Ukraine Aid, French Landslide, White Nationalism, Books, Gays, Manly Men

  • PZ Myers has a suggestion on who could have played Putin in a movie about the invasion of Ukraine. If only the perfect player was alive.
     
  • Infidel753 speculates intelligently on what Putin really wants: a world based on past, way past, international ethics.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice Anthony Stahelski believes the unexpected hardship experienced by Putin’s Russia, and the unexpected world unity in opposition, serves as a warning to other dictators. He suggests we expand on that unity with even bolder action.
     
  • This week President Biden got the legislation he asked Congress to give him providing lots more aid to Ukraine. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit names the 10 members who voted against Ukraine. Procedure had to be followed first. 220 Republicans voted against having aid to Ukraine come to a vote at all. They were against helping Ukraine right before they were for it.
     
  • The Palmer Report explains why the landslide election of Emmanuel Macron in the election for President of France, beating Putin’s candidate, may be good news for our own President Biden.
     
  • In Hackwhackers we get a peek under the ideological hood of White Nationalism and how it has become the prototype for the Republican future.
     
  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson sees a traditional pattern of democratic vs autocratic governance creating opportunities for two right-wing, antidemocratic ideologies competing for control of the Republican party.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson seems impatient with conservative extremism:

  • Nojo points out the good news. All the conservative book banning won’t work. There are too many alternate sources of knowledge.
     
    The bad news about book banning comes from the good news. Conservatives won’t stop there because they can’t.
     
  • The Propaganda Professor has what amounts to case studies. “Left leaning” media has become complicit in spreading right wing agitprop, mostly because those on the right side of the political spectrum have become expert at spinning issues out of non-issues.
     
  • A while back, the Department of Homeland Security noticed that a lot of Putin disinformation was coming into social media from Russian hirelings pretending to be Americans. Sometimes the purpose was to get Americans to hate each other. Sometimes it was to get Americans to do crazy unhealthy things based on made up stories about Covid, vaccines, and bogus cures (Drink your own urine!!). Often the purpose was to spread Russian anti-American propaganda. It had all become a threat to US Security.
     
    That wasn’t the only use of disinformation. Border traffickers were broadcasting bogus stories to get more and more immigrants to flee violence in their home countries and come to the United States.
     
    So Homeland Security established the Disinformation Governance Board to expose the lies with documented truth. It became the source of warnings about Russian disinformation before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The this-is-what-the-Russian-trolls-are-about-to-say announcements, just hours before Russian media said them, turned out to be extremely effective in rallying the entire world.
     
    Naturally, some American conservatives became outraged. Still are.
    They charge censorship. It isn’t.
    A few on the more extreme edge anticipate conservatives being persecuted or imprisoned for their thoughts.
     
    For example our own Missouri Senator Josh Hawley:
    Homeland Security has decided to make policing Americans’ speech its top priority.
    Sheeesh!
     
    Frances Langum notices one aspect that has the Fox Network especially worked up. Brian Kilmeade is mad as hell because the first Executive Director of the Board took the job while pregnant. How dare they put a pregnant woman in charge!

A few tweets I thought worthy:

And I’m allowed a few of my own:

Finally: My response to a sarcastic antagonist who suddenly withdrew and made his angry contributions invisible:


– Podcasts –
 

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