Boys Must Be Boys

Sudetenland Redux:  Last night Putin began a wild scale military attack across most areas of Ukraine including its capital Kyiv and Black Sea port city Odessa in an unprecedented assault that has already resulted in death and suffering and most certainly will lead to more economic turmoil and oil market disruptions almost everywhere. So much for the view that Biden and the US intelligence community were exaggerating Putin’s intentions, that the Russian leader “only” wanted to liberate the Donbas, the eastern part of Ukraine that his surrogates already controlled. Of course, the Former Guy asserts that his BFF Putin would never have attacked had the 2020 election not been stolen from him because, naturally, everything is about him. He called Putin “smart,” “savvy,” and a genius for sending military forces into Ukraine, adding “Putin is playing Biden like a drum.”  Keeping with that theme, Mike Pompeo, his slimmed down but still mean spirited last Secretary of State/presidential wannabee, who appears to have lost any last shreds of decency along with his corpulence, lauded Putin, calling him “talented,” “savvy” and a “capable statesman,” with lots of “gifts,” someone to be respected for knowing how to use power.  Note the repetition of the word “savvy,” it’s almost as if he and the Former Guy are using talking points provided by Putin’s PR department or maybe from Fox’s Tucker Carlson who, continuing in his role as the captain of Putin’s cheerleading squad, told his audience that there’s no reason that the US should assist Ukraine and that it is not “un-American” to support Putin.  That said, not everyone in the Republican Party is team Putin, Utah Senator Mitt Romney who back when he ran for president was ridiculed for his position that Putin and Russia were a problem that could not be “reset” or ignored went out of his way to point out that he was both right all along and prescient, tweeting that both Barack Obama and the Former Guy share the blame for underestimating Putin’s megalomania and avarice.  Like Romney, Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham expressed their support for Ukraine but also made sure to shade Biden for not doing enough to sanction Putin out of existence.  Neither of them had much to say about the Former Guy’s effort to weaken NATO nor the reality that Biden had to spend a good part of his first year in office getting the NATO allies to both believe that we were on their team and to act in unison before any harsh sanctions could be effectively implemented. As to Putin’s justification, in addition to his position that Ukraine should be his because he wants it, he’s also justifying his attack by telling his people that the “territory” has to be de-Nazified.  For his part Ukraine President Zelensky who is Jewish called Putin out for acting like Hitler and it’s hard to miss that grabbing Ukraine to liberate its “Russian” citizens does look a lot like Hitler seizing the Sudetenland before he then moved on to Poland, the beginning of WWII. The bottom line, Ukrainians are screwed,  there are no easy solutions, it’s not clear that Putin cares about the impact sanctions, even harsh ones, will have, and though Putin is likely to find ruling the  increasingly westernized population of Ukraine very challenging, in the short run he is going to get what he wants. It’s all so unbearably sad, dangerous and destabilizing.

Back in New York:  Yesterday Carey Dunn and Marc Pomeranz, two of the senior prosecutors investigating the Former Guy’s questionable financial practices resigned over what are believed to be differences with Manhattan’s new District Attorney Alvin Bragg about whether to move forward with the case against the FG.  Though the reasons for their departure remain murky, the fact that they departed leaves the impression that Bragg is either gun shy about the risks of proceeding with such a high profile, high risk case or because absent flipping a high quality witness he doesn’t believe that there’s enough there to succeed. To put it mildly that’s a bummer though it doesn’t mean that the Former Guy and his family are completely out of the NY woods as NYS Attorney General Tish James is still proceeding with her civil case where the burden of proof is easier to meet. And there’s still Georgia, Washington DC and E Jean Carroll who is trying really hard to get his DNA in her pursuit of some justice over his calling her a liar for her calling him a rapist.  On the January 6^th front, daughter Ivanka is supposedly in discussion about sitting down for an interview as is Rudy Giuliani, again.  That said, don’t count on either showing up or if they do shedding much light. 

Culture Wars: Having already made abortions virtually impossible to obtain in his state, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is now seeking to outdo Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on the LGTBQ front.  Yesterday he issued an order directing state agencies to investigate parents who facilitate gender affirming treatment to their transgender children saying that such care constitutes child abuse.  Forget the state’s failing power grid or that Texas ranks 45^th among the US states in providing access to health care, Abbott’s found the enemy and it’s parents trying to help their kids deal with their sexual identity.  Maybe he’s taking a page from Putin’s book, during his rambling speech in which he justified invading Ukraine, Putin compared gender nonconformity and the push for trans rights to “new strains” of a “pandemic” much like the coronavirus.  Hard to miss that the right’s talking points overlap so much with the Russian dictator.