Everything new is old again

Last night on MSNBC Joy Reid was talking to John Brennan, the former CIA director, about what already feels like the endless war in Ukraine.  We're all frustrated and enraged, but she hinted that the solution lay in the hands of some agency of the United States secret government, specifically mentioning Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo.  Couldn't they maybe...?  Brennan's response was unspecific.  When Joy Reid starts calling for a Second Amendment Solution, we have turned a page.  It was like hearing Mr. Rogers sing "You're Special Because You're Locked and Loaded."  Barely a week ago Lindsey Graham was savaged for inquiring if there wasn't "a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg" in Russia.  Now reasonable people are saying, "Murder him, please."

Him being Vladimir Putin, whose assault on Ukraine continues to widen and escalate.  Maybe this war seems exhaustingly long because the Russian government is using the techniques that assailed us every day during the Trump abomination.  Evidence of civilian targets?  "Fake news."  Bodies in the streets of Mariupol?  "Crisis actors."  You want projection?  The Russians are now accusing Ukraine of readying chemical/biological weapons (with their American propagandists fingering, yes, Anthony Fauci as the evil genius in charge); the well-informed fear this heralds a Russian bio-attack.  False flags have been flying since before the invasion, some of them skillfully demolished by the Biden administration.  Let me see, who was it that shot some concentration camp inmates in 1939, dressed them in Polish uniforms and told the world they had crossed the border to attack a German radio station?  It's almost as if that playbook has been pulled off the shelf.

I could use a laugh about now.  Hey!  Clarence Thomas is worried that the Supreme Court might be "compromised" by politics.  He's afraid Biden will expand the court and dilute its nut-right majority, thus depriving it of "the respect of the institutions that the next generation is going to need" as they face life without voting rights, access to health care or freedom from theocracy.  

Two kinds of people collect stamps:  Heads of state (George VI, Franklin Roosevelt) and nerds.  That could change when the Ukrainian postal service releases "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."  When is the first-day cover?  (Yes, all right, I was a nerd.)

Congratulations to winning artist Boris Groh.  

Did Tulsi Gabbard take money from a Russian agent?  Did Hillary Clinton call her out on it in 2019?  Probably and yes.

Leaders of the European Union met at Versailles, where they described the Russian war as "a tectonic shift in European history" and pledged to make the EU self-sufficient in energy, food and defense.  I hope the British are taking note that small, unallied countries tend to be sitting ducks for big, depraved countries.  If only there was a catchy slogan that would fit on a bus.

TANSTAAFL is the acronym made famous by Robert A. Heinlein in one of his libertarian novels, and it must be the one book Mitch McConnell has read.  Pandemic programs meant to feed poor children will soon expire and ol' Mitch wants them to learn young that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, at least in American public schools.  As of June 30 the kids are not all right.  Mitch is very worried about the deficit.  He had four years to forget what the word means, but early last year he remembered.

It took ten Russian soldiers to abduct Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of Melitopol, with a hood over his head.  And with that, all distinction between Vladimir Putin and a Colombian druglord vanished.