I read a fascinating — well, interesting — article the other day about the advances being made in medical science, specifically in the area of organ transplants, and the disturbing fact that the demand for transplantable organs is fast outweighing the availability of healthy ones. So we’re now looking — not at the traditional kind — but at transplants of organs from pigs. Those adorable little pink or grey or spotted creatures named Babe, or Petunia, or Porky, whose tissues and organs are remarkably compatible with ours.

The article went into a good bit of technical detail as to how the scientists first create a clone of an existing pig, then somehow alter it to reduce the likelihood of organ rejection or the transmission of innate infectious something-or-other . . . way beyond my ability to absorb. And I found myself wanting to save all the little porkers, and swearing to switch to turkey bacon.

And then I remembered something . . .

*. *. *

Back in the 1990s, somehow or other the rotator cuff in my right shoulder was torn. I have no idea how it happened; I’m not a tennis player . . . not an athlete of any kind. But there it was . . . it hurt, I could barely raise my right arm, and it needed to be repaired. So my favorite orthopedic surgeon — we’ll call him Dr. L. — scheduled me for the procedure, I arranged medical leave from my job, and I began practicing doing all sorts of things left-handed.

The surgery went well, and I was only in the hospital for a couple of days. About a week after returning home, I was set to have the stitches removed in my doctor’s office. Now, it’s important to know that Dr. L. — in addition to being an exceptionally skilled surgeon — has a devilish sense of humor. Having already done knee replacements for both my sister and me, he joked that it would just take a couple more operations and he would be able to afford to build a wing on his house, which he would name after us.

When he walked into the examining room that morning, he had with him a student from one of the local medical schools — a quiet, eager young man who was clearly honored to be learning at the side of this eminent physician. And as Dr. L. was snipping away at the new railroad track on my shoulder, he was also providing the student with a running commentary on the original procedure. And that was when I learned just how badly torn my rotator cuff had been — so bad that “extraneous tissue” had been needed for the repair. As it happened, the best available option was porcine tissue. Yes, that’s “porcine,” as in “from a pig.” In effect, I had a piece of pork now residing in my right shoulder. This was something very new at the time, and still on the innovative side, and I could see the student looking at me as though waiting for me to freak out. Which I didn’t. Instead, I was fascinated. My initial response, as I recall, was, “Really? That is so cool!”

Then came the funny part. Seeming to switch gears, Dr. L. launched into a story about the evening following my operation, which happened to be the first night of Passover. He had been hosting the traditional seder at his home, and was describing this new procedure using porcine tissue. Not my idea of dinner table conversation, but I didn’t grow up in the household of a physician.

Anyway, his adult son appeared disturbed about something, and asked (this, of course, is paraphrased): “Dad, I don’t understand. How could you ethically put the tissue of a pig into the body of a Jewish woman without her permission . . . and on the eve of Passover??!!!”

To which Dr. L. calmly replied: “Well, it was an unforeseen circumstance, and I could hardly wake her to ask if it was okay. And besides, you don’t know this woman. She would have just yelled at me for bothering her and told me to do my damned job.” And he was right.

As he talked, I saw the med student’s eyes getting wider and wider, just waiting for me to react. And I did . . . but not as he had expected. Instead, I burst out in laughter that was heard all the way down the hall to the reception room. I immediately named my right shoulder “Babe,” and went on a search for the perfect little pig brooch, which I have proudly worn on the right shoulder of my jackets ever since.

I should also point out that my sister had a favorite expression when she wanted to indicate that something was never going to happen: “When pigs fly!” Thus, the little wings.

*. *. *

As for the much more serious matter of heart, liver and kidney transplants, I’m torn between cheering for the potential benefits to mankind and mourning the loss of all of those sweet little oinkers. I’m afraid it’s a moral dilemma I’m not really qualified to solve . . . though at the moment, vegetarianism is starting to look really good to me.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/31/24

It’s the end of January, and my first doctor’s appointment of the year will be coming up soon. To me, that means two things: 1) I get to “earn” my medical, dental and prescription deductibles . . . yet again; and 2) this year’s round of new privacy forms — the ones we affectionately call HIPAA agreements — will be thrust at me for signature . . . yet again.

We Americans have become all too familiar with these forms since the U.S. Congress enacted the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA . . . get it?) of 1996. But do we really understand what it means? Has anybody actually read it? What protections does it offer us? Is it mandatory? And why do we have to renew it every single year, year after year after year? Our driver’s licenses, passports, even our credit cards are all issued for several years at a time. Our marriage vows are forever (hopefully). But HIPAA? Oh, no! Every single year, in every single doctor’s office . . .

I can’t answer the “why” question. But as to its purpose, it is supposed to “make it easier for people to keep health insurance, protect the confidentiality and security of healthcare information and help the healthcare industry control administrative costs.”

Really?

The confidentiality part, okay. I get that, and I appreciate it . . . although in today’s cyberworld, any sort of confidentiality has become something of an amorphous concept. But if good intentions count, then this is nice.

But how does it make it easier for people to keep their health insurance? I know people who have been struggling with that issue for years, because they’ve changed jobs or become unemployed, or their spouse has passed away, and they simply can’t afford individual coverage. Or because they’ve retired, found that Medicare is practically worthless, and Medicare supplemental coverage is outrageously expensive. (Trust me; I know.)

And as for the healthcare industry controlling administrative costs . . .

But is it mandatory? Short answer: No, not really. As to what happens to your life if you don’t sign it . . . well, that’s another good question. Sorry I don’t have the answer to that one either. But supposedly a healthcare provider cannot refuse to treat you just because you don’t sign it.

*. *. *

Well, all of these questions drove me to do a little research on HIPAA, and this is what I found. The Act is codified as 45 C.F.R. [Code of Federal Regulations], Parts 160, 162 and 164. (Part 163 is marked “Reserved” — presumably until someone thinks of something else they’d like to spend taxpayer money on to get it passed through Congress.) Part 160 alone has five subparts (A-E), with 552 sections thereunder. A .pdf copy of the unofficial, “simplified” version takes up 829 kb. of valuable space; in solid form, it’s about 105 pages of gobbledegook.

Now, my years of legal training have served me well from time to time, and I always try to do my due diligence. Therefore, for purposes of comparison — and having not much else to do today — I also looked up the following:

— The Magna Carta, written in the year 1217 A.D., originally contained just 63 clauses . . . four of which are still valid today;

— The U.S. Declaration of Independence was written on a single page, including the signatures;

— Abraham Lincoln managed to keep the Gettysburg Address to just three paragraphs;

— That bedrock of American democracy known as the United States Constitution occupies a mere four handwritten pages, also including signatures. It contains just seven Articles. Since its ratification in 1788, only 27 amendments have been added. Twenty-seven changes in a period of 236 years: just over one every decade. These cover another 20 or so pages, with nearly half of that space taken up by footnotes as to the dates of the individual states’ ratifications. So, we’re talking about 24 pages, more or less, original and amendments combined.

— And finally, there’s the noteworthy Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed on August 23, 1939, by emissaries of Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler (Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, respectively), guaranteeing a ten-year period of non-agression between the Soviet Union and Germany . . . Oh, wait a minute. Maybe not the best example, because it was terminated less than two years later, on June 22, 1941, when Hitler apparently had a memory lapse and invaded the Soviet Union. But my point is, it was only two pages of historic crappola.

I wonder how many kilobytes all of those documents together would require. Not that many; certainly not 829.

*. *. *

Now, personally, I don’t give a rat’s patootie who knows what doctors I visit, or what ailments have ravaged my body in recent years (or in the distant past, for that matter). I suppose if I were running for elected office, I might not want my opponents to know if I’d, say, had an abortion in my younger days (which I did not). Or I can understand not wanting my significant other to find out about that embarrassing social disease I may have picked up during my pot-smoking, hippie-commune-living years (that’s not me, either). But other than that, my attitude is: What’s the big deal? So the scars from all my orthopedic surgeries make me look like the sister of Frankenstein’s monster. So what? You want to see them? No problem.

But that’s just me. And I understand that many people — possibly the great majority — would not agree with me. So all in all, any privacy protection seems like a good thing. Although, considering the stuff that some of those same privacy-obsessed people put out there on social media for the entire world to snicker about and comment on . . . well, I’m sensing a little inconsistency here. But that doesn’t bother me either. It’s not my business.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/30/24

Your weekly reminder, lest we forget.

Their power resides in their words . . .

Please . . . bring them home!

Brendochka
1/29/24

How could I have missed it? The 100th anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov — better known to most of the world as Vladimir Lenin — came and went (on January 21st), and I slept right through it. Shame on me.

In my defense, however, I will point out that it didn’t make a huge splash in the news, considering the mountain of articles on the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, the war between Donald Trump and the entire U.S. judicial system, and Travis Kelce’s war with himself over the relative importance of his career versus his romance with Taylor Swift. But still, I must take responsibility for my own oversight.

Fortunately, I did come across one interesting article about the effect — or lack of it — of Lenin’s role in Soviet history on today’s Russia. Apparently, Lenin’s image today is “largely an afterthought in modern Russia . . .” [Jim Heintz, Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2024.]

In 1988, when a friend and I joined a tour group and headed off to the Soviet Union for a two-week adventure, one of our stops in Moscow was — in Mr. Heintz’s words — the “near-mandatory pilgrimage” to Lenin’s mausoleum in Red Square, where his embalmed corpse lies under glass, in full view of God and country. As the line of visitors snaked slowly but steadily (no stopping allowed!) around the sarcophagus, I whispered something to my friend, and she chuckled softly. You would have thought we’d pelted old Vlad with rotten tomatoes, judging from the guard’s immediate reaction . . . an angry, almost growling “Silence!” from the other side of the narrow enclosure, virtually scaring the breakfast out of everyone in line. We were obviously in sacred territory, in the presence of a demigod (albeit a dead one), and we had sinned. We were lucky not to have been arrested.

Not so today, apparently. The mausoleum is currently open only 15 hours a week, and draws fewer visitors than the Moscow Zoo. (I can understand that. Who wouldn’t rather spend time with some beautiful live animals than a creepy, waxy-looking dead guy?)

Statues of Lenin do still stand around the country, but Mr. Heintz informs us that many of those have been the targets of vandals and pranksters. My favorite is at St. Petersburg’s Finland Station, which commemorates Lenin’s return from exile; apparently, it was “hit by a bomb that left a huge hole in his posterior.” [Id.] How fitting, for one who has apparently become something of a pain in Russia’s ass.

According to historian Konstantin Morozov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lenin has “turned out to be completely superfluous and unnecessary in modern Russia.” [Id.] That’s really rather sad, in a metaphysical sense.

*. *. *

The Communist Party, led by one Gennady Zyuganov — something of an anomaly himself — also still exists in Russia, and is the largest opposition party in parliament. Yet it holds only 16% of the seats, dwarfed by Putin’s United Russia Party. So the question arises: If not communism, then what form of government does Vladimir Putin have in mind for the future? He clearly has brought repressive, totalitarian rule back to Russia after 30 years of relative freedom; he rules from the top of his own mountain, with an iron fist; and he has made it clear that he finds much to admire in the accomplishments of the late Josef Stalin. So is Russia facing a new era of Stalinism . . . or perhaps some hybrid of Putin’s own creation? Only time will tell.

*. *. *

Looking back on the past 100 years, and contemplating the next decade and beyond, perhaps it’s just as well that Lenin isn’t here to see what’s happened to the country for which he had such big dreams. I can almost see myself walking into his mausoleum again, only to find him lying face-down, weeping silently into his satin pillow.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/28/24

Back in December, I added to my short list of political HOSTAGES being held in Russian prisons — on false charges ranging from discrediting the government to being “foreign agents” to espionage — one Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist for RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty (RFE/RL). All I knew about Alsu at the time was that she held dual Russian-American citizenship, and had been arrested some weeks earlier on charges of acting as a “foreign agent” in Russia. Her alleged “crime”? Being co-editor — not author, but co-editor — of a book the Russian authorities claim contains “fake” information about the Russian military.

On Thursday of this week, January 25th, she marked her 100th day in a Russian jail in Kazan . . . still without having been designated by the U.S. government as “wrongfully detained.”

Why is this important? Simply because it would raise the profile of the prisoner’s case to “politically motivated” status, as in the existing cases of Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan. But when asked at a briefing on January 24th whether this designation was to be assigned to Alsu’s case, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel replied, “I have no updates to offer on any specific designation, but we have no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas.” [RFL/RL News, Jan. 25, 2024.]

So, effectively . . . a response without an answer.

RFE/RL’s acting president Stephen Capus has stated: “We hope the U.S. State Department will quickly designate Alsu as ‘wrongfully detained.’ Even one day unjustly behind bars is a tragedy, but a U.S. citizen wrongfully held in a Russian prison for 100 days is outrageous.” [Id.]

Mr. Patel has assured Alsu’s family and the public that the State Department “remain[s] incredibly concerned about the extension of her pretrial detention. I can also note that our request to visit her was denied on December 20. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow continues to seek appropriate consular access.” [Id.]

But still no word on the upgrading of her status.

*. *. *

According to a timeline provided by the Coalition For Women In Journalism, Alsu — who lives with her husband and two children in Prague — traveled to Kazan for a family emergency on May 20, 2023. Returning home on June 2nd, she was briefly detained at the Kazan airport, where both her U.S. and Russian passports were seized. After a four-month delay, during which she was of course unable to leave Russia, she was fined 10,000 rubles ($103) for failure to register her U.S. passport. On October 18th, she was detained by the police in Kazan for failure to register as a “foreign agent.” Following another couple of months of bureaucratic b.s., on December 12th the new charges of allegedly disseminating “fake news” were filed. [Committee to Protect Journalists, Jan. 27, 2024.]

The book in question, titled “Saying No To War: 40 Stories Of Russians Who Oppose the Russian Invasion Of Ukraine,” was published in November 2022 by RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service. This book is being used by the Russian authorities as justification for the earlier decision to extend Alsu’s pretrial detention until February 4, 2024. [Id.]

*. *. *

So, there she sits — another of Russia’s political HOSTAGES, awaiting an uncertain future for having done . . . what? Nothing more than her job as a journalist, in a country whose constitution guarantees freedom of the press, but whose leader chooses to ignore, amend, or simply delete those provisions that prove inconvenient, or contrary to his goals. A totalitarian government, in its truest sense, ruled by a man who at every turn emulates, and repeatedly praises, a predecessor whose very name conjures visions of the most monstrous crimes ever committed against humanity: Josef Stalin.

*. *. *

Alsu Kurmasheva: One more sacrificial lamb to Vladimir Putin’s Machiavellian political schemes.

We must bring her home.

Brendochka
1/27/24

Okay, so it’s spelled differently. But a pickle by any other name (or spelling) is still a pickle. And Igor Girkin has finally found himself in one. Heaven knows, he’s worked at it long enough.

In 2022, he was tried, in absentia, at The Hague for his alleged role in the 2014 downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine. Along with two other defendants, he was found guilty of the murder of the 298 passengers and crew aboard the Boeing jet, and sentenced to life in prison. He has ignored the judgment and has remained at liberty. Appearing as cool as the proverbial cucumber, he has said, quite simply, “I do not recognise the authority of the Dutch court on this matter. I am a military man and I am not going to accept that a civilian court in a foreign country has the authority to convict a person who took part in someone else’s civil war, only because their civilians were killed.” [Steve Rosenberg, BBC News, Jan. 26, 2024.]

Oh, well, then . . . that explains everything: Mr. Girkin — though it doesn’t show up on his curriculum vitae — is apparently a student of the Donald Trump Method of Evasion. Deny it long enough, and it never happened.

*. *. *

In reality, Girkin is a former Russian FSB intelligence colonel who has taken the nom de guerre of Strelkov (“Shooter”). He has fully supported Russia’s invasions, in 2014 and 2022, of Ukraine. But he made the same mistake that ultimately took the life of Yevgeny Prigozhin: he became openly critical of the military’s conduct of the war, and of President Vladimir Putin himself. He has declared his desire to run in opposition to Putin in the upcoming election (March 15-17, 2024), even though he has no chance of even being allowed to do so; he has said he merely “wanted to disrupt the ‘sham’ poll with the winner already known.” [Vicky Wong, BBC News, Nov. 19, 2023.]

Since, in Russia, it is apparently acceptable to shoot down commercial aircraft filled with innocent civilians (as long as it’s done on behalf of Mother Russia), but not to criticize the government, the military, or — Heaven forbid! — Tsar Putin himself . . .

Well, here is where things went sour for Mr. Girkin. Because he became upset at the way the Russian authorities were waging the war: he felt they were not trying hard enough. And so he founded a hard-line nationalist movement that he called The Club of Angry Patriots. And he began directing that anger at Putin himself, describing the President as a “non-entity,” and “a cowardly waste of space.” [BBC News, Nov. 19, 2023.]

Oh, shit!

I doubt many people were surprised when he was arrested, charged with “extremism,” found guilty, and sentenced to four years in a penal colony. Actually, that’s a very light sentence compared to others that have been handed down for similar “crimes” to people such as Vladimir Kara-Murza (25 years), and Alexei Navalny (a total of 30 years on various charges). But this time, I doubt that Mr. Girkin will have the option of refusing to recognize the authority of the court.

In fact, he will have four long years to marinate in his own anger.

And that, I promise you, is my last pun . . . for today, at least.

TTFN,
Brendochka
1/26/24

If you’re a news junky like I am, life can seem pretty depressing a lot of the time. And just when you’re about ready to pull the covers over your head and stay there until the next millennium, you miraculously stumble across an article that not only makes you laugh out loud, but actually cheers you up. Because even while our fellow homo sapiens continue to let us down, we can always find the good — and the fun — in our non-human companions . . . in this case, some incredibly beautiful African gray parrots from the United Kingdom.

According to the January 23rd article by Issy Ronald of CNN-London, it all started back in 2020, when five African grays were donated to the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in eastern England. It was soon found to be necessary to isolate the questionable quintet from the general population in order to prevent the spread of — not a disease — but a really bad habit they had picked up somewhere, and to try to rehabilitate the foul-mouthed felons. You see, those five were guilty of extreme profanity: they swore like a bunch of fugitives from a prison chain gang.

But somehow, the phenomenon seems already to have cropped up elsewhere, because this week three newly donated birds — named Eric, Captain, and Sheila — arrived at Lincolnshire, spouting language that would make a longshoreman blush. According to the park’s chief executive, Steve Nichols:

“When we came to move them, the language that came out of their carrying boxes was phenomenal, really bad. Not normal swear words, these were proper expletives.” [CNN, Jan. 23, 2024.]

So the crew at the zoo are trying a new tactic: putting the “eight really, really offensive, swearing parrots with 92 non-swearing ones” in the hope that the eight little hoodlums will learn “all the nice noises like microwaves and vehicles reversing” that most of the others favor. But if the opposite happens, and the well-behaved birds pick up the naughty habits from the Gang of Eight, well then . . . “it’s going to turn into some adult aviary.”

Mr. Nichols further explained that, since parrots echo the precise sounds they hear, six of the eight have men’s voices, two have women’s voices, and when they’re all swearing at once, it’s rather . . . well . . . a unique experience, and not in a good way.

The park has placed large warning signs for the visitors, but thus far they have not received any complaints. In fact, the visitors seem to delight in swearing at the parrots, which could screw up the whole flocking program.

*. *. *

So we’ll just have to wait to see how this all plays out. In the meantime, if you find yourself in eastern England and decide to visit the aviary at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park, please give my best to Eric, Captain, Sheila, and all the other foul-mouthed fowl. And don’t be surprised, as you walk by, to hear one of them call out, “Eff off, ye old battleaxe!”

I wonder . . . are their accents more London or Liverpool?

Brendochka
1/25/24

Here’s one for the books. Last week, as reported by Russian state media TASS, Vladimir Putin signed a new decree allocating funds “for the research and registration of Russian property overseas, including that in former territories of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union.” [Miranda Nazzaro, The Hill, Jan. 23, 2024.] Putin wasn’t talking about individual bank accounts; he was looking at prime real estate — and lots of it.

Although Alaska — which, as you may know, was purchased from Imperial Russia by the United States in 1867 for the bargain price of $7.2 Million, or around two cents ($0.02) an acre — wasn’t specifically mentioned in the decree, there are those whose attention has understandably been drawn to the situation. Some military bloggers have argued that Putin was using the decree to declare the sale illegal.

All right, are you finished laughing? Good. To continue . . .

On Monday, the State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson, Vedant Patel, responded at a press briefing as follows: “Well, I think I can speak for all of us in the U.S. government to say that certainly he’s not getting it back.” [The Hill, Jan. 23, 2024.] There was laughter from his audience, too.

I agree . . . the concept is as funny as anything I’ve heard coming from the direction of the Kremlin in a long time. But, knowing the skullduggery of which Vladimir Putin is capable, we can’t really dismiss anything he or his henchmen say without careful consideration.

The Institute for the Study of War noted last week that the “exact parameters of what constitutes current or historical Russia property are unclear.” Even assuming they know they can’t simply say they want it and then actually hope to get it back, this could be used as “soft power mechanisms in post-Soviet and neighboring states ultimately aimed at internal destabilization.” One military blogger, in a Telegram post, “suggested Russia could start enacting the law in Alaska and parts of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.” [The Hill, Jan. 23, 2024.]

As with so many of Vladimir Putin’s grand pronouncements, his words and actions can, and usually do, hold one or more hidden meanings. Perhaps he thinks he has a chance of regaining some of the Baltic states, the Caucasus or the Central Asian “Stans,” and has tossed Alaska into the mix simply to stir things up and create a bit of chaos in the U.S. — much as he has done in our elections — or to divert attention from his actions elsewhere . . . a typical Russian red herring (pun intended).

In any event, I wouldn’t start relocating the good people of Alaska any time soon. Remember . . . we didn’t march in and snatch it from Russia’s hands; we paid cold, hard cash for those 586,412 acres. And if they’re now thinking the price was too low . . . well, they agreed to it. In fact, they thought it was useless property and that they had gotten the best of us, which is why it was referred to as “Seward’s Folly.” Nobody knew then that it would have all that lovely oil. Sometimes, Mr. Putin, life just sucks.

*. *. *

But one thing does concern me, and that is the question of who will be President of the United States for the four years from 2025-29. From Putin’s point of view, he’s hoping it will be an old friend of his, someone he can easily manipulate and convince that he has that friend’s best interests at heart. Someone who already admires Putin to the extent of emulating his high-handed, dictatorial style of governing. And Putin will do anything to see that that happens.

This election is ours, not Vladimir Putin’s. And it’s not about making America great again. America already is great, and always has been. This time, it’s about keeping America great, and keeping her united . . . Alaska included!

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/24/24

It’s happened more than once . . . you know, all those times when Donald Trump has opened his mouth, inserted his far-right foot, and proven himself to be, shall we say, somewhat less knowledgeable than he would have the world believe. The fact that it has happened again is not news. But the two people who have recently given his foot a little extra lift toward his rosebud lips are rather surprising.

The first is none other than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the popular one-time entertainer suddenly thrust, two years ago, into the roles of commander-in-chief, diplomat, and all-around hero. Being normally, and very wisely, reserved in his descriptions of other world figures — with the obvious and understandable exception of Vladimir Putin and his many minions — President Zelensky has until now remained nearly silent concerning Trump’s ludicrous boast that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours if he were to be elected U.S. President for a second term.

But President Zelensky recently broke that silence, expressing serious concern over Trump’s ridiculous boast. In fact, in an interview on Britain’s Channel Four News on January 19th, Zelensky said that he considered Trump’s braggadocio as “very dangerous,” as the former U.S. president “has not said what his post-war scenario would look like.” [Andrew Carey and Victoria Butenko, CNN, Jan. 20, 2024.]

In other words, what would be the terms of any such truce as Trump envisions it? Trump never really answers that question. When asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in May of 2023 how he would accomplish this goal, he responded, “They [presumably meaning Russia and Ukraine] both have weaknesses and they both have strengths and within 24 hours that war will be settled, that war will be over.”

Ms. Collins — along with President Zelensky and the rest of the world — is still waiting for a coherent response to her question.

While acknowledging that the whole thing may just be another instance of Trump’s outrageously exaggerated style of campaigning, Zelensky expressed fear that Trump, if elected, “might unilaterally make decisions that do not work for Ukraine or its people, and seek to drive them through regardless . . . [which] makes me really quite stressed.” [Carey and Butenko, CNN, Jan. 20, 2024.] Zelensky has consistently and insistently maintained that any peace deal with Russia would have to include removal of all Russian forces from Ukrainian lands they have occupied since 2014, including Crimea . . . which Russia consistently and insistently says is, for them, a non-starter.

Stalemate.

So, Mr. Trump, lotsa luck keeping that promise in the event you are . . . Oh, no! No!! I can’t say it! I can’t even think about it!

*. *. *

The second, and apparently unintentional, little nudge came from a wholly unanticipated comment made by the always acerbic Kremlin press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, who is quoted as having said, when asked about Trump’s 24-hour-truce plan: “No, we have no understanding of how this can be done. We have not had any contacts on this.” In other words, the Putin administration has no idea what Trump has in mind.

But that’s not surprising, because neither has Trump.

Since Putin desperately wants his clueless friend back in the White House, it is unlikely that Peskov meant to undermine Trump. He simply goofed, and in so doing, gave America the biggest, nicest belated Christmas gift we could have wished for . . . and we appreciate it. Donald Trump doesn’t need anyone to help him look like Mad King George; but thanks anyway.

Just sayin’ . . .

Made you smile, didn’t I?

Brendochka
1/23/24

Just as I was starting to feel as though this nasty sinus infection of the past five days was beginning to ease and I was feeling a bit better, I ran across this item in yesterday’s news concerning our little furry rodent friends and their unexpected effect on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And now I feel a different kind of sick:

“The frontlines of Russia’s war in Ukraine have become infested with rats and mice, reportedly spreading disease that causes soldiers to vomit and bleed from their eyes, crippling combat capability and recreating the gruesome conditions that plagued troops in the trench warfare of World War I. The infestations are due partly to the change in seasons and mice’s mating cycle, but are also a measure of how the war has become static . . .” [CNN’s 5 Things, Jan. 21, 2024.]

They had me at the vomiting and bleeding from the eyes. As though the missiles, bombs and drones weren’t enough, the military on both sides — defenders and aggressors — have this new plague to deal with. And how long will it be before the new little invaders find their way to the general population in what is left of the homes, hospitals and churches of Ukraine’s cities and towns? Do the people of Ukraine deserve this? For that matter, do the families of the conscripted Russian soldiers, praying back at home for their husbands, sons, brothers to be returned to them, need this additional worry?

Some will say it’s just another fallout of war. Maybe so. But why do we keep doing these things to ourselves and each other? Once again, my thoughts return to one of my favorite folk songs of the ‘60s:

“Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, every one.
When will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?”
[“Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” Pete Seeger, 1955]

Apparently, the answer is . . . never.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
1/22/24