Friday Homestead Dispatch

Dentiloquent Didactic Despot

“Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.” ― Christopher Hitchens

1.
I hardly know where to begin today. I started writing about Putin on Wednesday but this morning everything seems dated already.

Tanks rolling into Ukraine look surreal and so old school. An actual ground war. Ukraine declared its independence in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union but Putin dismisses Ukrainian national identity as a fiction. Do you know any citizens that are demanding war? Even in Russia, according to Aljazeera, municipal deputies, journalists and scientists have penned open letters opposing invasion. “We are convinced that the citizens of Russia did not give him such a mandate,” the regional officials’ letter says, before warning that the incursion will have “catastrophic consequences”.

“This is an unparalleled atrocity for which there is and cannot be justification,” the letter adds. It also calls on Russians not to “be silent” over the attack, saying “only massive popular condemnation can stop the war”.

Language Magazine has reported that Russian newspaper editor, Dmitry Muratov who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, is publishing Friday’s edition in Ukrainian as a show of solidarity against Putin’s invasion. The editor-in-chief of Moscow-based newspaper Novaya Gazeta spoke defiantly of his “shame” for Russia’s ground invasion of Ukraine, saying Friday’s edition would be published in Ukrainian and Russian. The Associated Press has reported that Shocked Russians turned out by the thousands Thursday to decry their country’s invasion of Ukraine as emotional calls for protests grew on social media. Some 1,745 people in 54 Russian cities were detained, at least 957 of them in Moscow.

According to the Daily Mail (UK), All Ukrainian border guards protecting a tiny island in the Black Sea from Russian invaders, reportedly 13 in number, were killed yesterday after refusing to surrender to warmonger Vladimir Putin's forces and defiantly telling a Kremlin warship: 'Go fuck yourselves!'.

In the meantime in our country is it no surprise that Republican lawmakers are blaming President Biden for the assault on Ukraine? Republicans, while hammering Putin’s march toward war, also wasted no time placing the blame for the escalating hostilities squarely on the shoulders of President Biden, saying his administration cleared the way for Russia’s aggression with a series of foreign policy blunders, including the disastrous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last August.

Indeed, as Biden has been leaning more toward diplomatic avenues rather than a show of aggression, an article in Politico suggests that Putin, after all, has his own rationales for moving against his neighbor. The Russian leader has long believed that Ukraine is really a part of Russia — or that it at least should fall under Moscow’s sphere of influence — and he cites dubious historical references to make that case. Putin also has long proclaimed that Russian security is threatened by the expansion of the NATO military alliance. Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, as well as its citizens’ preference for democracy, only added to Putin’s fears that the country could be a long-term threat to his own.

The Russia/Putin/Ukraine thing is damn complicated. Who are you going to believe? What is propaganda, what is closer to a bit of truth? If you ask Tucker Carlson of Fox News, he’ll say Why do Democrats want you to hate Putin? Has Putin shipped every middle class job in your town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked your business? Is he teaching your kids to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Does he eat dogs? (Yes, he does eat dogs)

And the orange Frump loves Vladimir. He aspires to be Vlad. Leave your shirt on, Donnie. “Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. ‘I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. ... We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.” Now that’s a word salad that could only tumble from one person’s gob.

The right-wing media trolls who are questioning why we should even care about Ukraine might do well to recall the well-documented time period known as Holodomor, a Russian engineered famine that killed somewhere around four million people in Ukraine in the early 1930s. Prof. Andrea Graziosi of the University of Naples writes. "In the case of the Holodomor, this was the first genocide that was methodically planned out and perpetrated by depriving the very people who were producers of food of their nourishment (for survival). What is especially horrific is that the withholding of food was used as a weapon of genocide and that it was done in a region of the world known as the ‘breadbasket of Europe’.”

And, as Charles Pierce states, “the current Russian insistence that Ukraine is traditionally part of Russia is a contemptuous insult to the four million people that the Soviet Russian government killed. Obviously, being traditionally part of Russia didn’t work out so very well. Oddly, we’ve seen this same argument coming from some on the left, too. It is more than clear that Ukraine doesn’t want to be part of Russia. How national self-determination stopped being a liberal value is certainly worthy of further study when and if we step back from the brink of all-out war in West Asia.”

Dr. Madeleine Albright, who served as the U.S. secretary of state from 1997 to 2001, wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times yesterday saying Mr. Putin has for years sought to burnish his country’s international reputation, expand Russia’s military and economic might, weaken NATO and divide Europe (while driving a wedge between it and the United States). Ukraine features in all of that. Instead of paving Russia’s path to greatness, invading Ukraine would ensure Mr. Putin’s infamy by leaving his country diplomatically isolated, economically crippled and strategically vulnerable in the face of a stronger, more united Western alliance.

I’ll leave this subject with the final word from local woodworker, musician, political analyst, and all-around great guy Dan Hostetler: Not even slightly surprised to see right wingers tripping over one another to praise Putin and justify Russian aggression in Ukraine. Putin is like the Platonic ideal of what Trump and his lickspittles aspire to; fascist autocrat, paranoid xenophobe, racist, boorish dickhead, gay- hater, looter, unapologetic murderer. If the populace managed to run Putin’s ass out of Russia, he’d be a Republican superstar in America.

2.
Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is a piece of work. In 2010 she left the following phone message for Anita Hill: "Good morning, Anita Hill. Its Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray on this, and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day."

Have a good day. Crikey…

This wack-a-doodle woman got an early start in whack-a-doodle-ism as her (Ginni’s) mother was involved in the whack-a-doodle-ism that was Phyllis Schlafly in the 1970s…you know, the woman who was a conservative activist against the Equal Rights Amendment. Virginia picked up the reins and has gone on to be politically active in such groups as the Heritage Foundation, one the most influential conservative public policy organizations in the United States; founder of Liberty Central, a Tea Party-affiliated nonprofit lobbying group that kicked off in 2010 and ceased operation in 2012; a current member of Groundswell, a right-wing strategy group; and is also actively involved with the CNP (Council for National Policy) which the Southern Poverty Law Center reported is a coalition of influential right-wing leaders, political operatives, conservative media figures, members of the religious right, free-market fundamentalists and donors. The coalition operates on multiple fronts and focuses on political strategy, media and grassroots organizing. The goal of the coalition is to advocate for right-wing and anti-rights policies that favor conservatives and the religious right.

Of course, she has no influence on her husband, the sitting Justice. Snicker. The Times reported that Because Supreme Court justices do not want to be perceived as partisan, they tend to avoid political events and entanglements, and their spouses often keep low profiles. But the Thomases have defied such norms. Since the founding of the nation, no spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice has been as overt a political activist as Ginni Thomas. In addition to her perch at the Council for National Policy, she founded a group called Groundswell with the support of Stephen K. Bannon, the hard-line nationalist and former Trump adviser. It holds a weekly meeting of influential conservatives, many of whom work directly on issues that have come before the court.

Who’s really in charge here…

If you have a New Yorker subscription, there’s a thorough piece by Jane Mayer titled Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court? in the January 21st issue worth a read.

3.
There’s a crazy man in Washington, representing Florida, who sits in a very big chair, and who just released an eleven point plan to fuck with other people’s lives. Top priorities include: completing the border wall and naming it after former President Donald Trump, ensure kids stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, declaring “there are two genders,” ending any reference to ethnicity on government forms and stating that all social media platforms that censor speech and cancel people will be treated like publishers and subject to legal action.

Yes, folks, brought to you by the guy who, as the CEO of a health insurance company that was caught illegally gouging the public on billing, had to plead the Fifth Amendment a staggering 75 times to help himself avoid prosecution, as the company, HCA, was smacked with the largest fine in a fraud settlement case in United States history. Poor guy…he only left with $300 million in stock, a $5.1 million severance and a $950,000-per-year consulting contract for five years. And, as all ultra-wealthy Republicans like to say, if Americans got any more Covid-19 stimulus money it might make them lazy.

Yes, Senator Rick Scott, who in his grifting career has almost out-Trumped Trump, decided as governor of Florida to outsource prison medical care to Corizon Health for $1.2 billion had additional fees which resulted in over 660 malpractice lawsuits from shoddy care it provided Florida inmates that left as many as 30 people dying a month. Smooth move, Bat Boy.

If it weren’t laughable, Scott turns the language upside down regarding voting rights in his plan. He states, Today’s Democrat Party is trying to rig elections and pack the courts because they have given up on Democracy. They don’t believe they can win based on their ideas, so they want to game the system and legalize voter fraud to stay in power. In true Orwellian fashion, Democrats refer to their election rigging plans as “voting rights”. We won’t allow the radical left to destroy our democracy by institutionalizing dishonesty and fraud.

And in his home state of Florida, without any evidence of voter fraud, the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 90 last year that includes these items to actually make it MORE difficult to vote:

– Floridians now have to give a driver’s license number, state ID number or the last four digits of their Social Security number to request a vote-by-mail ballot.

– Requests for mail ballots don’t last as long. Instead of requesting a ballot through the next two general elections — the next four years — requests are limited to the next general election — or two years. However, current requests are grandfathered in.

– Drop boxes are limited to early voting hours, unless it’s a drop box at the supervisor’s office, and the boxes must be physically manned while in use. Relying on remote video surveillance isn’t allowed.

– Election officials are not allowed to mail ballots to a voter unless the are requested.

Don’t even get me started on Texas…

In 2018, Scott claimed without evid­ence that there was “rampant fraud” in the U.S. Senate elec­tion he ended up winning. This was a stark example of candid­ates in close races making wild fraud alleg­a­tions to discredit the vote-count­ing process.

Scot­t’s claims of fraud were quickly and widely rejec­ted, includ­ing by members of his own admin­is­tra­tion. For example, elec­tion monit­ors from Scot­t’s admin­is­tra­tion repor­ted that they saw no evid­ence of fraud in Broward County, a focal point of Scot­t’s accus­a­tions. A state judge, in an emer­gency lawsuit brought by the Scott campaign, also said that he had seen no evid­ence of fraud. Ulti­mately, in April 2020, the Flor­ida Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment closed lengthy invest­ig­a­tions into these issues, find­ing no evid­ence to support Scot­t’s alleg­a­tions of wide­spread fraud.

Lee Papa wraps it up nicely saying this plan imagines a country in flames, repressing true Americans, one where the greatest issue facing us is white people not allowed to say the n-word without consequences. It's hyper-Christian, nationalistic, fascistic, and deranged, ignoring all the real problems in this nation, which, to be fair, are mostly caused by Republicans. 

That’s all I got for today…it’s been a long week of music, art, and out-of-town guests. Thanks for reading…

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