A little under two months ago, tiny Denmark – with a population less than that of New York City and a GDP of $400 billion – committed its “entire artillery” to Ukraine. “The Ukrainians are asking us for ammunition now.
In the previous century, AKBVN (After Korea Before Viet Nam) I was trained in artillery fire direction control at Fort Sill, but I have no memory of a "King of Battle" slogan plastered anywhere.
i have been asking this question also. since the invasion i have been attending an AA meeting in kyiv on zoom. they hold their meetings in bomb shelters, often i can hear the bombs. i set my laptop up by my hummingbird feeders so they can watch something beautiful. my friends are being abandoned. it breaks my heart to sign in to a meeting and not see faces i have come to know and admire. people who are staying clean and sober while fighting for their lives deserve much better from us. my friends will never quit fighting.
The gutting of our national education system in the 70s and continuing local tax cutting to education has left this country in a state of STUPID. Teaching was a valued and honorable profession
I agree. History used to be a separate subject, but about 50 years ago it became just one more thing to teach in Social Studies.
I recall in the 1980's I somehow or other began questioning this elementary school Social Studies teacher who taught History, too. She had no idea when our Civil War took place, or WW1, or WW2. Like the then unknown Sarah Palin, this History teacher was confused as to who fought who in WW2.
She taught in a school district with a great reputation. Lilly White, too. I couldn't keep myself from saying that she should be ashamed to take her paycheck. That was ungentlemanly.
Yes, education has been gutted. And the No Child Left Behind act was no help---better to say a disaster. Civics has been gone for decades. No wonder people have no idea what democracy means or how important voting is or how government works. We have a population generally reduced to high school (at best) reading levels. Without immigration of well educated individuals, our technical, medical, and most other fields would be the joke of the world. No criticism of people who are the victims of poor education; the leaders as the criminal actors. It is probably too late to turn education around.
Grover, your surname is the same as one of America's greatest historians, Howard Zinn. He wrote the great "A People's History of the United States", published in 1980 and still in print and ebook. I've given numerous copies to young people. We would be a much better country had this book been mandatory in schools instead of banned in many.
Being well aware that kids will never see these books in school, maybe we should all give one or both of those books to kids. Gotta turn this ship around!
Hello Rich. Howard Zinn, no relationship, is a great historian. Thanks for spreading his words..... An honors students of mine was an assistant on one of his book projects.
My husband and I had dinner with Howard Zinn years ago. It wasn't a large group—perhaps a dozen or so people. He was seated across from me! Of course I was in awe of him. In addition to being brilliant, he was a kind and sweet man. He had such a wise and generous spirit.
I was a HQT for NCLB and was micromanaged out of a career I loved into an early retirement. Seriously, scripted lesson plans held to a strict calendar. (History was not on the test and teachers are evaluated by how their students did on the test.)
I believe you, but where was this? I fell in love with History in my 7th grade US History class in West Los Angeles and went on to teach it for 40 years. California elementary schools teach cultural history but the teachers have to have basic 4 year college educations which require a demanding survey of US and World History.
we are a bunch of feckless, unserious, cult members, poorly educated, racist and violence prone - and maga republican. This 'party' needs to be defeated in November, in a definitive rout. Even then, it will take decades to drive this disease from the body politic. That so many of our fellow citizens could fall under the spell of a charlatan and continue to support, and elect, those who attacked our Capitol and our democratic system is unfathomable to me. As is the allure of authoritarians to a slice of our population. There are articles and books noting differences in brain physiology between libs and conservatives affecting perceptions of politics and culture. That doesn't bode well for re-educating those lost to maga or re-aligning our politics. Electing responsible majorities in Nov is a must.
I fear the maggots cannot be de-programmed from the MAGA cult. Even if the Orange Jesus were to drop dead tomorrow, there’s a long line of maggots, like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, waiting to take his place and substitute Project 2025 for our beloved democracy. Be very afraid.
I'm with you on the first sentence, but Bannon and Miller don't have the same huckster chops to draw a crowd and play to it as the Deranged Depraved Defendant.
Sorry. I know of many highly educated, successful and outwardly likable people who support Trump. But…I live on Long Island now. It scares me to death.
Who are we? We are who we have always been, with some of it hidden. It just took Trump to make the ugliness acceptable and out in the open. We remain a country full of ignorant, stupid bigots who are full of hate. This has been coming for a very long time and those in power did absolutely nothing to stop it, so we are paying the price. For those who haven't seen it, watch the video Trump has put out on Lies Antisocial, called "Trump's Virtues" and narrated by Thomas Klingenstein, a screaming fascist from the Claremont Institute. It is terrifying. Medias Touch Network has a good summary and RawStory has a link if you can stomach 8 minutes of blatant Nazi imagery full of chants of "USA, USA" - you know, Sieg Heil for America. I am ill.
Watched it last night and was terrified. To give the devil his due, it's a slick, seemingly accurate ad, if you didn't know better. It's been chopped, processed and edited enough to appear factual. On it's surface, it appears respectable enough for the GOP/MAGA to hold it up as a defense. The narration is done well., acknowledging hand picked criticisms that have been aimed at trump and turning them into positives.
A lot of established money has been poured into this production and it's message/tone is going to probably be acceptable by undecided voters.
Lucian, your description is spot on and has made me want to scream into the void since Mike Johnson took office as Speaker. I have been watching the FX/Hulu series “We Were the Lucky Ones,” the gripping experiences of members of a Polish Jewish family who were scattered to the winds as the Nazis invaded and began their Final Solution. Apart from being superbly written, well-acted and edited with amazing production sets and locations, it is a dire warning of the horrors of authoritarian dictators. Putin is the Hitler of the modern era with the genocide he is committing against the people of Ukraine. And it is plain as day that the threat to Ukraine is a threat to the rest of Europe and in turn to the U.S.
Ukrainian President Zelensky famously said when offered safe passage out of the country just after Putin invaded two years ago, “I don’t need a ride. I need ammunition.” He still does, and even more so. And the thing of it is, with the right amount and type of “ammunition” Ukraine would likely repel Russia and reclaim much of its seized territory. But the U.S., the “leader of the free world,” is being hog-tied by a four-time indicted insurrectionist traitor (who happens to be a former President), who is pulling Johnson’s puppet strings, just as his own puppet strings are in turn being pulled by Putin.
We know how allowing Hitler to get as far as he did worked out - it thrust us into a world war. Putin needs to be stopped NOW, and shown that a united West, backed by NATO, will not allow him any further conquests.
Biden should make use of every lever of executive power, including executive orders and his authority as the one person constitutionally bound to safeguard the security of the U.S., to get every bit of ammunition and arms to Ukraine that he can. For the U.S. to be embarrassed by Denmark, and several other NATO allies, going above and beyond to provide arms and ammunition to Ukraine, should be the top issue right now. Otherwise, a film in the future about our times may be titled “We Were NOT the Lucky Ones.”
As an American I am ashamed we have abandoned Ukraine when our support was and is needed the most. I am retired and not wealthy, but I make as large a donation as I can to United24 for defense. United 24 was started by Dr Timothy Synder and others to aid Ukraine in its fight for survival. I also believe the war between Israel and Hamas was started to weaken support for Ukraine and give Putin a chance to gain the upper hand. Please, if you are able , check out Dr Snyder’s Substack and donate if you can.
Agree. The Gaza war was started to distract the West from Ukraine. I follow Dr. Snyder's blog and am contributing to the fund for safe skies. The US should be doing a lot more.
Sad and ANGRY is who we are. I'll leave the expletives out, for now. You all know what has to be done. No amount of pressure, emails or whatever will sway that Krystyun Traitor, the Spewker of the House.
Here is his telegram address, if you want to give it a shot.
I agree with virtually everything the first 14 comments brought up. I really believe that we are slow marching into WWIII. If Ukraine falls to the whims of the lunatic putin it will surely be the beginning of a World War. We have to only look as far back as the 1930's to see what hitler did in Austria and then Poland, does anyone that has the ability to read not see this coming. Alliances have been formed, try this on for size, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, then you can add their proxies and want to be proxies like Hungary and Serbia. If you don't think they will stand shoulder to shoulder you haven't been paying attention. The Russians can be defeated as long as the war is confined to Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are up to the task provided they have the tools to continue the fight. Their fight is our proxy fight, and we owe it to them to have their backs. I don't know if we have until Nov. to figure this out, a lot of good people are going to die in the meantime, people that you would be proud to call your friends. We need to do everything in our power to stop this march into oblivion, if we don't our children and grandchildren won't not just have a country to be proud of, they likely won't live though the holocaust about to consume the world. At this point whatever will stop that from happening I'm in favor of. I know this will upset some, but maybe the Insurrection Act or Martial Law to remove the impediments to our acting in our own interests, it doesn't have to be permanent but we could hang a bunch of the traitorous bastards that want to sell us out to the Russians and it might focus the minds of a lot of their supporters. We were mostly unified during WWII, I know we had a fifth element that were fascists but they were marginalized by the collective will of the nation, we could do that again, I believe that putin is betting his life that we won't. If America is to really wake up to the threat we are facing, that will have been a bad bet.
We all scream VOTE! The reality is that if we wait until November to ameliorate this, Ukraine will be no longer. Do I want to live in a country that would aid and abet the criminal Putin to accomplish this? No. Thank you Lucian, for reminding us that House Repugnicans aren’t merely feckless, they’re dangerous.
Between Rachel Maddow's PREQUEL (just finished it and highly recommend), Heather Cox Richardson, what's going on in Gaza, and my own several decades of experience, I know we've been headed in this direction for a very long time. I hope we're not in a death spiral.
I was nine years old during the Cuban missile crisis and was aware that something really bad was happening. I really had no understanding of the gravity of it. Today I think that we are living through a 21 century Cuban missile crisis . Only levels of magnitude worse. I am in a constant state of anxiety due to whats happening in the world. I'm counting the days until the election so I can breathe a little easier when Biden wins. It will be a long seven months. You can't plan for anything. Someone said all your plans go out the window as soon as you get punched in the face. Every day is like a punch in the face. Peace and love.
I was 12 and I have a vivid memory of sitting with my mother and listening to the radio, and knowing that things were really bad. That was the point at which I began to ask questions.
I was 22, an Army Reserve private being trained in artillery at Fort Sill. There was no omnipresent TV to scare us with the threat of nuclear war. What got my group's absolute attention was that the trainees in the group in front of us had been immediately diverted to a far corner of the base where they were practicing climbing down rope ladders lashed to walls, to simulate climbing down the hull of a ship into a landing craft. The message was that we were getting ready to invade Cuba. I swear there was no talk about nuclear war, only brave chatter about how long it would take for the U.S. to finish off Castro (consensus, a month at most) -- and, myopia at its best, how long would Reservists and National Guard trainees have our six-months active duty extended.
Today I watched a 30 second clip on YouTube Attorney General Bobby Kennedy going after mobster at a meeting in the House. Very interesting. And then currently his dumb as a pile of rocks son. No offense to geodes.
I was old enough to understand what was going on. I'll never forget staring at that b&w tv, nearly paralyzed by fear. An unexpected but not inappropriate analogy. This is a prolonged version, perpetrated half by our own.
Could I agree more? The moral and strategic justification for Ukraine's support has only grown stronger over the past two tragic years, as has the example set by Ukraine's people and leadership. They deserve everything the US has promised and more. If they do not receive it because of MAGA's venality and dishonesty, coupled with our public's impaired attention span, the disgrace will be ours for a generation and beyond.
How did we get here? Jeffrey Goldberg has an excellent summary in The Atlantic in which he calls out Senate Republican cowardice as the culprit. He is particularly harsh about Portman of Ohio and McConnell of Kentucky who both know damn well what a menace Trump is and chose not to act in 2021 after the J6 Insurrection. Trump was back on his heels. He was at his weakest. But out of fear of the mob or fear of pain for the beloved GOP, they failed to muster the votes to convict Trump of the crimes they had seen unfold before their eyes. Had they acted then, hell had they acted in 2019, hell had they acted in 2016, we would not be where we are today with US foreign policy held hostage by Donald "Putin's Bitch" Trump.
Who are we? Hosts to massive malignant cancer cells masquerading as human politicians and media enablers. Compare all those blocking our sending ammunition to Ukraine to U.S. Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Howell Forgy, ship's chaplain on the cruiser USS New Orleans, undergoing repairs at Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941. When the only electrical power, from the dock, was knocked out, ship personnel formed a "bucket brigade" to bring antiaircraft shells topside and to gun mounts. Chaplain Forgy went along the men, urging them to "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition." The phrase made it into popular lexicon, and provided the title and some of the lyrics to a Frank Loesser hit song in 1942, including these words:
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
And we'll all stay free
Praise the Lord and swing into position
Can't afford to be a politician
Praise the Lord, we're all between perdition
And the deep blue sea.
"Can't afford to be a politician." The thought bubble above Frank Loesser's hereafter head is "Are you sh*tting me?"
Remembered wrong, should have checked: Artillery is the "King of Battle," not the Queen, which is the Infantry.
As an artilleryman, I appreciate your correction.
Hahaha - was just going to send that correction about King vs queen of Battle, but lots of red legs have done so! Great piece.
In the previous century, AKBVN (After Korea Before Viet Nam) I was trained in artillery fire direction control at Fort Sill, but I have no memory of a "King of Battle" slogan plastered anywhere.
i have been asking this question also. since the invasion i have been attending an AA meeting in kyiv on zoom. they hold their meetings in bomb shelters, often i can hear the bombs. i set my laptop up by my hummingbird feeders so they can watch something beautiful. my friends are being abandoned. it breaks my heart to sign in to a meeting and not see faces i have come to know and admire. people who are staying clean and sober while fighting for their lives deserve much better from us. my friends will never quit fighting.
The gutting of our national education system in the 70s and continuing local tax cutting to education has left this country in a state of STUPID. Teaching was a valued and honorable profession
I agree. History used to be a separate subject, but about 50 years ago it became just one more thing to teach in Social Studies.
I recall in the 1980's I somehow or other began questioning this elementary school Social Studies teacher who taught History, too. She had no idea when our Civil War took place, or WW1, or WW2. Like the then unknown Sarah Palin, this History teacher was confused as to who fought who in WW2.
She taught in a school district with a great reputation. Lilly White, too. I couldn't keep myself from saying that she should be ashamed to take her paycheck. That was ungentlemanly.
Yes, education has been gutted. And the No Child Left Behind act was no help---better to say a disaster. Civics has been gone for decades. No wonder people have no idea what democracy means or how important voting is or how government works. We have a population generally reduced to high school (at best) reading levels. Without immigration of well educated individuals, our technical, medical, and most other fields would be the joke of the world. No criticism of people who are the victims of poor education; the leaders as the criminal actors. It is probably too late to turn education around.
I believe we have Ronald Reagan and William Bennett to thank for gutting civics education.
Precisely.
All Republicans.
Thanks.....
Grover, your surname is the same as one of America's greatest historians, Howard Zinn. He wrote the great "A People's History of the United States", published in 1980 and still in print and ebook. I've given numerous copies to young people. We would be a much better country had this book been mandatory in schools instead of banned in many.
And "Lies My Teacher Told Me".
I gifted some of those, too!
Being well aware that kids will never see these books in school, maybe we should all give one or both of those books to kids. Gotta turn this ship around!
Yep---turn this ship around. A BIG and crucial project.
My grandson took AP History. The required text was Howard Zinn's People's History.
Hello Rich. Howard Zinn, no relationship, is a great historian. Thanks for spreading his words..... An honors students of mine was an assistant on one of his book projects.
My husband and I had dinner with Howard Zinn years ago. It wasn't a large group—perhaps a dozen or so people. He was seated across from me! Of course I was in awe of him. In addition to being brilliant, he was a kind and sweet man. He had such a wise and generous spirit.
Last I read an astounding amount of Amercans can't read to the level of 6th graders, I may be off a year or so but still.
I was a HQT for NCLB and was micromanaged out of a career I loved into an early retirement. Seriously, scripted lesson plans held to a strict calendar. (History was not on the test and teachers are evaluated by how their students did on the test.)
Stupid or ignorant leaves in the same place. Lost
I believe you, but where was this? I fell in love with History in my 7th grade US History class in West Los Angeles and went on to teach it for 40 years. California elementary schools teach cultural history but the teachers have to have basic 4 year college educations which require a demanding survey of US and World History.
we are a bunch of feckless, unserious, cult members, poorly educated, racist and violence prone - and maga republican. This 'party' needs to be defeated in November, in a definitive rout. Even then, it will take decades to drive this disease from the body politic. That so many of our fellow citizens could fall under the spell of a charlatan and continue to support, and elect, those who attacked our Capitol and our democratic system is unfathomable to me. As is the allure of authoritarians to a slice of our population. There are articles and books noting differences in brain physiology between libs and conservatives affecting perceptions of politics and culture. That doesn't bode well for re-educating those lost to maga or re-aligning our politics. Electing responsible majorities in Nov is a must.
I fear the maggots cannot be de-programmed from the MAGA cult. Even if the Orange Jesus were to drop dead tomorrow, there’s a long line of maggots, like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, waiting to take his place and substitute Project 2025 for our beloved democracy. Be very afraid.
I'm with you on the first sentence, but Bannon and Miller don't have the same huckster chops to draw a crowd and play to it as the Deranged Depraved Defendant.
Yup, the Deranged Demon has had many years of experience as a huckster.
There could be some infighting, because some of his followers would be waiting for Trump's resurrection! I am serious.
Be very alert. Fear is not our friend. Activity is. Be attentive and get busy! But you know that, shee-rah.
He loves the uneducated - for obvious reasons.
Sorry. I know of many highly educated, successful and outwardly likable people who support Trump. But…I live on Long Island now. It scares me to death.
Who are we? We are who we have always been, with some of it hidden. It just took Trump to make the ugliness acceptable and out in the open. We remain a country full of ignorant, stupid bigots who are full of hate. This has been coming for a very long time and those in power did absolutely nothing to stop it, so we are paying the price. For those who haven't seen it, watch the video Trump has put out on Lies Antisocial, called "Trump's Virtues" and narrated by Thomas Klingenstein, a screaming fascist from the Claremont Institute. It is terrifying. Medias Touch Network has a good summary and RawStory has a link if you can stomach 8 minutes of blatant Nazi imagery full of chants of "USA, USA" - you know, Sieg Heil for America. I am ill.
Watched it last night and was terrified. To give the devil his due, it's a slick, seemingly accurate ad, if you didn't know better. It's been chopped, processed and edited enough to appear factual. On it's surface, it appears respectable enough for the GOP/MAGA to hold it up as a defense. The narration is done well., acknowledging hand picked criticisms that have been aimed at trump and turning them into positives.
A lot of established money has been poured into this production and it's message/tone is going to probably be acceptable by undecided voters.
Take it very seriously.
Lucian, your description is spot on and has made me want to scream into the void since Mike Johnson took office as Speaker. I have been watching the FX/Hulu series “We Were the Lucky Ones,” the gripping experiences of members of a Polish Jewish family who were scattered to the winds as the Nazis invaded and began their Final Solution. Apart from being superbly written, well-acted and edited with amazing production sets and locations, it is a dire warning of the horrors of authoritarian dictators. Putin is the Hitler of the modern era with the genocide he is committing against the people of Ukraine. And it is plain as day that the threat to Ukraine is a threat to the rest of Europe and in turn to the U.S.
Ukrainian President Zelensky famously said when offered safe passage out of the country just after Putin invaded two years ago, “I don’t need a ride. I need ammunition.” He still does, and even more so. And the thing of it is, with the right amount and type of “ammunition” Ukraine would likely repel Russia and reclaim much of its seized territory. But the U.S., the “leader of the free world,” is being hog-tied by a four-time indicted insurrectionist traitor (who happens to be a former President), who is pulling Johnson’s puppet strings, just as his own puppet strings are in turn being pulled by Putin.
We know how allowing Hitler to get as far as he did worked out - it thrust us into a world war. Putin needs to be stopped NOW, and shown that a united West, backed by NATO, will not allow him any further conquests.
Biden should make use of every lever of executive power, including executive orders and his authority as the one person constitutionally bound to safeguard the security of the U.S., to get every bit of ammunition and arms to Ukraine that he can. For the U.S. to be embarrassed by Denmark, and several other NATO allies, going above and beyond to provide arms and ammunition to Ukraine, should be the top issue right now. Otherwise, a film in the future about our times may be titled “We Were NOT the Lucky Ones.”
As an American I am ashamed we have abandoned Ukraine when our support was and is needed the most. I am retired and not wealthy, but I make as large a donation as I can to United24 for defense. United 24 was started by Dr Timothy Synder and others to aid Ukraine in its fight for survival. I also believe the war between Israel and Hamas was started to weaken support for Ukraine and give Putin a chance to gain the upper hand. Please, if you are able , check out Dr Snyder’s Substack and donate if you can.
Agree. The Gaza war was started to distract the West from Ukraine. I follow Dr. Snyder's blog and am contributing to the fund for safe skies. The US should be doing a lot more.
There is no “Republican Party.” There’s only MAGA, the party of Putin
So sad but so true.
Sad and ANGRY is who we are. I'll leave the expletives out, for now. You all know what has to be done. No amount of pressure, emails or whatever will sway that Krystyun Traitor, the Spewker of the House.
Here is his telegram address, if you want to give it a shot.
https://t.me/jamesmichealjohnson
This is his personal email, if he hasn't gotten tired of me and others hounding him. He told me to use right wing Telegram.
<jamesmichealjohnson983@gmail.com>
Don't forget that he spells his name with the e and a reversed.
Carry on and keep the email bombs flying.
Keep on, Lucien. I and many others appreciate your contributions to our sanity.
I agree with virtually everything the first 14 comments brought up. I really believe that we are slow marching into WWIII. If Ukraine falls to the whims of the lunatic putin it will surely be the beginning of a World War. We have to only look as far back as the 1930's to see what hitler did in Austria and then Poland, does anyone that has the ability to read not see this coming. Alliances have been formed, try this on for size, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, then you can add their proxies and want to be proxies like Hungary and Serbia. If you don't think they will stand shoulder to shoulder you haven't been paying attention. The Russians can be defeated as long as the war is confined to Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are up to the task provided they have the tools to continue the fight. Their fight is our proxy fight, and we owe it to them to have their backs. I don't know if we have until Nov. to figure this out, a lot of good people are going to die in the meantime, people that you would be proud to call your friends. We need to do everything in our power to stop this march into oblivion, if we don't our children and grandchildren won't not just have a country to be proud of, they likely won't live though the holocaust about to consume the world. At this point whatever will stop that from happening I'm in favor of. I know this will upset some, but maybe the Insurrection Act or Martial Law to remove the impediments to our acting in our own interests, it doesn't have to be permanent but we could hang a bunch of the traitorous bastards that want to sell us out to the Russians and it might focus the minds of a lot of their supporters. We were mostly unified during WWII, I know we had a fifth element that were fascists but they were marginalized by the collective will of the nation, we could do that again, I believe that putin is betting his life that we won't. If America is to really wake up to the threat we are facing, that will have been a bad bet.
Amen! Can anyone imagine Nixon or Reagan agreeing with the Putin wing of the GOP? No way. We have to support Ukraine.
We all scream VOTE! The reality is that if we wait until November to ameliorate this, Ukraine will be no longer. Do I want to live in a country that would aid and abet the criminal Putin to accomplish this? No. Thank you Lucian, for reminding us that House Repugnicans aren’t merely feckless, they’re dangerous.
Between Rachel Maddow's PREQUEL (just finished it and highly recommend), Heather Cox Richardson, what's going on in Gaza, and my own several decades of experience, I know we've been headed in this direction for a very long time. I hope we're not in a death spiral.
I was nine years old during the Cuban missile crisis and was aware that something really bad was happening. I really had no understanding of the gravity of it. Today I think that we are living through a 21 century Cuban missile crisis . Only levels of magnitude worse. I am in a constant state of anxiety due to whats happening in the world. I'm counting the days until the election so I can breathe a little easier when Biden wins. It will be a long seven months. You can't plan for anything. Someone said all your plans go out the window as soon as you get punched in the face. Every day is like a punch in the face. Peace and love.
I was 11. Hadn't made that connection but now there it is. It was the only time in my life that I ever saw my father afraid.
I was 12 and I have a vivid memory of sitting with my mother and listening to the radio, and knowing that things were really bad. That was the point at which I began to ask questions.
I was 22, an Army Reserve private being trained in artillery at Fort Sill. There was no omnipresent TV to scare us with the threat of nuclear war. What got my group's absolute attention was that the trainees in the group in front of us had been immediately diverted to a far corner of the base where they were practicing climbing down rope ladders lashed to walls, to simulate climbing down the hull of a ship into a landing craft. The message was that we were getting ready to invade Cuba. I swear there was no talk about nuclear war, only brave chatter about how long it would take for the U.S. to finish off Castro (consensus, a month at most) -- and, myopia at its best, how long would Reservists and National Guard trainees have our six-months active duty extended.
Today I watched a 30 second clip on YouTube Attorney General Bobby Kennedy going after mobster at a meeting in the House. Very interesting. And then currently his dumb as a pile of rocks son. No offense to geodes.
Bobby is spinning in his grave. His son is a massive embarassment.
Makes me so very sad...
I was old enough to understand what was going on. I'll never forget staring at that b&w tv, nearly paralyzed by fear. An unexpected but not inappropriate analogy. This is a prolonged version, perpetrated half by our own.
Could I agree more? The moral and strategic justification for Ukraine's support has only grown stronger over the past two tragic years, as has the example set by Ukraine's people and leadership. They deserve everything the US has promised and more. If they do not receive it because of MAGA's venality and dishonesty, coupled with our public's impaired attention span, the disgrace will be ours for a generation and beyond.
How can we turn our backs on Ukraine? What sense of evilness allows this?We The People Do Not want this.What is our recourse here?
How did we get here? Jeffrey Goldberg has an excellent summary in The Atlantic in which he calls out Senate Republican cowardice as the culprit. He is particularly harsh about Portman of Ohio and McConnell of Kentucky who both know damn well what a menace Trump is and chose not to act in 2021 after the J6 Insurrection. Trump was back on his heels. He was at his weakest. But out of fear of the mob or fear of pain for the beloved GOP, they failed to muster the votes to convict Trump of the crimes they had seen unfold before their eyes. Had they acted then, hell had they acted in 2019, hell had they acted in 2016, we would not be where we are today with US foreign policy held hostage by Donald "Putin's Bitch" Trump.
Who are we? Hosts to massive malignant cancer cells masquerading as human politicians and media enablers. Compare all those blocking our sending ammunition to Ukraine to U.S. Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Howell Forgy, ship's chaplain on the cruiser USS New Orleans, undergoing repairs at Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941. When the only electrical power, from the dock, was knocked out, ship personnel formed a "bucket brigade" to bring antiaircraft shells topside and to gun mounts. Chaplain Forgy went along the men, urging them to "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition." The phrase made it into popular lexicon, and provided the title and some of the lyrics to a Frank Loesser hit song in 1942, including these words:
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition
And we'll all stay free
Praise the Lord and swing into position
Can't afford to be a politician
Praise the Lord, we're all between perdition
And the deep blue sea.
"Can't afford to be a politician." The thought bubble above Frank Loesser's hereafter head is "Are you sh*tting me?"