Planes and Oil  🌻 🌻 🌻

Ukraine Strong: The Ukrainians are winning the war of public opinion as they should but despite their impressive bravery on the battlefield their suffering is immeasurable. As exemplified by the very long convoy of Russian military trucks and assorted killer paraphernalia that remains stuck in place during day twelve of what was supposed to be a five day blitz, Russia is still underperforming but given their military resources they’re still causing an unconscionable amount of disruption, death, and destruction and are expected to destroy more cities and takeover more land, nuclear reactors and ports during the coming days.  Of course the Former Guy has a solution to all of this, over the weekend speaking at a New Orleans  big donor event, he said that the US should put the Chinese flag on F-22 fighter jets and "bomb the s*** out of Russia….And then we say, China did it. Then they start fighting with each other, and we sit back and watch.” Everything about that statement is moronic:  the Former Guy who once suggested nuking a hurricane probably wasn’t kidding and who are these “big” donors who are so committed to him that they are still showing up and emptying their wallets to hear him speak? Would it surprise anyone to learn that Fox’s Sean Hannity, who remains a member of the Former Guy’s shadow cabinet, was the one who first came up with the idea?  As to calls by many including the very frustrated and heroic Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for the US and NATO to establish a no fly zone over Ukraine, that’s considered a no-go strategy because doing so would risk a direct confrontation between US and Russian forces, one of those things that could trigger WW III with nukes. The alternative which Biden appears to be in the process of facilitating involves back filling Poland’s air force with US fighter jets allowing them to provide the Russian fighter jets that Ukrainian pilots have experience flying to Zelenskyy’s air force. 

Filling Up: Another big issue currently up for discussion is whether or not the US and Europe should ban imports of Russian oil. That’s a logistical, inflationary problem for the US as we produce more than enough to cover our needs, but it is a bigger problem for Europe which is dependent on Russian energy. According to Axios, President Biden may be headed on a “make nice” trip to Saudi Arabia shortly to convince the Saudis to sell more oil to cover Europe’s Russian oil shortfall.  The bottom line is that it is going to cost more to fill tanks everywhere, not that any of that bothered those truckers who showed up in the Washington DC area to protest vaccine mandates and a few other things that they’re not sure about this weekend.  They didn’t do much to disrupt traffic, nor did they get anywhere near the attention they wanted. Close to one million Ukrainian refugees fleeing for their lives with many, many more likely to follow and some US snowflake truckers are whining about getting jabbed.  The truckers aren’t the only ones seeking attention, Kim Jong un, who the Former Guy made sure to tell those New Orleans donors is someone he still very much admires because Kim is so nice and his quivering staff stands at attention whenever he speaks, keeps shooting off missiles, frustrated that right now his actions aren’t getting him any banner headlines. Also on the world leader front, Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, together with one of his Russian speaking cabinet members, made a surprise to us but approved by Zelenskyy, Biden, Macron and whoever else matters trip to Moscow to try to intermediate between Putin and Ukraine over the weekend.  More meetings are expected to follow but it’s not clear that there is an offramp that Putin would be willing to take and for obvious reasons no one is openly supporting Senator Lindsey Graham’s suggestion, the one that involves poison and/or shivs.   China’s President Xi seems to be taking his time, trying to figure out what about the Ukraine crisis is good for him and his long term aspirations to Ukrainize Taiwan.  On the one hand China didn’t vote against the UN condemnation of Russia, instead opting to abstain, on the other he hasn’t done anything helpful, beyond getting Putin to reschedule his attack until after the Olympics.

People and Politicians:  WNBA star Brittney Griner may now be Putin’s newest hostage.  She was in Russia playing offseason basketball which is what WNBA players do to earn a living when she was stopped while trying to fly home something to do with traces of hash oil in her luggage but also because in socially conservative Russia gong after a prominent LGBTQ Black person reaps PR benefits and since Russians now have no Netflix, can’t upgrade their iPhones and there are food and essentials shortages, diversions are needed.  We’re only learning about her detention now but it appears to have happened more than a week ago. Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Montana Senator Steve Daines took some deserved heat over the weekend for tweeting about a zoom meeting with President Zelenskyy while the call was taking place even though Ukrainian officials had asked everyone on the call to hold off until it ended to protect Zelenskyy’s safety.  Rubio, who is Vice Chair of the Senate intelligence committee and who really should know better showed up on every news show he could so he could say that his screw-up was a nothing burger, just leftist fake news, because he’s up for reelection this year and can’t afford to appear to be that craven and stupid.  Except it’s Florida so maybe he can?  And talking stupid and probably illegal, according to The New Yorker former Chief of Staff/North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows voted as a North Carolinian during the 2020 election by using an address in a trailer park where, of course, he never lived because voting fraudulently is okay when you are a Republican?