
  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson observes an unprecedented aspect of the Biden administration: a denial of the election result by the losing former president. A growing body of evidence documents an active attempt to overthrow American democracy.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors reports that 59 Republicans boasting about signing forged election documents in 2020 may be surprised to face criminal charges and prison.
     
  • Joe Gandelman, at The Moderate Voice, reviews a draft executive order prepared for Trump that would have seized voting machines after the 2020 election, and concludes that it does sound like a coup attempt.
     
  • Julian Sanchez of Cato Institute seems skeptical about one line of Trump defense in the attempt to overturn democracy, too many eyes on me:
     


    Then demolishes the too damn dumb to try a coup defense:

Continue reading “Gorsuch, COVID, Jan 6, Investigate, Biden Press, Voting, Gay M&Ms”

Rightist Hilarity, DOJ, Insurrect, 2022, Vote Rights, Sinema, COVID, Maddow

I am still recovering from painful complications after a recent biopsy. No cancer was the good part.
I very much appreciate the public and private messages of support.

I mentioned to a close and beloved family member that screaming continuous agony is not as much fun as people may think. I no longer recommend it.
He asked if that meant primal therapy does not work.

Here’s what I thought noteworthy from the last three weeks:

  • My longtime friend, Darrell Michaels, who is Unabashedly American, goes all uproarious, posting a series of memes representing the current state of contemporary conservative comedy. Apparently he shares the rightist instinct for humor.
     
    Here is his first:
     

    Most of the rest are of a similar level of wit and wisdom.
     
    I had completely forgotten that my friend, like so many conservative humorists, is hilarious.

  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit celebrated the New Year with memes a few steps upward from poor Darrell and his traveling troupe. Are you taking notes, my frolicsome friend?
     
  • While, as responsible citizens, we all pretty much had to be captivated by the legislative lynching in the US Senate of voting rights, an extraordinary criminal charge of seditious conspiracy was carefully documented by the US Department of Justice. In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson reviews the indictment against 11 members of extremist group the Oath Keepers.
     
    The evidence is explicit. When combined with other well documented reports, it appears the combination of active violence and rightwing legalistic sounding mumble-jumble pretty much has to have been a fairly large conspiracy.
     
    Any plot involving that many participants can be expected to develop huge leaks.
     
    Stay tuned.
     
  • Our friend Dave Dubya goes tick-tocking the new evidence, providing a chilling January 6 timeline.
     
  • Green Eagle wants to remind us just how viciously insane our opponents on the right are and posts a few viciously insane examples.
     
  • An extraordinary headline in Axios:
     
    Trump accuses Jan. 6 panel of “seeking evidence of criminal activity”.
     
    Not kidding, that’s the report. They stand accused of seeking evidence.
     
  • On last week’s one year anniversary of you-know-what, Max’s Dad has a few well considered thoughts on the insurrection, including the flag of Confederate slavery carried into the Capitol building, Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz, high level conspirators, and the character of America.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz points to what all Americans know and what decent Americans care about concerning last year’s most infamous act of violence.
     
  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac reports on a division among those who planned the January 6 insurrection on how to commemorate the anniversary.
    Okay, so it’s satire.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life examines experimental research using random subjects in a controlled setting and discovers a likelihood of political violence this year.
     
    Looking over the same data, I would say YIKES!
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger reports on a new Justice Department unit dedicated to battling domestic terrorism, and points to three steps that are needed to make that effort effective in keeping us, and our nation, safe.
     
  • Wisconsin Republicans, suckling up to Mr Trump, have been hot to investigate the 2020 Wisconsin vote that went for candidate Biden. One screwup after another has accumulated into an ongoing embarrassment for that investigation. Now we have a new scandal involving a forged election document signed by unelected Wisconsin “electors” and submitted to the National Archives as if it was real. Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson is getting impatient with state Republican officials and their propensity for having cartoonish cigars blow up in their collective face:
     

Continue reading “Rightist Hilarity, DOJ, Insurrect, 2022, Vote Rights, Sinema, COVID, Maddow”

Still in Recovery, but Recovering

(Posted by cell phone)

Good news: Cancer free although I’m laid up for another few days.

Bad news: This adventure involved an unexpected trip to the Emergency Room, where I asked one of the nurses how things are going. She said they are deluged with COVID patients.

So I checked a regional survey here in Missouri. The hospital is coded in the extreme range. More than 96% of ICU beds are currently occupied.

A moment’s thought tells me there are patients in serious condition who will be unable to get required extreme treatment.

At least some with nothing related to COVID will die because of the pandemic.