Donald Trump Asks Vlad for Another Favor

 If we didn't know it already, we certainly do now. As far as former president Donald Trump is concerned the most important thing in the world isn't war, pestilence, or impending environmental doom. No, all those issues are pale annoyances compared to what really counts--you know, the legacy and future of Donald John Trump.

How else do you explain Trump's bizarre appeal to Vladimir Putin the other day on some obscure Trumpist new show. Why would the wife of Moscow's mayor give both Joe and Hunter three and a half million dollars he asked. Putin would know, he said. Putin should release the why to the world. 

El Don pulled something akin to this back in the 2016 campaign. During a rally he asked the Russians to release Hillary Clinton's emails, if they had them. Within 48 hours emails began to emerge letting everyone know who Vlad Putin preferred in the White House.

Over the next four years Trump paid the Russians back by doing everything he could to foment discord with NATO members and weaken the alliance. His unabashed fawning over Putin himself was a national disgrace. It became so embarrassing at times that the idea of the President of the United State performing fellatio on Putin didn't seem that far fetched.

Ah, but time has marched on. Unfortunately for all of us Trump hasn't. His most recent public call for Putin's help isn't to a slyly smiling Russian autocrat with unknown plans and ambitions. Now it is to a widely perceived war criminal who has openly threatened the world with nuclear weapons while invading a sovereign nation for no other real reason than he wanted to. In historical context it is as if Herbert Hoover called on Herr Hitler to dig up dirt on Franklin Roosevelt in 1939.

Of course the late, unlamented, Adolf was a tad busy at the time invading Poland, just as Vladimir's excellent adventure in Ukraine is ongoing. It's highly doubtful helping out Brother Don is foremost in the Russian president's mind since his army is bogged down and taking heavy casualties in a war he thought would last for maybe a week.

Putin might try to explain the situation to Mr. Trump but the ex-president is unlikely to understand. After all, he, Donald J. Trump is the most important thing and will be as long as he is alive. One can easily imagine Trump blustering into the phone, saying something along the lines of, "Good God man, can't you multi-task?"

Well, sometimes priorities just don't match up. And with The Big Orange Guy we will always know what his top priority is.

sic vita est

3-31-22

Marjorie Taylor Greene Steals Putin's Lines and Mo Brooks Plows on Without Donald Trump

 Then along came Georgia republican congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Not to be outdone by her fellow rank rookie, Madison Cawthorne, R-NC, she let her feelings on Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky be known the other night. At what she called a town hall meeting filled with supporters Greene agreed with Cawthorne's description of Zelensky as a, "thug," and a corrupt one at that. She also accused the Ukrainian government as a whole of being corrupt. 

Earlier, on a far right wing radio show, she had stated she objected to American military aid to Ukraine because the arms and equipment might fall into the hands of, "Possibly Nazi militias, who are torturing and killing innocent people, including women and children."

 All that nonsense is pretty much what Vlad Putin said to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It  makes one wonder if Greene is on the payroll in Moscow, or just steals the Russian president's lines. In either case her sudden concern about Nazi militias having weapons comes as a surprise to many considering her proclivity for speaking at white nationalist gatherings across the land.

Meanwhile, Alabama congressman, Morris, "Mo," Brooks" senate campaign took a hit this week when former president and Putin wanna be, Donald Trump rescinded his endorsement. Brooks, who was seen at the January 6th coup attempt exhorting the mob to march on the capitol building because it's, "time to take down names and kick ass," immediately blamed this reversal of fortunes on an October, 2021 phone call between he and Mr. Trump.

According to Brooks he incurred Trump's wrath by refusing to remove Joe Biden from the presidency, install he, Donald J. Trump in the White House, then call a special national election. Brooks said he told the former Commander in Chief that any attempt at moving forward with a plot like that would violate his oath to uphold and defend the constitution. The Alabama republican also maintains he told Mr. Trump January 6th was the last legal attempt they could make to keep Biden out of power.

While the complete lack of understanding how the U.S. government works, plus the utter illegality of such an act certainly sounds like Trump it doesn't explain why it took six months for The Big Orange Guy  to rain on Brooks' parade. Sensing the inherent doubt among party members and perhaps the outrage of those loons who actually think it was a good idea, Brooks changed course.

He is currently saying Mr. Trump is once again being manipulated by GOP senate leader, Mitch McConnell. no friend of Trump, or his worshipers. Why McConnell is pulling this chicanery remains unclear. Brooks, however, is plowing ahead without El Donald, saying he is, "The only America First," candidate in the race.

In other words, he out trumps Trump.

Yes, these are weird and violent times. It is hard to tell if people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump are the cause, or just symptoms. I like to think they are both. It's the romantic in me.

sic vita est

3-24-22

         

  

 

A Giant Bear in a Tar Pit

 It is becoming increasingly obvious that when it comes to logistics and in the field tactics the Russian army resembles a giant bear wallowing in a tar pit. Let's face it, when someone at the top can't figure out how much gas it takes to get a huge armored convoy from the border to Kyiv, you know you have some command problems. 

Unfortunately for the Ukrainians what the Russians lack in military expertise they more than make up for in sheer brutality and two bit excuses. They shell a maternity hospital, then claim it was actually a militia headquarters. They bomb a theater which was so clearly identified it contained children seeking shelter you could see the signs via satellite, then say it was the Ukrainians who blew it up in order to gin up world support. 

This is nothing new for them. I once knew a woman who was in the first unit of American nurses to enter Berlin at the end of WWII. Their base was a former SS maternity hospital. Their first job was to clear it of dozens dead babies who had been  shot and stabbed. The Russians, who initially took the hospital, said all the horrible carnage was perpetrated by the Germans themselves. No one believed them.

Indeed, when it comes to waging war the Russians have never worried with subtleties such as winning the, "hearts and minds," of the civilian population. You don't have to if you just blow the shit out of all of them.. This, tactic, is especially helpful when your troops and armor are bogged down against an opposing army.

It has been reported the Russian army entered Ukraine on February 24th with 20 generals in the field. So far four of them have been killed. The reason 1/5 of the senior command has perished is thought to be the Generals had to move too close to the front to rally their soldiers and give them personal direction. 

In other words a whole lot of Russian troops don't want to be there in the first place and the ones who do can't figure out which fork in the road to take, or know how to deal with stiff resistance from an army that was supposed to have immediately caved in..

The Ukrainian miasma appears to have driven Vladimir Putin even battier than he was to begin with. He was on Russian TV the other night promising an, "internal purification," of, "bastards and traitors," at home. The ghost of Joe Stalin was proud and the word Gulag once again entered the lexicon of the world.

In the end the Russians will probably win this war through sheer numbers and Putin's willingness to commit any atrocity imaginable. That and as long as he is in power his ego won't let him pull out.

However, we now know why Mr. Putin was and is so quick to threaten nuclear war. His army might be huge, but it isn't very good.

Or as one navy vet put it. There isn't an American flight crew out there who wouldn't start salivating as soon as they saw that Russian convoy crawling through the Ukrainian countryside. 

3-17-22

Madison Cawthorn: Crazier Than the Craziest and Rootin' For Putin

So what is a 26 year old wildly right wing freshman Congressman to do these days? Especially when competing with those two glamorous fascist show girls, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene for media coverage? Well for Madison Cawthorn, R-NC, the answer seems obvious. You have to be crazier than the craziest and the most brutally cruel liar this side of Vladimir Putin.

Luckily young Mr. Cawthorn is well versed in both these arts. In addition he has the Trumpian ability to switch up his stories at speeds approaching Mach Two with little regard for the public record. Describing his 2014 serious car accident which left him partially paralyzed, he has said the driver of the vehicle, Bradley Ledford, "left him to die in a fiery tomb." Ledford has said he was the one who pulled Cawthorn from the wreckage. Later Mr. Cawthorn swore he had, "no memory," at all of the accident, although he did recall being, "declared dead at the scene." Official reports describe him as, "incapacitated."

During his campaign in 2020 the Congressman said he lost out on an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy due to the accident. This was news to the Academy which had rejected him weeks before the crash occurred. 

As we can see Representative Cawthorn prefers his peculiar version of reality, so anything he says, no matter how insane, on the campaign trail, shouldn't surprise us. Even so, it was a tad nauseating the other day when he called Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, "a thug." His reasoning was vague, but perhaps it was because Zelensky didn't cave into Don Trump's extortion attempt during the 2020 campaign. He also described the Ukrainian government as corrupt to the core. 

At another campaign stop the Congressman implied the Russian invasion wasn't such a bad thing because Zelensky was trying to impose, "woke," policies on the Ukrainian people. Yes, we all understand that's what thugs do. Indeed, enforcing woke politics is the first rule in the thuggery handbook, which Cawthorn obviously has a copy of. Unfortunately Comrade Putin doesn't because you can say many things about him, but woke isn't one of them and he is definitely a thug.

Actually Mr. Cawthorn sort of agrees with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Kirill who blames the Ukrainian invasion on western, "Russophobia,," and the attempts of NATO countries to force everyone to hold gay pride day parades.

While we can't speak to the Patriarch's education we do know Madison Cawthorn dropped out of college after one semester of spectacularly poor grades. He blamed them on the car wreck, saying the head injuries he sustained caused him to be, "slow." and a romantic breakup with an unnamed woman.

We also know it only took him that single semester to become a legend among the women at his school. Several have accused him of sexual harassment, groping, and aggressive sexual behavior. Cawthorn, denies all the charges.

Finally we know he has been charged with driving with a revoked license. It was revoked because of the number of speeding tickets he has received.

Well, what should we expect from a 26 year old college drop out, just trying to be cool. Too bad the silly son of a bitch is just smart enough to live in a solid red district and be a member of the American political party that values ghastly bombast over substance.

Hey, who says this republic isn't great?

3-11-22

The Internet's Bodyguard of Lies

 In war, truth is so precious she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Sir Winston Churchill

These days that bodyguard is every social media site found on the internet. Even under the best of circumstances most of, "the news," you find on various sites ranks from the dubious to outright bullshit. Now that there is a full fledged war raging in Ukraine it is guaranteed almost everything you see on those sites has little to do with the reality.

USA Today fact checked 22 different posts on social media and found all of them were either false, or were missing context. Some of the posts were pro Ukrainian, while others seemed to fall into the categories of American right wing and evangelical propaganda. 

For example, one claimed Ukraine was the largest donor to the Clinton Foundation. The truth is, while there were some substantial donations by Ukrainian individuals to the foundation, the government in Kyiv hasn't donated a penny to it.

A photo purported to show a huge crowd in Ukraine rejoicing because the country's leadership had lifted a ban on evangelical proselytizing. The photo was taken in 2017. It was a crowd celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. USA Today points out there has never been a ban on proselytizing in the country.

Another is allegedly of a Russian jet going down in flames during the invasion. It was taken in 1993 and shows a Russian aircraft just after it had collided with another plane at a British air show.

A CNN correspondent put it this way, "We aren't going to really know what happened in any battle for weeks, maybe months." 

We certainly can't know the mindset of Vladimir Putin. Speculation has run from the assessment he has stepped off into the deep end of the pool, to things as bizarre as Rev. Pat Robertson's declaration that he is being compelled by God Almighty to blow shit up. All because it is the start of the end of times--that Putin needs to conquer Ukraine so he can use it as a staging ground to invade Israel rather than the Baltic states and even eastern Poland.

Whatever the case, while Pastor Robertson and other religious hysterics might be fine with that most of us aren't. 

We do, however, need to realize Putin is in so deep in this mess his ego isn't going to let him withdraw without getting exactly what he wants. No, the only way Russia will turn around and leave now is if some cabal of oligarchs come to the conclusion having billions of dollars doesn't count for much if you can't spend it and removes him. 

At least one Russian ex pat has suggested that. U.S. based Alex Konanykhin has offered a million bucks to any Russian military officer who arrests Putin for war crimes, dead, or alive. 

Yeah, good luck with that Alex. It's going to take more than your money to rid us of Comrade Putin. You also might want to watch out for Slavic men carrying umbrellas in your neighborhood from now on. 

Meanwhile the rest of us can only follow the news and sift through the bodyguard of lies dgrowing at a prestigious rate on social media. Then understand what we are seeing there isn't really what is happening. 

And pray the truth isn't actually far worse.

3-3-22