TEDdy Goodness with Ian Bremmer on Russia v. The World

Ian Bremmer is a political scientist focusing on global risks. You may have heard him on Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara. He’s got a 360° landscape view of the world and how it all works. He will quickly disabuse squishy lefty sentimentality.

Nevertheless, he predicts nothing but bad juju for Russia and Putin going forward no matter what the outcome in Ukraine. In this video, Bremmer observes what has happened in the last couple of weeks and does thought experiments on what comes next. A more sincere focus renewable energy sources may be Vladimir Putin’s unintentional gift to the world- except in the United States where the fossil fuel industry has a choke hold on us and will resist any move to sustainable energy sources in the near future 🙄.

The biggest impact to us will be the loss of The Peace Dividend. That was the money we didn’t spend on military escalation after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s what fueled the historic global productivity since 1990. Yeah, that’s going to go away. My own prediction is that Americans have very short memories and Republicans are going to use this moment to shove more foreign oil down our throats and throw even more money at the defense industry at our expense and they’ll use their propaganda media units to terrify their base to vote for it. Democrats just don’t have a muscular spokesperson (yet) to administer dope slaps to our fellow, soon to be completely bamboozled, American citizens.

Cue the loud and stupid new talking points about the Keystone Energy Pipeline that was supposed to be built to move Canadian oil through the US to the Gulf of Mexico to FOREIGN ports. That’s right, we were just going to give Canada a right of way to sell their oil overseas. This seems to be lost on right wingers who gulp this Fox News fantasy with increasing irritation and belligerence. Seriously, what did they think was going to happen to that oil? Did they think possession is 9/10ths of the law and as long as it is passing through the US, all their oil are belong to us?? The more I think about it, the dumber it sounds because the *source* is still Canada and if we steal their oil, they’ll just close the tap. And there’s nothing making them sell their muddy oil to us anyway. They’re capitalists in Canada too. They’ll sell it to whoever they want for whatever price they want. Not only that, but why do we want to piss off the Canadians? It makes no sense. But this is the Fox News propaganda factory at work. It’s all about pushing emotional buttons, screw rational thought.

Anyway, enjoy (if you can call it that) this TED interview with Ian Bremmer.

Saying the unthinkable

I’ve got a bad feeling about what Putin is about to do. There are a couple of ominous news reports today. One says that the Russian convoy that got bogged down on the way to Kyiv has been dispersed and is being redeployed to forests and villages around the city. The second says Putin is ready for his assault on the Kyiv. Also, Russia is striking targets further west. If the convoy isn’t going straight to Kyiv, what is he planning? Various other reports are saying that he could use chemical weapons or tactical nukes inside Ukraine.

The last part of Ioffe’s latest interview with Frontline is chilling because it gives us a sense of what Putin’s options are and how it affects the rest of the world:

We saw with the refugee flows from Syria, they gave us Brexit; they gave us the rise and the empowerment of the far right in Germany and Hungary, in the Czech Republic and France. Is this going to keep emboldening the far right? …

Did anyone else take Problems of Democracy as a senior in HS? We have known for at least a century what elements of democracy that bad actors will use to their advantage. Xenophobia, fear or hatred of anything foreign or strange, is one of the most important arrows in a nationalist’s or demogogue’s quiver. There are two kinds of people this works on: those people who are neurologically wired to be fearful and those people who have been conditioned through a communication in a media source to see foreigners or strangers as “the other”. Others are people whose motives and culture we do not know. Therefore, we can make them seem dangerous. This is how you rally a country against an enemy.

And when Putin threatens the use of nuclear weapons—he threatened it the first time when he declared war on Thursday morning. He threatened again three days into the war, when he saw it wasn’t going well. He threatened it in 2018 when he went to that airshow and he gave that crazy presentation about all the new nuclear weapons he had that could strike the U.S.

If people think that he won’t use them, I think they’re mistaken. Everything Putin has showed us at every step of the last 22 years is that every time we think he won’t go that far, he does. We think he won’t come back for a third term; he did. He won’t annex Crimea; he did. He won’t invade Ukraine; he did. He won’t try to kill Navalny; he did. He won’t try to subvert an American election; he did.

And so why would we believe that this time he won’t do what he says he’ll do? …

I mean, it’s unthinkable. Like, what he has opened up with this invasion is unthinkable. And because he is losing and because the sanctions and the Ukrainians are humiliating him, because he is backed into a corner, he is the most dangerous he has ever been, because it is now existential for him. And if you think he doesn’t know that everybody in the world understands that the only way to end this is to put a bullet between his eyes, he knows. And that makes him also much more dangerous.

More insight on why Putin is in Ukraine from Julia Ioffe

This is another Frontline interview from a couple of days ago with Julia Ioffe. Ioffe is a Russian born American journalist. Her interpretation of Putin’s security council meeting with his advisors sitting 50 feet away is that it is very reminiscent of the Soviet era when the politboro was full of 3rd stringers and no one said what they were really thinking. We can see that as well at a superficial level but there’s something about that image that we Americans can’t understand because we’ve never lived through an authoritarian regime- yet. If we are prudent, we will never have to.

The thread that keeps getting reinforced in all of the Putin File interviews and most recent Frontline episodes is that we are where we are because of the naïveté of Bush and Obama, and the anomaly that was Trump. She is particularly hard on Obama who absolutely did not pay any attention to Putin’s moves, did not see them for what they were, and was at odds with his advisors on the issue.

I keep seeing the two terms of the Obama administration as a feel good, aspirational trip for the older boomers and well off professional class, and utter neglect of everyone else. There was a reason why I went on and on and on about Obama. He ignored Republicans and their strategy to take over state legislatures and the courts, and he let the DNC get lousy with consultants that sucked the life out of its ability to fight back. Oh sure, George Bush and his pointless war in Iraq was bad. Trump with his utter incompetence coupled with his shark like instinct to consume and corrupt everything he touches was awful and has brought us to the brink of a fascist state (and I don’t use that term lightly. It’s a real thing now, not hyperbole.)

But Obama, who should have known better, was an eight year long missed opportunity. He was not temperamentally suited for staring down someone as paranoid and motivated as Putin. Obama inherited the world’s last superpower; Putin inherited what he saw as a superpower failure.

It is only because he is bracketed by the two absolute worst American presidents in history that Obama’s inexperience, vulnerability and passivity comes off looking good.

And it all falls on Joe Biden to fix it and keep the tantrum throwing Republicans quiet, because we all know that we can’t expect them to put their country’s and world’s wellbeing first. That is just too much to ask of them. Ioffe says that at Helsinki with Putin in 2018, Trump makes the US look weak and stupid. Bush was naive and reckless, Obama was negligent and passive, and Trump just made us look like total losers. If you ever wonder why Trump is always going on about being weak, it is because he is projecting is own inadequacies on his base and our country and then acting accordingly.

From the transcript, Ioffe assesses what Putin sees America as today :

I think he [Putin] correctly sees America as a nation so divided that it’s paralyzed; that it is a nation at each other’s throats, that can’t agree on anything. And whatever one team says, the other team will say just the opposite, just because. He sees a president who, on one hand, he’s dealt with before. Biden was put in charge of the Ukraine portfolio in 2014, because Obama had not enough time to deal with it, and frankly, I don’t think cared that much about Ukraine.

So on one hand, he has—he’s dealing with a new president who is old, who has been around, who has Putin’s number, who is surrounded by aides and advisers and people in the State Department and in the White House and then the Pentagon who know Putin well, who know his tricks, who see right through him.

But on the other hand, he barely has control of Congress. He doesn’t have the Supreme Court. He doesn’t have the American public. And then Afghanistan happens, and the message that sends to Putin and I think to the rest of the world is that America’s done with its adventures abroad. America’s tired of it. America’s turning even more inward. America has no more appetite for war. It has expended all the energy it possibly had for war. It’s spent.

And if Putin were to do something now, America wouldn’t retaliate, because why end a war—a long foreign war, why take such a political hit, because this is done so messily—just to get your troops bogged down in another thing? And I think that was a very accurate read of the situation.

I admire Biden’s steadiness and resolve and I’ve been impressed by what he’s done so far with respect to the invasion of Ukraine but what a GD clusters}#% the situation is right now.

We should be asking Republicans if what they are doing right now, their relentless oppositional defiance disorder, is out of genuine concern or unparalleled selfishness and opportunism. Do they really admire what Putin is doing or are they still childishly trying to own the libs while Ukraine burns and the rest of the world looks down Putin’s barrel? Is their boisterous, obnoxious and uninformed support for Putin giving aid and comfort to an enemy who wants to take us back to the Cold War and drop another Iron Curtain over Eastern Europe?

Do they really want the US to become like Russia? We need to force their base to really take a look at what Russia has become. Do they want THAT? That’s where Trump and his ultra-wealthy friends and duped base are taking the rest of the country. Make no mistake. That’s where we are headed. No free and fair elections. If Trump or DeSantis is elected in 2024, no more free press. No more freedom of assembly. It’s coming. Somehow, they will make it happen and their Supreme Court will rubber stamp it. If there is a Republican in the White House and Republicans running Congress, we will become an authoritarian state. All that stands between us and that future is Biden and Harris for 2 years.

See the interview here on Frontline’s YouTube channel.

Why are Gas Prices Rising? Because the Oil Companies Raised Them!

Why do prices of any particular item go up? The quintessential reason is that the person or group selling the item have raised the prices. This might seem to be first-grade analysis, but it is actually more insightful than most of the people in the media or anywhere else who keep trying to provide external rationales for it.

These people, deliberately or foolishly, seem to start from an a priori assumption that people and companies only raise prices because they are required to by circumstances. It is implied, ridiculously so, that they only seek reasonable profits, and would keep prices fairly steady unless they were forced to raise them.

There are always rationales provided by those who raise prices on things they have and the public wants or needs. Cost of doing business is the umbrella term. They say that it costs more for them to extract or make the product. That weather problems made it more difficult. That they had to pay higher wages to workers because of a smaller labor supply. They even say that the demand was so great that they had to raise prices to not run out of product.

There is this mystique about business which somehow lets them get away with it. Turn on a business news station, and you will hear all sorts of jargon, not that it does not have some meaning, but is also a way to hide behind abstruseness.

I actually have an MBA, though I focused on the human side of management, and I have no expertise in the operational side, though I could read a balance sheet, and I had some idea of strategic management when I took the courses. As a bit of a side note, those of us in the Management School who had come from a Humanities background, which were not that many, feared the required course in Finance, taught by someone who was respected, but demanding, and required high-level mathematical computations, the sort that were why we Humanities types were required to take a summer class in Calculus to be admitted.

So we put off taking that Finance class, as we saw the other students who took it, complain and struggle, and take out their slide rules during lunch; and then finally we had to take the Finance course in the summer following the first year of the program. And for some amazing reason, we got a visiting professor with a Liverpudlian accent, who was affable and not very demanding. The first day of class he passed out copies of a balance sheet of a company, real or invented, and asked what we thought. The accounts receivable were high, much more than the accounts payable. So most students thought that the company was doing very well. But he said, “They went bust,” (which he pronounced “boost”).

The reason was that accounts receivable are not cash. And so even with all the money owed them, they ran out of funds. Oh, I suppose that someone might have loaned them the money based on the balance sheet, but maybe not. Anyway, it did highlight the fact that financial numbers do not always tell the story of what is going on in a company.

These corporations always have their “business-speak” to try to explain why they are raising prices. It has seemed that they are doing less of this,, they usually just raise them and let the consumers struggle with it, and fend for themselves. In many cases, maybe all of them, they do not “have to” raise prices, they just choose to. Why? So they can make more profits? When is the last time you saw an oil company president be grilled by members of Congress?

Based on their own balance sheets and reports, the major oil companies are making record profits. So in their narrow view of the world, why should they stop? As long as people are required to buy gas, they will have to pay for it, no matter what the price. Some may give up and stop working, or try to bicycle to work, but they are subsumed by the many who will simply keep paying at the pump.

Then the networks keep showing shots of gas stations, with the higher numbers, and they keep talking about how gas prices are going through the proverbial roof. But they almost never, if at all, say why the prices are going up. The implication seems to be the Russia situation, and that Biden cut off oil imports from them. But apparently only about 3.5% of the oil we use comes from Russia.

Some have speculated that Saudi Arabia has substantially raised prices over the last few years because their crown prince was upset that we protested their murder of Jamal Khashoggi, though Trump was fine with it. Some say that the oil companies did not ramp up supply fast enough to meet the greatly increased demand once economies began to heat up in 2021. Wouldn’t that be their problem? But they made it ours, as that is how they work.

Or, could it be….that the oil companies simply saw that this was a good opportunity to raise prices, and deflect it onto other things? Shell recently reported immense record profits, which as usual, they said were mostly used for stock buybacks and management raises. There are those in this country who applaud such things, “That is true laissez-faire economics, not any of this socialism! Demand goes up, prices go up! The goal of any business is to make the most profits possible!”

This has a certain appeal to many people, because it is simple, and mirrors their own personal beliefs that in Ayn Rand Objectivist fashion, if everyone were solely motivated by their own self-interest, it would all work out well. But of course it doesn’t, not for those who are not at the top of the financial pyramid, or those who have other motivators besides greed and acquisitiveness. Those at the top virtually never have the capacity of empathy or social concern, they are like the zombies or ghouls or Daleks in the stories, who move relentlessly ahead with one purpose, to gain for themselves, and destroy anyone who tries to prevent them.

They have set up this whole government structure to bend to their will. They have bought politicians by the hundreds, including presidents. They have bought a majority of the Supreme Court. They have bought the Congress and the state legislatures. They literally spend every day fighting against any legislative or executive action which would encourage or mandate the use of any sources of energy that are not derived from fossil fuels. It is a never-ending task for them, but it is assuaged by the billions of dollars they make.

There is no reason to ever think that the oil companies are going to lower prices, unless they have to. And maybe after pushing them up even higher, they will give people a respite, just so they can act concerned and moral, before pushing them back up.

Smart people have been saying for decades that America needs to wean itself off fossil fuels. But few of us do much about it. We can’t depend on the good will of corporations in any area, and certainly not the oil companies, whose standards of rapaciousness predate the Standard Oil Trust.

It’s like the song about the Arkansas Traveler who sees a man sitting in his living room, playing his fiddle, while his roof is leaking as the rain comes down. He asks him why he doesn’t fix the roof, and the fiddler replies that he can’t fix it now, it’s raining too hard! So he asks why he doesn’t fix it when it is sunny outside? And the fiddler says, “There’s no reason, the roof isn’t leaking then!”

Well, we all know that amusing yarn. But it does have relevance here. The predictable element is not the weather, but the greed of oil companies. Maybe they have additional motives. Maybe part of the goal is to damage President Biden, and make sure that Republicans take over Congress and then the Presidency, so that they can pass even more Big Oil-friendly bills, and make sure that the plebians are forced to pay whatever the oil companies think they can get away with charging them for the fuel they need to get to work each day.

Again, we cannot look at this with a moral sense, as to “How much money do you need?” as Jake GIttes asked Noah Cross in “Chinatown.” They need more, and even more. The competition to be trillionaires is a battle, and they cannot ease up for a moment.

The only answer is for our government to enact some high taxes on windfall profits and generally on the corporations. But they’ve stacked the deck to make sure that it cannot happen. While the candidates they pour money to, run on made-up culture issues to get the base riled up, they are really there to protect the corporate barricades. Maybe we need our own revolution, but we are not France in 1790, with the peasants starving, and Marie Antoinette saying that if there is not enough bread, they can simply eat cake instead.

What is most frustrating is how the oil companies and the media networks they own, manage to block and deflect any pointing of blame at them. Somehow it is as if the prices went up because they were forced to have to. That Biden is responsible for this, not the people who actually raise the prices. To extend the metaphor ,that is known as being able to have your cake, and eat it, too.

There has always been a much greater anger at the business powers and corporations throughout history, than there is now in America. Maybe that is simply due to media narratives that they themselves purvey, but which their audience does not realize is propaganda created by them. But while I do not watch all the programs, I wonder if any of them at all actually emphatically blame the oil companies for gas prices going up? It would seem very logical to do, wouldn’t it? “No, it wasn’t me, I didn’t raise our prices, look at that man over there! And even I did raise them, I had to, you can understand that. Blame the Democrats!”

All it takes is a little focus, don’t be fooled by the misdirection and deflection. The truth is right in front of us. Hercule Poirot would instantly figure it out. “Mon ami, the gas prices are going up because those who set the prices, have raised them! C’est tres evident!”

To GOP Politicians in red states. STFU about gas prices.

Here is the list of current gas prices in all 50 states.

If you live in Oklahoma, your gas prices are where mine were in PA about a month ago. Even Texas hasn’t hit $4.00/gal yet. Florida and Georgia are the two red states that are just barely paying a little more that $4.

I’m very lucky that I work from home in one sense that I don’t drive my car that often. I have a 2014 Kia Soul with 43500 miles on it. (No it’s not for sale). What ticks me off though is I’m pretty sure I’m paying twice as much for natural gas and electricity than I was a year ago. Something tells me that the gas companies are charging more because somehow, we in the northeast are paying off the idiotic Texas grid fiasco from last year. Well, SOMEONE’s going to have to take a haircut if they can’t pass all those costs on to consumers who will grumble but pay. And that would be us. That ticks me off. I finally get a raise and it’s gobbled up by trying to heat my house that I work in all day.

And what is really annoying is I keep my house at a balmy 65°F and have been doing it for years. But it doesn’t matter a jot. I’m conserving. I’m still paying a lot more than last year.

Add that to the $4.30/gal that I’m paying at the gas station and I am one unhappy person right now. But I’m going to suck it up and pay it because as much as it hurts my wallet, it’s not like I’m standing in a war zone.

So, I don’t want to hear one drawling complaint from anyone south of the Mason Dixon line about how much gas costs. That goes for the plains states as well who are still less than $4.00. You’re just whining because some media outfit is covering you whining. Nobody is shelling your tractor.

And if yinz (y’all) really cared about the prices of gas that your constituents have to pay, you wouldn’t vote against bills that would lessen their dependence on fossil fuels. You know, stop opposing solar power? Renewable energy sources? Nuclear power? (I hear the new reactor designs are much safer.)

Also, you wouldn’t have supported that Putin fanboy. You got us into this mess by not voting for the person who would have made Ukraine one of her top foreign policy priorities and made Vlad’s knees shake. It’s all YOUR fault that we’re in this mess and frankly, I don’t want to hear some blonde floozy sTrumpette or MAGAhead complaining about gas prices.

Media sources, please take note. We don’t want to hear it.

Slava Ukraini

His Beautiful Wickedness

Vladimir Putin. What’s going on in Vlad’s head? If you find yourself wondering these things in the middle of the night after you’ve solved Wordle and Worldle (if you thought Diego Garcia was a toughy, just wait until you have to search the world for a tiny oval island with no ports, bays, peninsulas or any other notable features. Good luck.)you might want to settle down with a few hours (ok, half a day) of The Putin Files by Frontline on YouTube.

The Putin Files is a series of interviews of journalists, state department officials, Russians etc, who have studied, met and/or worked with Putin. It’s like that metaphor of the 6 blind men and the elephant. Everybody has a different experience with him but they overlap to give an image of the wicked witch of the east.

Masha Gessen’s interview is the most interesting and insightful. She gives a chilling background of what it was like to live in post WWII St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad. Putin’s childhood puts tough childhoods in a whole different category. I don’t mean to imply that his parents were abusive or that they had no money. Nobody’s parents had money back then. I mean that his parents lived through a siege that was horrific beyond what our charmed American lives can possibly comprehend.

Julia Ioffe was present during the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine that ousted Victor Yanacovich.

Anthony Blinken recounts the history of the Obama administration’s interactions with Putin and Putin’s interactions with Hillary Clinton.

There are at least a half a dozen other interviews with John Brennan, Susan Glasser, Vladimir Kara-Murza and others.

The impression I get is of a kid who grew up very poor but whose traumatized parents indulged him. Something about his interactions with his parents reminds me of Alex DeLarge from Clockwork Orange. Vlad was an undersized feisty kid who learned how to beat the sh^# on the playground. His parents bought him a car when he went to college. Gessen speculated that he was the only person his age in St. Petersburg with a car.

Then he tries to get into the KGB at age 16. They tell him to come back after he’s got an education. He does.

The picture you get is of a man who is still playing King of the Mountain. Once you get to the top and you’re sitting on your hoard, you’re always watching out for people who want to steal it and topple your mountain. He’s greedy, vengeful, paranoid and deeply upset that the breakup of the Soviet Union means he has less of an empire to control. He’s tightly wound like a spring, very clever about finding out what makes other leaders tick and Bush Jr, Obama and Trump were no match for him.

Hillary Clinton drove him absolutely crazy. He hates her with a passion that feels like the worst sexism mixed with genuine fear. Hillary was/is an ambitious woman who was used to dealing with powerful men. It might have been easier for Putin to get into a guy’s head but Hillary might have been a lot less gullible and not nearly as complacent as her boss. When he couldn’t make any headway with her, he got into the heads of the guys who might vote for her.

Anyway, if you’re ever suffering insomnia, give the Putin Files a try. The series is 4 years old but remarkably prescient. All of these interviews feature Ukraine. Putin is determined to get it back and then Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Oh yeah, they will be his. But he is also terrified of public protests. There’s a ban on them now in Russia. Go to a protest and you’ll get 15 years in jail. We’ll see how long that keeps the peace.

Start with Gessen. There’s also a very recent Frontline from last week called Putin’s Way that provides a neat summary of Putin and his motives.

The Utter Recklessness and Stupidity of Rubio and Daines, and What It Epitomizes

You probably have heard the story that yesterday President Zelensky of Ukraine held a video conference call with United States senators and some Congresspeople. And that Ukraine’s ambassador specifically told them not to show any video of it whatsoever. And that two Republican senators, Marco Rubio of Florida and Steve Daines of Montana, did just what they were told not to do.

Now, it does not take more than low intelligence to comprehend that the reason the participants were told not to share any videos, is because of the risk to Zelensky, who has been targeted for assassination, and who is desperately trying to fight off Russian military power. That is why Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota wrote, “Appalling and reckless behavior by two U.S Senators.”

Congressman Jason Crow, a brave former Army Ranger who was awarded a Bronze Star, and who on January 6 of last year, was trying to save people in the Capitol during the insurrection, wrote, “The lack of discipline in Congress is astounding. If an embattled wartime leader tells you to keep quiet about a meeting, you better keep quiet about the meeting. I’m not saying a damn thing. Lives are at stake.”

Rubio had a spokesperson say in defiance, “Anybody pretending this tweet is a security concern is a partisan seeking clicks.” Daines had a spokesperson say that his tweet was made before it was requested not to be, and contained no identifying information.

I think it is beyond appalling, and that if a Democrat had done that, there would be calls for his immediate removal, maybe a trial for treason; and then a drumbeat of attacks on the Democratic Party as undermining the country. It would be the top story on every network.

To me, this accentuates the nature of the Republican Party. Let’s put it this way: Do you remember the legendary scene in the movie ‘Glengarry Glen Ross,” where Alec Baldwin’s character is brought in to give the salesmen a “motivational speech” which consists of browbeating, mocking, and scorn? Baldwin keeps hammering away at the message, “A.B.C.! Always Be Closing!”

The meaning is that he wants every one of those salesmen trying to sell worthless land to foolish customers, to have every word and gesture they make be focused on one thing, the sale. Everything is about that. The sole purpose of every conversation, every word, with the marks is to try to get them “to sign on the line which is dotted.” There is no room for anything to distract from that goal.

For Republicans, their mantra would be, “A.B.C. Always Be Campaigning.” This is a so-called political party which exists now for the sole purpose of gaining and keeping power. Their only considerations are how to win elections, and concurrently, how to damage the Democratic Party so that they cannot.

This is never out of their mind, it has become almost biologically determined. They cannot let any situation go by without reflexively turning it into an attack on Democrats. They cannot do anything without trying to have it make them look good. It is as if they are desperately struggling actors who need to try to do anything which will gain them publicity. “Look at me! Over here! I’m meeting with President Zelensky! See how important I am? Vote for me over that terrible Val Demings!”

I don’t think that Rubio and Danes were trying to endanger Zelensky’s life, though it is not impossible to conceive of that. More likely, it was a combination of grandstanding, and a complete incapacity to comprehend others’ needs and wishes.

After all, that is Republicanism in a nutshell. People cry out for health protection, a living wage, gun safety–and you ignore them. They are not part of your calculus, which is about staying in office, raking in immense amounts of money, and feeling important. You only need them at election time, and the way things are set up, you probably win no matter how bad a public official you are.

Marco Rubio, at least from a distance, is one of the stupidest people I have ever seen in the Senate, although others are making a bid to reach that level as well. He knows nothing coherent about policies, he just attacks Democrats in inane ways, and then quotes Biblical verses. I can’t stop him from being re-elected, but he cannot be allowed to greatly risk the lives of Zelensky and Ukrainian citizens, because he and Danes had this need to look important, and because they have learned never to care about anyone’s wishes or needs but those of their corporate donors and right-wing foundations.

You will note that it is not Democrats who do such reckless and stupid things, particularly in the midst of a war. It is Republicans, who make everything about them and their needs.. Always Be Campaigning. And they know that they can get away with it, it is like they are ‘made men” who are protected by the people who employ them. The fact that this story will not force Rubio and Daines out of office, if not facing legal prosecution, will attest to the invulnerability they and their cohorts think they have.

Humanitarian Corridor

There was supposed to be a cease fire and humanitarian corridor out of Mariupol, a city in southern Ukraine that has been hit by heavy shelling. The mayor arranged for civilians to get out but Russians fired on them as they tried to leave. Residents are now trying to keep down and out of the line of fire. Unfortunately, children are dying. The following video is hard to watch. Normally, I wouldn’t post something like this but it was posted on Twitter by Amy Siskind who I trust.

The video is from Sky News, which, if I’m not mistaken was owned or partially owned (?) by Rupert Murdoch. Sky has a complicated ownership history. Supposedly, it’s run by NBC news now even though it’s based in the UK. Yesterday, I saw a different video featuring Sky News journalists who were fired on in Kyiv by Russian snipers. They were able to get away but one reporter was wounded and the camera man was hit by two rounds of bullets that were deflected by his body armor. All of this is to say that Sky is in the thick of it and this is what war really looks like. You know, like if the US had a civil war, it could be like this. It wouldn’t be just a bunch of paunchy second amendment types acting all macho. People actually die, cities are destroyed, infrastructure is ruined, economies are destabilized, and it takes years to recover.

The video is heartbreaking. Just a warning.

Ukraine invasion: Young mother collapses in boyfriend's arms after toddler killed in Russian shell attack.

I hope Putin lives long enough to be tried and rot in prison! https://t.co/qgahs97h9T

— Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) March 5, 2022

A few tweets down, I found this Tolkien quote twitter user in my stream. The quotes are supposed to be random but the timing is uncanny:

Théoden answers Saruman.

‘Even if your war on me was just—as it was not, for were you ten times as wise, you would have no right to rule me and mine for your own profit as you desired—even so, what will you say of your torches in Westfold and the children that lie dead there?’

— The Shire-Reckoning (@ShireReckoning) March 5, 2022

A “genius” didn’t do this. A power mad, cold blooded murderer did.

Slava Ukraini.

********************

Putin has declared that sanctions that we and other nations have imposed on Russia are an “act of war”. It sounds like whining to me. It would be easy to get drawn into this war. Only weak men whine.

Dragging the rest of us into the war is what Putin seems to want. I guess that would help his narrative at home. “They’re attacking us. All we did was a “special operation” in Ukraine to protect our territory from Nazis and this is how we get treated?”

And then what? Is that how he intends to rally the country around him to resign themselves to sanctions? Or is it a deliberate declaration against the rest of the world?

Either way, the sanctions are starting to bite. Whether it gets him to stop the attacks on Ukraine remains to be seen but Putin, the strong man, may win the battle and badly lose the war.

He’s melting. Melting. What a world, what a world.

All Roads from Kyiv Lead to Trump

We had a couple of other clueless presidents where Putin was concerned. George Bush looked into his eyes and saw a soul. Not sure what that was all about but then Bush’s propaganda machine got us into a totally unnecessary land war in Asia when we invaded Iraq. Anyone who thinks that wasn’t about the oil is in denial. At least that’s how they sold it to some of their base. Yep. “Our oil that we need is under their sand. Let’s go get it.” Saddam Hussein was just a convenient baddie.

Then there was no-drama Obama who didn’t want to interrupt commerce or something. Well, to be fair, Ukraine had some corrupt leaders back then and needed to do clean up. But Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 should have raised his heartbeat a little. It should have gotten him into high gear about how to protect Ukraine in the future. It didn’t.

But neither of those presidents has anything on Donald Trump who took Putin’s side almost from the minute he took office. The Republican platform in 2016 was hostile to Ukraine, Trump didn’t spend the money that Congress allocated to Ukraine for weapons, he tried to extort fabricated opposition research on Hunter Biden from Ukraine in exchange for weapons and got impeached for it, he embraced Putin in every meeting with him, and most importantly, he tried to weaken NATO and threatened to pull the US out of NATO altogether.

The invasion planning of Ukraine started in 2016 and Trump clung to power after his loss in 2020. He gave Putin a couple of extra months while he barricaded the doors on the Biden administration’s effort to start the transition.

Think about that. Trump prevented the incoming president’s transition team from talking to people at the defense department for two months. That’s a lot of lead time for Putin to put his ducks in a row and slow down military aid to the Ukrainians.

I don’t know what coverage of the war is like on Fox News or right wing radio. Even Sebastian Gorka’s strong man, Victor Orban, has condemned the invasion. So that’s interesting. Hungary is a member of NATO and as bad as Orban is, I’m betting that even he doesn’t want to take Hungary back behind the iron curtain.

Whatever it’s like on Fox, it’s a billion times worse in Russia where the population is cut off from anything but state run news and any public criticism of Putin or his invasion will get you 15 years in a Russian jail. Russians still think they’re in Ukraine for peacekeeping operations and no one is allowed to challenge that. There is no alternative news source.

Yeah, that’s the way Trump’s pal runs his country. There is no first amendment and no hope of replacing Putin through free and fair elections. There are no free and fair elections. You can vote for whoever you want to in overwhelming numbers, Putin is still going to win. That’s what Georgia and Texas are going to be like this year. No matter who you vote for, Republicans are set up to win.

If Georgians and Texans ever fall out of love with Republicans, there will be no way to get rid of them.

And Republicans were enamored by Putin. Oh sure, there is some shyness about that now but we have the videotape.

Lindsey Graham thinks Trump would have kicked Putin’s ass. That’s very strong versus weak rhetoric that means absolutely nothing but is like Cialis for the MAGA rally crowd. The truth is that Trump probably would have let Ukraine fend for itself because that was what he was doing from 2017-2021. The war would have been over in days because Ukraine wouldn’t have been able to fight back. Then all those former Soviet client states who are now in NATO would have been sitting ducks knowing they would be next. After all, if Putin is threatening to nuke you, what will NATO do? If things got testy between Trump and Putin, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Trump would done something stupidly provocative or would have attempted to drop a nuke. The question is, on what target?

The answer is, on all of us.

The guy is toxic and anyone still clinging to him is toxic. I realize that pointing this out to the MAGA crowd is not going to get us anywhere. But kicking Putin’s ass either means taking Putin out or tempting mutually assured destruction. It’s all playground taunts until somebody is instantly incinerated by radiation.

Real strong men don’t drop nukes.

*********************

Outside Lviv station, which is thronging with exhausted refugees fleeing war in eastern Ukraine, an accomplished pianist is playing “What a Wonderful World.” It’s hauntingly beautiful. pic.twitter.com/Xm5itr8jl7

— Andrew RC Marshall (@Journotopia) March 5, 2022

Slava Ukraini.

Live from Ukraine

Pavlo from Ukraine has been live broadcasting from his location in Ukraine. He appears to have relocated from his apartment in the city. (I think it was Kyiv, check his playlist).

This was his vlog from yesterday. I’m following Pavlo because he is a pre-existing YouTuber from Ukraine that I found last year before the invasion. I liked his tour of his city apartment, the Soviet era features that were falling apart, the jars of tomatoes that his mother and babushka sent to him from their village, the trip to visit his babushka on her little farm with the cows, chickens and old fashioned well in the yard. It was all very warm and gave me a good idea of what life was like in Ukraine.

I don’t know where Pavlo is now. He’s definitely not in a city. The stress is palpable but so is his determination to not let the Russians take away their country. As a male of fighting age, he can’t leave the country now but he doesn’t want to leave anyway.

His internet access is becoming less stable but I can’t look away. Stay safe Pavlo and Luba.

Slava Ukraini