We’ll start the day with a quick, unexpected history lesson, courtesy of Jeff Danziger (WPWG). I went to look up Vyacheslav Molotov to confirm that he was Stalin’s Minister of Defense during the Hungarian uprising, and discovered that he wasn’t: He was Foreign Minister. More important, I discovered that the Molotov cocktail, though used to […]
Patrick Blower’s analysis of Russian forces gets a particular laugh because it fits so well with a Bulwark podcast Charlie Sykes did with Gen. Mark Hertling, former commanding general of United States Army Europe and the Seventh Army, in which Hertling said that, while the Russian forces may look good polished up for the May […]
Christian Adams makes use of Putin’s long table to demonstrate the current state of affairs, as, in the wake of a United Nations condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia finds itself isolated from the rest of the world. Well, somewhat isolated. Here’s the vote on that resolution, and it’s not surprising that Belarus, […]
Pat Bagley gets the lead-off position today for having illustrated the theory that no two nations with McDonald’s have ever gone to war. The literalists have just gone scrambling off to find out how many McDonald’s are in Ukraine and Russia, but we’re not going to wait for them to get back. The point isn’t […]
Michael de Adder declares sanctions a failure within hours of the announcement of the first full rounds, mocking Biden’s response as silly and futile. There’s a real temptation to ask “What do you think we should do, then?” Tucker Carlson would, of course, offer a way of dealing with Putin that involves soft lighting and […]
Clay Bennett (CTFP) starts off today’s tour of bathos and foolishness with this commentary on the news that Trump’s accounting firm announced they don’t intend to defend his financial statements because they don’t trust the information he gave them. It’s a large “Uh-Oh” indeed and, while his co-conspirators and rightwing defenders will continue to attack […]
Sherman’s Lagoon (KFS) plays with a fairly well-known saying, that fish don’t understand the concept of being “wet” because they live in water. It’s applicable to all sorts of things people don’t seem to get for having failed to ever step outside their own experience. Some people are lucky enough to live lives that don’t […]
John Cole shows both reactions to Biden’s press conference. He gets the time wrong: It was just under two hours, hardly four, but still a prodigious effort. The dual response, I think, is between those who did the assigned homework — who watched the conference and judged it for themselves — and those who fake […]
My first impression of this Steve Breen (Creators) piece was that he obviously hadn’t read up on the particular level of sanctions which Biden apparently proposed, should Putin (further) invade Ukraine. As noted here (and in the general news coverage), it’s not just the type of sanctions against individual oligarchs that Obama invoked in Putin’s […]
Stuart Carlson (AMS) offers a pun which I suspect is more about unavailable and late-arriving Christmas presents than about World Peace, but Jacob Marley’s regret can cover both topics, particularly if we get away from the specific notion of importing goods and focus, instead, on Marley weighed down by his voluntarily assumed burdens. And note […]