Ukraine, Putin Rally, War Crimes, Postage, Boycott, Fox, Both Sides

  • PZ Myers pays attention to the explicitly expressed, but under-reported, aims of Vladimir Putin quite aside from military invasion. He insists he will accomplish the purification of Russian society of non-traditional ideas. Those on America’s extreme right are loving the idea.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice, Mark Satta looks at Putin’s efforts to justify invasion through the extreme manipulation of language beyond its generally accepted meaning.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged tells us of a woman in Russia arrested for carrying a blank protest sign. The sign with nothing on it tells us something about freedom in Putin’s Russia.
     
  • There are strange goings on in Putin television. Russia being in Putkin-Control, it’s hard to get a straight story, which is one reason tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors becomes instantly valuable. He gathers the Twit-bits and News-pieces into a coherent narrative as the dictator tries to go all Trumper.
     
    Putin holds a massive rally with a crowd that Putin-folk insist numbers 200,000 screaming fans. The stadium only holds 81,000, so there’s that. Then, in mid-sentence, Putin’s mic goes out, the dictator disappears like a card from magician’s hand, and tengrain pieces together the mystery. Now for Putin’s next magical trick.
     
  • Want the Putin view of the pro-Putin rally of seemingly adoring fans crammed into a clown car of a stadium? M. Bouffant at Web of Evil runs to the nearest pro-Trump site to discover how charismatic, how effective, how popular a national leader Putin has turned out to be. Kind of a miracle.
     
  • In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson has this to say: While Russia’s war on Ukraine continues in all its blistering horror, there are glimmerings that suggest Russia’s position in its assault on Ukraine is weakening.
     
  • Infidel753 points out that Putin’s invasion and his bullyboy targeted attacks on children’s facilities and hospitals for pregnant women is intended to be a show of strength. Instead he demonstrates profound national weakness. The creative title says it well.
     
  • I confess. At first I thought this was satire. Nojo tells us about Ukraine’s competition to design a new postage stamp, and the wonderfully profane winner.
     
  • I suppose any disaster will have grifters ready to take advantage. Scotties Playtime brings news of one of the worst possibilities operated by right-wing Americans right in Ukraine itself. Children are the targets.
     
  • Doing business with Russia sounds so antiseptic. Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger tells us a little about corporate complicity: Companies helping Putin murder Ukrainian citizens.
     
  • News Corpse reports on the public grateful praise Putin’s Foreign Minister expresses for the Fox Network.
     
  • As the Putin invasion of Ukraine continues, uniting the world, uniting most of the US, driftglass sees a new narrative in the both-sides-are-the same ideology: Putin has discredited his supporters on both extremes. The only fly in that ointment is that virtually all Putin support comes from the right.
     
    For myself, I’m okay with both-sides as a conclusion, backed by evidence or logic or both. A conclusion can be examined and debated.
     
    I reject it as a premise backed by nothing.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit points out that, in the US House of Reps, Vlad maintains his very own Putin Caucus.
     
  • It has been winding through the internet, and we can hope it somehow leaks into Russia. Hackwhackers relays from a Twitter feed the video of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s quietly impassioned message of love and admiration for the people of Russia, including a story of his boyhood hero, Yury Petrovich Vlasov, who later became his admired friend. The video is a plea and a challenge to reject Putin lies about the invasion of Ukraine. Hackwackers calls it a remarkable video: a fair description.
     
  • At Political Irony Vlad retaliates against worldwide actions with sanctions on several Americans. Hillary Clinton issues an ideal response.
     
  • Andy Borowitz has the details as Donald Trump offers his considerable experience and expertise in helping Russia file for bankruptcy.

Continue reading “Ukraine, Putin Rally, War Crimes, Postage, Boycott, Fox, Both Sides”

Vlad the Invader, Inside Putin, Zelensky Inspires, Ukrainians Suffer & Die, GOP

Police are heroes because they are willing to do exactly this, and occasionally they are called upon to do exactly this.

  • The two year period between 1989 and 1991 began with the tumbling of the Berlin wall and ended with the fall of the USSR. It is remembered by much of the world as a brief time of hopeful joy. The Palmer Report compares Vladimir Putin’s reaction to that time with that of another historical figure to another historical downfall. It may help explain a combative personal view that sees the world only in hostile nationalistic and racial terms.
     
  • In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson has us remember FDR’s fireside chats, in which he explained the war by contrasting the growing philosophy of fascism with that of democracy.
     
    She suggests that Vladimir Putin may have provided a similar service in advance of his latest invasion.

    In 2019, Russian president Vladimir Putin told the Financial Times that the ideology of liberalism on which democracy is based has “outlived its purpose.” Multiculturalism, freedom, and human rights must give way to “the culture, traditions, and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.”

    Outmoded democracy and freedom must give way to what he sees as more traditional racial and ethnic family values.
     
    We can see how the Putin side of that contrast might appeal to a few media personalities and political figures here in America.

  • The Moderate Voice presents the speech by Ukraine’s President Zelensky to the British Parliament that inspired a standing ovation, along with a series of individual reactions.
     
  • This not fun and games. Hackwhackers displays three photos showing frantic efforts to prevent, then reactions to, a singularly tragic death in Ukraine.
     
    Putin is a murderer.
     
  • Nojo doesn’t catch much cable news and so misses the enthused drama. But he sees the reaction of friends, and catches what is on line and in print about the forty mile Putin army convoy stalled on the way to Kiev. He greets reports with a degree of skepticism.
     
  • Infidel753 explains with patient care, so even the dimmest bulbs among us can glow brighter with new understanding of why, no, we won’t have a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Spoiler alert: has to do with the end of the world as we know it.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil explains that, while many major corporations are pulling out of Russia, Mr. Trump’s former bank says it would be impractical to give up all those profits.
     
  • Author John Scalzi has books that sell worldwide, including in Russia. So what are his thoughts on that, now that Putin has invaded Ukraine? Well… he does have a three point plan.
     
  • Andy Borowitz reports that Putin is upset to find Ukrainians are less obedient than his friend Trump.
     
  • Putin is having trouble invading Ukraine, but Dave Dubya explains how he had no trouble at all taking over the Republican Party.
     
  • Remember, when Donald Trump was President Trump, how he all but tripped over his tongue gushing love and servitude toward Vlad Putin, Kim Jong Un, and every other dictator and near-dictator he stumbled into? He admired and envied tough guys who could subdue their societies and kill their critics.
     
    tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors brings us the latest explanation from Donald Junior, Son of Don. Seems that gushing was all a trick to get on their good side and get them to agree to – well – things. Had me fooled. How about you?
     
  • I usually suspect at least a little exaggeration from anyone discussing someone from the opposition. I have heard that Trump was asked about Ukraine and went to windmills. He had to have given a few sentences to the question, then rapidly and awkwardly transitioned. But NOOooooo…. News Corpse has the video. Sure enough, the friendly, fawning interviewer asks Mr. Trump what he thinks will happen in Ukraine. Mr. Trump’s very next words are:
     
    Well, and I said this a long time ago, if this happens, we are playing right into their hands. Green energy. The windmills don’t work.
     
    Then he stumbles on about birds and visual landscapes and environmentalists. Yikes.
     
  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac has the headline as Mr. Trump has a new worry about the name of his new social media platform and Mr. Putin.
     
  • Pravda is the Russian word for Truth! Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit takes an old Russian saying about the official Putin News Agency and applies it to the Fox network.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger goes all third-party Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Putin lovers in the Republican party: counting all the ways they love him using their own words. Oh how they twist about in the aftermath of the current stalled Putin invasion. Ted does express the forlorn hope that they’ll take Russia’s Ukraine debacle as an object lesson and rethink their own hostility to democracy. But he is afflicted with more realistic expectations.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life applies principles of group think to the actions of, and support for, Vlad Putin on the part of some.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony sees some flipping and flopping as some Republicans try to figure out how to Putinize with support/oppose/predict he won’t/knew he would confusion about the invasion.
     
  • YellowDog Granny does seem to notice observations that possess the virtue of accuracy:
     

     
  • A prominent Republican, favored to become the GOP nominee for a Congressional seat in Michigan, boasts of advising his daughters, if rape becomes inevitable, to lie back and enjoy it. Yeah, he says it on video, in public, in front of God and everybody. Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged suggests this is just the latest manifestation of a growing Republican philosophy, and relates her own father’s very different advice.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson seems skeptical:

Continue reading “Vlad the Invader, Inside Putin, Zelensky Inspires, Ukrainians Suffer & Die, GOP”

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”