“Despite the incredible heroism of Ukraine’s people, it’s still more likely than not that the Russian flag will eventually be planted amid the rubble of Kyiv and Kharkiv. But even if that happens, the Russian Federation will be left weaker and poorer than it was before the invasion. Conquest doesn’t pay.”
Paul Krugman, commenting on the economic impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
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The skyline of Dallas, Texas was lit up recently in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Other cities around the U.S. and around the world have done the same in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, as they face a brutal onslaught from Russia.
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Fences supposedly make good neighbors, but how about tables?
When French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Moscow last week to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin about the burgeoning Ukraine crisis, neither man probably realized some observers just wouldn’t take them seriously. Putin seems intent on invading Ukraine, during the Winter Olympics in Beijing and despite strong global opposition and threats of sanctions from the developed world.
But amidst the tension, one thing about the meeting stuck out: the table. Macron and Putin sat at opposite ends of a gargantuan white table, as COVID protocols still deem such ambits necessary. It almost goes without saying the physical distance between the duo was analogous to their ideological differences.
This photo is only one of the many derisive images about the conference. Personally, I found the small floral arrangement more intriguing than either leader.
Filed under Curiosities
“There have always been efforts to censor books, but what we’re seeing right now is frankly unprecedented. A library is a place of voluntary inquiry. That means when a student walks in, they’re not forced to check out a book that they or their parents find objectionable. But they also don’t have authority to say what books should or shouldn’t be available to other students.”
Carolyn Foote, a retired school librarian in Austin who’s helping to lead the #FReadom campaign
#FReadom campaign is a grassroots effort to fight back against book challenges (translation: censorship) in Texas.
“Well, if you are digesting Russian misinformation and parroting Russian talking points, you are not aligned with longstanding, bipartisan American values, which is to stand up for the sovereignty of countries, like Ukraine but others. Their right to choose their own alliances, and also to stand against, very clearly, the efforts or attempts or potential attempts by any country to invade and take territory of another country. That applies to Sen. Hawley, but it also applies to others who may be parroting the talking points of Russian propagandist leaders.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in response to a reporter’s question about Sen. Josh Hawley’s suggestion the U.S. not support Ukraine in its ongoing efforts to thwart a Russian invasion
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“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
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“Today we mark a truly grim, heartbreaking milestone: 500,071 dead. That’s more Americans who have died in one year in this pandemic than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. That’s more lives lost to this virus than any other nation on Earth. But as we acknowledge the scale of this mass death in America we remember each person and the life they lived. They’re people we knew. They’re people we feel like we knew. Read the obituaries and the remembrances. The son who called his mom every night just to check in, the father’s daughter who lit up his world, the friend who was always there, the nurse who made her patients want to live.”
President Joe Biden, on the COVID-19 death toll reaching the half million mark in the United States
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“The Devil made me do it!”
You have to understand something about the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6. They’re not entirely responsible for their actions. They had merely responded to the words of their newly-formed deity, Donald Trump. In the hours leading up to the siege, Trump had infused them with idea that he had been wronged by the voting process; that the 2020 elections had been manipulated by covert gangs of leftist forces determined to enforce abortions and gun confiscations upon helpless, red-blooded, bible-carrying Christian American citizens to ensure his loss. He was a victim, Trump maintained, and vicariously so were his minions.
CHARGE!!!!!!!!!
Thus, the Trumpians had been victimized by the same queer-loving renegades and they were justified in storming the Capitol, tearing through offices, screaming like children told to come in for dinner, threatening others because they got their feelings hurt – all while dressed like ghosts of the Civil War and refugees from a Comic-Con conference gone wrong.
Please!
The Capitol Hill warriors are no more victims of enraged rhetoric than porn stars are of poor script-writing. For years conservatives have proclaimed the tenets of individual freedom and personal responsibility. They declared such values in reactive angst to a welfare society and relentless victimhood proclamations.
They loathed when non-White people bemoaned centuries of Euro-colonial oppression and systemic racism. They rolled their eyes at the thought of women hollering about sexual harassment in the workplace and on college campuses. They snickered at queer folks complaining of innate homophobia on the job and in school.
Then the U.S. Congress met on January 6, 2021 to certify Joe Biden as the winner of last year’s presidential contest, and – as Dante Alighieri once wrote – all hell broke loose.
The Trumpian crowd became maddened by the process and felt they had no other recourse but to subvert that constitutional mechanism in the most violent manner possible. Their voices and votes had been ignored and they had to stop the madness.
So, in the name of Ronald Reagan, where the hell was all that talk of personal responsibility? Where were the people to take ownership of themselves and their actions? In other words, why do the Capitol Hill rioters suddenly see themselves as victims of…well, anything?!
They all sound like a bunch of – oh, God! A bunch of minorities, women and queers! Pass the rifle and heaven forbid! Now these “victims” have placed themselves in the same category as tree-loving, pot-smoking, Muslim-loving liberals!
What’s going to happen next? The magnetic poles will switch sides – like communist traitors – and life as we know will extinguish itself?
Again – please!
I personally don’t care to hear the anguished state of mind of these mentally- challenged pencil-dick and cavern-cunt imps. What happened with last year’s presidential elections is something known as democracy. It’s the sustenance upon which civilized societies survive. We cannot exist without it. The goons who stormed the Capitol three weeks ago didn’t fall victim to the verbiage of Donald Trump; they were victims of their own damned stupidity. If they truly were swayed by Trumpian oratory, they are as gullible as a child believing in Santa Claus. They roared into that building because what was left of their brain cells had perished in the swamp of their own hysteria.
It’s just so incredibly interesting that these right-wing extremists who wrap themselves in the American flag and cry freedom – while waving the loser traitorous Confederate flag – are suddenly helpless and violated. They couldn’t help themselves. Their faux president told them to do it.
The reality is quite simple: they’re violent and they’re stupid. But they aren’t victims.
Filed under Essays
“The president does read and he also consumes intelligence verbally. This president, I’ll tell you, is the most informed person on the planet Earth when it comes to the threats that we face.”
– Kayleigh McEnany, White House Press Secretary, in response to claims that Donald Trump wasn’t aware of bounties placed on U.S. troops in Afghanistan by the Russian government
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Chief Writing Wolf 