Donald Trump may not be worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize; but he is the hands-down winner of my first-ever “Most Quotable Livig Person” award.
In all honesty, my standards are very low. I wasn’t looking for inspiration, or words of wisdom. Humor would have been good, but not necessary. I just focused on those comments that make you sit up and say . . .
“WTF??!!!”
And who does that better, or more often, than the old Trumpster? So here it is — the first winning quote, fresh from yesterday’s news, in which the big man gives us his views on Ukraine and its courageous President, Volodymyr Zelensky:
“I suggest they [Ukraine] get a new leader who can make a deal because he could have made many deals and for some reason he [Zelensky] never does. He wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel.”
– Source: Mathew Daly, Susie Blann and Elise Morton, AP, October 10, 2026.
*. *. *
i’m not sure whether this happened before or after his phone call with Vladimir Putin in which Putin — the guy who invaded Ukraine four and a half years ago and has been decimating it ever since — received a gift from Trump worth billions of dollars in oil exports.
But the precise timeline doesn’t matter. It’s the effect that counts.
If your intentions are nefarious, and you don’t have a legitimate excuse for whatever it is you’re planning to do, just invent one. And if you can deflect the guilt onto the very person or country you are targeting . . . well, so much the better.
Case in point: Vladimir Putin’s political hostages.
Yes, the same ones I write about every Sunday, including today. There are hundreds, possibly even thousands, of them scattered throughout Russia and its allied countries (such as Belarus). But the ones that make the headlines — the Evan Gershkoviches, Paul Whelans, Brittney Griners, Vladimir Kara-Murzas — are of the greatest value to Putin.
They are exchangeable.
Heading Home – August 2024
As an example, Brittney Griner — a well-known American basketball star — was swapped for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. And Gershkovich, Whelan and Kara-Murza were among the 16 hostages exchanged for eight Russians being held in various countries in 2024, including convicted professional assassin Vadim Krasikov.
Fortunately, there haven’t been any such high-profile cases of late (that I know of). But, if Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev is to be believed, we may be seeing a resurgence in the near future. In fact, the groundwork is already being laid in Moscow.
Dmitry Medvedev
On Friday, well-known pro-Kremlin military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk, his wife, and three others were arrested in Montenegro on suspicion of spreading Russian influence in order to destabilize the government as part of Putin’s ongoing hybrid war in Europe.
In response, Medvedev has urged Russians to avoid traveling to Europe, warning them that they would be vulnerable to arrest as a result of what he called the growing anti-Russian sentiment.
Of course, he neglected to mention the reason for any such wave of anti-Russian feeling — the war against Ukraine — but said that Europe had declared “open season” on Russians.
Writing on Telegram, as well as Russia’s new MAX social media platform, he said:
“In effect, a hunt has been declared on all (I emphasize, all) Russians”; and added that it would be “foolish for our people to go traipsing around European countries, even with good intentions and important objectives. Any Russian could potentially become a target. Neither visas, nor invitations, nor any other guarantees offer protection. Anyone can be arrested, especially if they speak the truth about Western countries, the EU, and the Bandera-style neo-Nazi regime. They welcome onlyy ‘relocating scum’ [Russians who have moved abroad] — and even that is only temporary.” [Kyiv Post, October 9, 2026.]
Obviously, what Medvedev broadcast to his people is a perfect description of a scenario that plays out in Russia with alarming frequency; he simply switched roles. But there is method in his madness, because he went on to state that Russia should:
“. . . expand its pool of detainees available for exchange. It is now quite likely that we will need to replenish the exchange pool with European and American morons to get our own people out. There is no other way: when living with wolves, one must howl like a wolf.” [Id.]
A “pool of detainees available for exchange” — that is what all of the American and other prisoners currently rotting in the Russian penal system are to Putin. Currency. Collateral. Personal property with barter potential. And Medvedev just admitted that that is the sole reason for their incarceration in the first place!
The U.S. State Department currently has a Level 4, “Do Not Travel” advisory in place for Russia. But there are those, such as diplomats, journalists, and others with legitimate reasons to be there. And they are in serious jeopardy.
Medvedev’s presentation may lack a certain je ne sais quoi — calling people “scum,” “morons,” and “a pool of detainees” is not exactly the height of diplomacy — but his warning should be taken seriously. We are on the verge of a second Cold War . . . if it hasn’t already begun.
Dmitry Morozov is a young Russian activist from the west-central city of Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurt Republic. Following the recent parliamentary elections, he requested official permission to organize a peaceful protest against what he and others considered irregularities in the election process. When the petition was refused by the mayor’s office, Morozov, together with other local activists, filed a lawsuit with the court, which responded by ordering the city administration to review the request again.
Poster Demanding Morozov’s Release
But on the evening of October 2nd, while on his way to a local shop, he was arrested and detained by the FSB (Federal Security Service). The following morning, FSB officers took him back to his home, conducted a search, and confiscated his computer. According to his father, there were scratches on Morozov’s face and his hands were swollen.
Following the search, he was returned to detention, where he was kept for more than 24 hours before finally being permitted to see an attorney on October 4th. On October 5th, his parents were brought to the police station for questioning, and were subsequently released. [Source: OVD.info.]
Morozov has now been charged with possession of a “large quantity of drugs” and ordered held in pretrial detention for two months. The prosecutor also said that “there is information about Dmitry Morozov’s involvement in a Ukrainian armed group.” [Meduza, October 5, 2026.]
This is the typical progression of cases in which political activists have been initially detained for some minor violation, and later charged with more serious crimes carrying lengthy prison sentences. Trials can be delayed for many months, are nearly always held behind closed doors, and are virtually guaranteed to result in a guilty verdict.
Other activists have protested Morozov’s arrest and are advocating for his release. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of them ended up sharing Dmitry Morozov’s fate.
While we await further word of the outcome of his case, he has, of course, been added to our list of Putin’s political hostages.
*. *. *
And, this being Sunday, here again is the list of those hostages known to me. Sadly, it hasn’t gotten any shorter since last week.
Prisoners of War:
The 20,000+ Kidnapped Ukrainian Children The People of Ukraine The 6,000 Starving Citizens of Oleshky
Immigrant Detainees in Russia:
Migrants from the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan
Endangered Exiles:
Pavel “Pasha” Talankin Mikita Losik Yulia Navalnaya Oleg Orlov Countless Journalists and Other Dissidents
Political Prisoners:
In Afghanistan:
Mahmoud Habibi (Afghan-American) Paul Overby (American, missing since 2018)
Andrei Chapiuk Uladzimir Labkovich Andrzej Poczobut Marfa Rabkova Valiantsin Stafanovic Yuras Zyankovich
In Georgia:
Mzia Amaglobeli
In Russia:
The “Crimea 8”: – Oleg Antipov – Artyom Azatyan – Georgy Azatyan – Aleksandr Bylin – Roman Solomko – Artur Terchanyan – Dmitry Tyazhelykh – Vladimir Zloba
James Scott Rhys Anderson (British) Aleksandr Andreyev David Barnes (American) Yevgenia Berkovich Gordon Black (American) Hayden Davies (British) Yury Dmitriyev Anastasia Dyudyaeva Antonina Favorskaya Konstantin Gabov Robert Gilman (American) Stephen James Hubbard (American) Sergey Karelin Timur Kishukov Vadim Kobzev Darya Kozyreva Artyom Kriger Aleksandr Kynev Michael Travis Leake (American) Aleksei Liptser Svitlana Loi (in Ukraine) Mikhail Loshchinin “Madame Z” (in Ukraine) Grigory Melkonyants Dmitry Morozov Boris Nadezhdin Nika Novak Svetlana Petriichuk Leonid Pshenychnov (in Russian-occupied Crimea) Ilya Remeslo Nadezhda Rossinskaya (a.k.a. Nadin Geisler) Lev Schlossberg Sofiane Sehili (French) Igor Sergunin Dmitry Shatresov Robert Shonov Grigory Skvortsov Eugene Spector (American) Joseph Tater (American, disappeared) Karina Tsurkan Arseniy Turbinin (age 18) Laurent Vinatier Robert Romanov Woodland (American)
You have not been, and will not be, forgotten. Stay strong.
It must require an exceptionally twisted, narcissistic mind — or perhaps a form of dementia — to be able to look into a mirror and see yourself this way:
“Who is the fairest of them all?”
But this is what I imagine as Vladimir Putin’s perception of himself: not (I hope) as a beautiful maiden, but as a virtuous victim of persecution and aggression, rather than the tyrannical, murderous warmonger he truly is.
Once again today, he has attempted to turn reality on its head by presenting Russia as the victim of Ukrainian aggression, sweeping aside the small matter of the war of attrition that he launched nearly five years ago and continues to escalate despite the efforts of others to negotiate a peaceful settlement.
He has somehow managed to convince his one-man fan club, Donald Trump, to suspend sanctions on the export of Russian fuel, thus allowing the Russian treasury to recoup billions of dollars that will flow directly into his war chest.
And what has he offered in exchange? A ceasefire? Assurances that he will end his targeted attacks on civilians? A promise to finally schedule a long-sought trilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump?
The answer: None of the above.
Instead, he tried to convince the world — despite all evidence to the contrary — that he had been ready to resume negotiations with Kyiv following Russia’s parliamentary elections in September, but that Ukraine had jeopardized the peace process by attacking Moscow and — allegedly — striking polling places.
Further, his foreign policy aide, former Ambassador to the U.S. Yuri Ushakov, commented on the phone call between Putin and Trump:
“By launching a massive drone attack on Moscow, other cities and polling stations, as well as on specific individuals involved in organising [sic] the election, on the main voting day, the Kyiv regime effectively disrupted the possibility of an immediate resumption of the negotiation process. And now, as the president said, we will consider when those negotiations can be resumed.” [Dmitry Antonov and Vladimir Soldatkin, Reuters, October 9, 2026.]
Vladimir Putin with Yuri Ushakov
The question is whether Putin is delusional enough to believe his own convoluted version of the facts, or is simply offering tried-and-true Soviet-style propaganda as justification for his actions. In either case, he is dragging Donald Trump along with him, as evidenced by these comments from Trump to the press at the White House today, just a day after his phone conversation with Putin:
“I suggest they [Ukraine] get a new leader who can make a deal . . . for some reason [Zelenskyy] never does.” [Susie Blann and Elise Morton, AP, October 10, 2026.]
Turning the subject to himself as usual, he added that, if he had been president of the U.S. in 2022:
“ . . . that war would have never started. There was no reason that that war with Ukraine and Russia started. It started due to incompetence. [Zelensky has] lost 30% of your country and you’ve had over a million people go between the two of them, over 2 million people killed. That’s a war that should have never started. And I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.” [Id.]
The Man Trump and Putin Would Replace (Earlier Statement)
After digesting today’s news, I’m left wondering whether there’s a rubber room somewhere that would accommodate the two of them, and how quickly we can arrange transportation.
In my earlier post today, I discussed Donald Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine in making an unexpected deal with Vladimir Putin — a deal in which certain sanctions against Russia would be lifted to allow the sale of millions of tons of diesel fuel, earning billions of dollars for the replenishment of Putin’s depleted budget to be used against Ukraine while requiring nothing in return.
At the same time, in a flagrant display of hypocrisy, White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were meeting in Miami with Ukrainian officials, ostensibly to discuss a proposal to end the war — a proposal that, like the others they’ve presented for Ukraine’s consideration, would undoubtedly require grossly unjust and unacceptable concessions on Ukraine’s part.
Along with much of the rest of the world, I keep asking myself how people can justify being so corrupt, so two-faced , so unfeeling, and how they manage to live with themselves.
Then I found that philosopher Noam Chomsky had already summed it up perfectly, and in very few words:
“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”
– Noam Chomsky, “Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World”
Noam Chomsky (1928 – present)
The sad truth is, they just don’t give a damn.
What we do about it, how we stop them . . . well, that’s a whole different matter.
Pride. Greed. Lust. Envy. Gluttony. Wrath. Sloth. That’s the list of vices commonly cited, and warned against, in Christian theology.
But when you’ve already committed all of them, I suppose one more doesn’t make much of a difference . . . however vehemently you may preach to others about the importance of Christianity and family values. So I propose adding what I call Political Prostitution to the list. Or we could just call it Betrayal.
And yes, of course I have an example.
In the past week, Vladimir Putin has murdered two dozen civilians in the Ukrainian town of Pryluky, wiped out another 33 in a targeted missile strike on a civilian bus in Kramatorsk, and left around 6,000 to starve to death in blockaded Oleshky.
What’s left of the bus and its passengers in Kramatorsk, Ukraine
All of these blatant war crimes, and more, were committed in spite of the sweeping new sanctions against Russia passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by Donald Trump last month.
One would naturally expect a harsh response from Trump, at least as strongly worded as those issued by European leaders. But that didn’t happen. Instead, he announced on social media yesterday that he had made a deal with the Russian president by phone, in which it was agreed that Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel fuel, followed by an additional 500,000 tons in November, and another one million tons “immediately thereafter” . . . plus a whopping additional three million tons “within a short period of time” after that. [Michelle L. Price and Collin Binkley, Associated Press, October 9, 2026.]
Sanctions? What sanctions?
And why have they suddenly evaporated?
Actually, that’s easy. The U.S. midterm elections are just around the corner, and Trump’s Republican candidates aren’t doing well at all.
And, as we all know, the main reason they’re in jeopardy of losing the House of Representatives and possibly also the Senate is that the prices Trump had promised his followers he would lower — from food to housing to medical care to gas — have instead skyrocketed. And he thinks that, by allowing Russia to flood the market with an abundance of fuel, our gas and other fuel-related prices will magically drop overnight, winning him some desperately-needed Brownie points with the voters.
At the same time, his friend in the Kremlin will be laughing all the way to the bank as he replenishes his much-depleted war chest without having given anything in return.
So, Ukraine be damned. The rest of Europe be damned. Human decency be damned. Trump has an election to fix, to try to keep himself and his cohorts from having to face accountability for their crimes. And if he has to prostitute himself in the process . . . well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
As an added twist of the knife in Ukraine’s back, even as Trump was making this announcement, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were meeting with Ukrainian officials in Miami to discuss a proposal to end the war. [Id.]
Always good for a laugh — especially when he’s not trying to be funny — Donald Trump outdid himself yesterday when speaking to a group of scientists at the U.S. . . . excuse me, the renamed Donald J. TrumpInstitute of Peace in Washington.
The occasion had nothing to do with “peace” prizes in the same sense as the Nobel Peace Prize he so openly covets (and just lost out on again). Rather, medals were being awarded for scientific achievement, this year going to five tech industry corporate moguls who (incidentally?) just happen to be billionaire contributors to Trump’s campaigns and pet projects:
> Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies; > Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google; > Lisa Su, President and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices; > Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft; and > Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia
And to top off the event, the National Medal of Science went to a man who needs no introduction: Elon Musk, whom Trump called “our modern-day Thomas Edison.”
It’s interesting to note that these honorifics were being handed out by a man who daily denigrates immigrants to our country as lowlifes and criminals, and who obviously was unaware of the irony in the fact that five of the six recipients were themselves immigrants: Brin born in Russia, Su and Huang from Taiwan, Nadella from India, and of course, Musk from South Africa.
But that was obviously not an issue for Trump as he began his opening remarks at the ceremony by complimenting the day’s honorees:
“We have an extremely high IQ audience for a change. For a change. It’s very nice.”
“Say what?!!”
It never occurred to him that he had just delivered a massive insult to each and every one of his rabid MAGA supporters who have made up the bulk of his rally audiences for the past ten years.
So how does that feel, good buddy? Your hero just called you “low IQ.” (That means “stupid,” you know.)
Forget history, and forget the standard dictionary definitions. JD Vance has his own idea of what socialism really is . . . well, sort of.
JD Vance
At a press conference this week concerning the government’s campaign against alleged fraud in the country’s H-1B visa program, he was asked by a reporter: “How do you define socialism personally and why do you think socialist candidates are popping up everywhere across the country?”
That seems like a fair and very relevant question as we approach the November 3rd midterm elections, and particularly in view of the Republican administration’s repeated assertions that liberals are promoting socialism and/or communism.
Now, the long-accepted definition of socialism — and as set out in the Merriam-Webster dictionary — is as follows:
1: any of various egalitarian economic and political theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2a: a system of society or of group living in which there is no private property
b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory that is transitional between capitalism and communism and is distinguished by unequal distribution of of goods and pay according to work done
Karl Marx (doing his Napoleon impersonation?)
But Vance had a bit of difficulty with that, because the Democrats and other liberal Americans he has described as “socialists” haven’t been advocating anything close to it. So what he came up with was this bit of word salad:
“Oh man, you know, I guess it’s honestly it’s a hard term to define these days because very often socialism, you know, classically you would think socialism is about prioritizing workers, and yet in reality I guarantee that most of the self-described socialists running across the United States of America are going to howl about this announcement today, which is prioritizing American workers over foreign workers.
“So, I don’t know what the term means anymore. I think in reality what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers and you want boys to play in girls’ sports. That’s what unites the socialists that I see running across the United States of America today.”
And there you have it, from the lips of the man who is a single heartbeat removed from the presidency of the United States . . . who can’t cobble together a coherent sentence without a script . . . and who conflates socialism with gender identity.
It’s not a protocol, really, because that would imply that it made a modicum of sense. I’d say it’s more like “Mein Kampf” and “1984” mated and gave birth to a cheap imitation of a Stephen King horror story.
“It” is, in fact, Pete Hegseth’s concept of what the U.S. military should look like.
U.S. Military Parade – Crossing Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial toward Arlington National Cemetery
That’s nice. But no . . . I meant what they should literally look like:
The Perfect Military Man
That’s better.
AI nailed it: male, tall, slender, strong, clean-shaven, White, Christian, and ready to follow any order, whether legal or not. Hegseth has also specified no “beardos” or “weirdos,” and they must possess a satisfactory testosterone level. In addition, he has created a new Office of Religious Affairs in the Pentagon for the purpose of evaluating the “spiritual fitness” of active-duty troops and cladding them — in his terminology — in the “full armor of God.”
The one thing he didn’t ban? Tattoos. The fact is, the self-styled “Secretary of War” is covered in them.
Pete Hegseth, Exposed
So . . . not weird, right?
And speaking of “Mein Kampf,” have you ever seen the Iron Cross medals handed out for bravery during Hitler’s Third Reich?
In fact, Der Führer wore one himself:
There were so many similarities between Hegseth’s standards and what I recalled of Hitler’s obsession with creating a so-called “Aryan race” that I did a little further checking, and found that Adolf and Pete had more in common than I had realized. for example, Hitler required:
> Physical characteristics: Straight blond hair, light-colored (blue) eyes, fair skin, tall and athletic stature, and very specific cranial and facial features.
> Racial Purity: Germanic, Nordic and other Northern European stock, with proof of lineage free of Jewish or nonwhite ancestry dating back generations.
Those who fell outside these definitions — Jews, Romany people, Slavs, people with disabilities, etc. — were labeled as subhumans and considered disposable. And as the world learned, albeit too late, he managed to dispose of some 13 million (or more) of them before he was finally stopped.
The Liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Are those similarities just coincidences? Is Pete Hegseth consciously emulating Hitler, or did he conjure up these ideas on his own? I don’t have the answers; but it hardly matters. Because either way, this is an individual who shouldn’t be allowed to head up a local Nighborhood Watch, much less have charge of the world’s most powerful military force.
Not everyone is beautiful, or talented, or brilliant. That’s just a fact of life. But what I will never understand is how so many totally ignorant people have suddenly come to occupy such influential (and profitable) positions: corporate moguls, high-ranking politicians, and talking heads who keep trying to pass themselves off as intellectuals.
Today’s case in point: self-described “political commentator” and “media personality” Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson
Since becoming anathema to the mainstream media, including even right-wing Fox News, Carlson has tried to maintain something of the appearance of a journalist by limiting his interviews to people who share his views, or who themselves are not very bright and therefore not likely to challenge him in any way.
But this week he made the mistake of interviewing British former Tory Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg. In a lengthy and often contentious debate on foreign policy — in which Carlson was clearly out of his depth — he blamed the West for having incited Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, incorrectly stating that the Western nations had breached the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum — in which Ukraine agreed to give up its arsenal of nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees — by failing to stop NATO’s eastward expansion to Russia’s borders, when in fact the breach was Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea.
After Rees-Mogg made mincemeat of that preposterous assertion, Carlson moved on to World War II, claiming that Germany had a legitimate claim over parts of Poland back in 1939, and asking why Britain had bothered entering the war at all.
Rees-Mogg’s reply was, simply and logically: “Otherwise we’d be speaking German.”
And here is where Carlson went completely off the rails when he countered with:
“Who cares? There are a lot of people in Britain who can’t speak English. So it would be nice to have at least a European language spoken in your country.”
Source: Rowena Mason, The Guardian, October 4, 2026.
“You gotta be kidding me!”
So, a racist apologist for both Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin, who knows little or nothing of history or politics, tries to palm himself off as an expert on everything.
