Let’s all keep in mind that Putin killed a new democracy in its crib back in 2000 when he took over Russia after Boris Yeltsin.  Using the KGB skills he honed in Communist East Germany in the early 80s, Putin then created a Russia that is now more dangerous and rich than the previously known Soviet Union.  Putin was ashamed that the Soviet Union collapsed after the Berlin wall fell, and he wants it rebuilt, but not as the Soviet Union, but as an imperialist Russian Empire.  He doesn’t want to be president, he wants to be Czar.

He can do that now that Russia is one of the largest oil and gas producers and controls energy supplies into Europe.  He has rebuilt the Russian military, now has a warm water port after taking Crimea from Ukraine, quashed all opposition, changed the constitution so he can stay in power for life and has made elections there a joke.  Billionaire oligarchs support and protect him, and his drive to build a new Russian Empire is relentless.
And who’s happy about it?  TFG himself and his supporters. Last night Putin brazenly invaded Ukraine, even shelling facilities near Kyiv, and millions of Ukrainians, in disbelief that he actually attacked, are fleeing to the west.  On Tuesday, TFG call Putin a genius and said how smart he was to go in as a “peacekeeper”.  Last night, right before Putin launched attacks in to Kyiv and other cities, TFG did it again, praising Putin at a fund raiser at Mar a Lago, saying how smart Putin is, walking in “for two dollars worth of sanctions”, then ironically claiming that if he were in office,

“This would never have happened, ever in a million years, it would have never happened.  And I know him very well. I know him probably almost as well as I know anybody in this room other than Doc Ronny [Jackson].”

So, let’s be clear – TFG is characteristically praising, as he has for years, then tried to push blame onto Biden for Putin doing what he himself supports.  Of course, his sycophants fell in line, praising Putin and TFG, bashing Biden.

If anyone doubts what the US would look like during a second TFG term, just look at Russia today and listen to TFG’s actual words.  He dreams of being a dictator and almost accomplished that in 2020.  With the Republican Party in tatters and now virtually 100% aligned with TFG and Russia, the only thing standing in his way is the rest of us making sure he never gets close to the Oval Office ever again.

TFG and his supporters are using Putin to undermine Biden and the US government to his own advantage, and Putin is so long term focused and patient that I don’t have any doubt that another TFG victory in 2024 figures into his calculus in going after Ukraine today.  Even if he doesn’t succeed this time, he’ll just come back in 2025 as Trump holds the door open for him by lifting all sanctions (like he did in 2017) and undermining NATO while fantasizing doing the same thing to Mexico.

If one ever needed another justification for abolishing the Electoral College, TFG is it.

Peter Doocy, yet another example of nepotism being alive and well at Fox “News” is the White House “correspondent” for the propaganda network, and is the son of “Fox and Friends” talker Steve Doocy.  Like his father, he has made a career of making a fool of himself on national television, carrying the water for the network and the party of Trump.  Doocy, not that smart himself, always tried to catch Joe Biden out with leading questions from the “Do you still beat your wife” genre, and tried again yesterday shouting at the President if inflation is a liability to him.  Biden responded appropriately.  You can see the exchange here.

The network went into full on Karen mode, led by Sean Hannity, moaning and whining about how terrible Biden’s behavior was, while missing the irony that they worship a guy who has spent a lifetime engaging in childish behavior and public profanity.  Don’t remember?  Here’s a little reminder from Time about Trump’s language, and keep in mind this was over 4 years ago, less than a year into TFG’s infestation of the Oval office.

In 2018, Ari Melber of MSNBC did a piece on the hypocrisy of Fox and the evangelical right’s endorsement of TFG’s constant stream of profanity in private and public, when historically offended at that very same language from other politicians.  It’s a 6 minute segment, but a good listen.

Meanwhile, Biden has called Doocy to “clear the air” between them, something that TFG would never do, and who indeed banned from the White House any reporter challenging him or asking tough questions.  Personally, I thought Biden’s response to Doocy’s idiocy was pitch perfect and accurately described him, but that’s just me.

On Christmas Eve, Joe and Jill Biden live-streamed calls into NORAD’s Santa Tracker, talking to kids about Santa, what they want for Christmas, and other kid friendly topics.  It was all in good fun, right up until a smart ass named Jared Schmeck of Oregon called in with his 4 kids; Schmeck was pleasant enough making small talk with the President, but when signing off, he thought it was a great idea to say, “Let’s Go Brandon.”  That’s right, Schmeck used a euphemism to tell the President of the United States, “Fuck Joe Biden.”  To make matters worse, he videoed himself doing it, then he and his wife posted it to their social media accounts.  That wasn’t smart.

The metaverse did what the metaverse always does – it exploded.  MAGAts gloated with glee at the the insult lionizing Schmeck’s disrespect, but also something else happened.  Normal people were shocked at the insult and responded to the Schmecks’ posts, flooding their accounts.  Then, netazins started researching Schmeck and his family.  What they learned, and then published, was not attractive.  Turns out he works for his father’s electrician company, which claims to be a “Christian owned” company complete with a code of conduct which included treating everyone “with respect”.  It also turns out that his father was a Navy Seal when he was arrested for his involvement in a gun trafficking ring back in the early nineties.  It goes on and on, but I won’t repeat all that here.

Schmeck also did what all MAGAts do when caught doing something stupid or cruel and then shamed for it – he blamed everyone else for “attacking” him for exercising “free speech”, and then lied saying his insult of Joe Biden was “just a joke” and “innocent jest”.  It most certainly was not a “joke” and he was not  “just frustrated with his policies.”  It was the normal lame excuses always spoken by the guilty.

Schmeck is now learning that free speech goes both ways.  Sure, you can say what you want in public, even posting a video of yourself personally insulting the President of the United States on a public livestream.  But if you do that, expect a full helping of response to that insult.  This is the problem with living in an echo chamber.  Schmeck thought it was hilarious to insult the President and his friends likely did, too.  Now he’s shocked at the response of normal people.  What he and others in his echo chamber don’t understand is that fully more that HALF of Americans disagree with his politics and most certainly his smartassed disrespect of the President.  He’s now learning that lesson.  Maybe he’ll think twice before doing that again.  On second thought, I doubt it.

Right-wingers and Trump’s media loudmouths are howling after the Biden administration ousted 18 Trump appointees from service academy boards, calling the ouster a “power grab” and “politicizing the service academies”.  Well, it’s just the opposite.  What most media is not reporting is that Biden’s move is part of his effort to clean up the open sewer Trump left behind when he finally vacated office on January 20th.

The rest of this story is this – after Trump lost the election, his acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller (you know, the guy who refused to send the national guard to the Capitol on January 6th), ousted dozens of academy and other board members and replaced them with Trump loyalists.  He packed the boards of at least 3 service academies as well as the Defense Business Board and added HUNDREDS of Trump appointees to boards within the DOD on 42 boards in all.  To contain the damage, new defense secretary Lloyd Austin suspended all board activities to do a “zero based review” of all the boards that Trump polluted with partisan, cronies, and loyalists. Biden’s move to oust 18 Trump appointees is just a part of the massive cleanup underway at DOD and other departments Trump infested.

Now you know the rest of the story.

For time and immemorial, the standard playbook for dealing with a disgraced former leader has been the same. You let them ride off into the sunset and everyone forgets about him or her. This even includes the criminals. I have always been taught and always believed that criminalizing political behavior would lead to bad ends. The last guy has taught those of us in that camp that we shouldn’t politicize criminal behavior.

Polling data indicate that he’s gaining for 2024. No, he would not win an election if it were held today, but it’s certainly close enough to make people nervous. What seems more outrageous historically is that he is in front of the entire GOP pool. What’s more, when someone loses by eight million votes the normal course is for all of the next candidates to fall over themselves convincing us that they aren’t that guy. Except, every blasted one of them is doing the exact opposite.

I’d say things will change once the indictments start rolling in, but I think it will take him actually wearing an orange jumpsuit for there to be a dent. Even then, it would just be a dent. I don’t know how many times I can say the word “normally” before we all realize that normal will just be one of those quaint words we don’t use anymore. They will convince themselves that it’s all a sham like my mother in law who convinced herself that Joe Biden was resigning. This one is going to take a few election cycles to clear.

Yesterday, Biden responded to Greg Abbott’s and Mississippi governor Tate Reeves’ announcements lifting all state restrictions that protect their citizens from Coronavirus infections.  In his response, Biden said,

“We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way in which we’re able to get vaccines in people’s arms. … The last thing, the last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking — that, ‘In the meantime, everything’s fine. Take off your mask. Forget it.’ It still matters.”

How dare Biden denigrate the memory of neanderthals so insensitively.  Their thinking was much more developed than today’s rightwing knuckle draggers.  He should be more careful with his rhetoric.