Operational Control!  🌻🌻🌻

World Chess Board: As evidenced by the number of world leaders who have recently visited, things are looking up in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, unfortunately the immediate future for southern and eastern Ukraine remains bleak.  Having failed, or at least failed thus far, to “liberate” all of Ukraine, Putin is refocusing his efforts on the east and south, looking to General Aleksandr Dvornikov to coordinate and head up his invasion forces.  Dvornikov, the evil mastermind behind last week’s missile attack on Ukraine’s Kramatorsk railway in which at least 57 people including children were killed with an additional 107 injured, previously led Russia’s air war in Syria where he was responsible for massive obliteration under the theory that if you can’t win hearts and minds then you might as well bomb the citizenry and the infrastructure to smithereens or worse.  Nothing’s off the table for him.  Getting back to the traveling squads, Britain’s Boris Johnson who is trying awfully hard to get the British press to focus on how he’s supporting Ukraine rather than his COVID shutdown parties visited President Zelenskyy over the weekend, hot on the heels of  European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, and Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer.  According to a White House spokesperson, President Biden has no plans to visit, not that anyone would reveal any plans if he did.  It’s also highly likely that France’s Emanuel Macron is a bit too busy to hit the Ukraine trail.  After a too close for comfort first election round where he’s ahead by just under 5 points, he now faces a runoff against the very right wing, xenophobic Marine Le Pen.  By the way, Pen is still paying off loans for a previous election from one of her benefactors, someone name Vladimir Putin.  The France run off will take place on April 24. CPAC (Conservative PAC) is scheduled to hold it’s May conference in Hungary, and when they get there, no doubt with Tucker Carlson by their side, they’ll find that another right wing hero, Viktor Orban is still in power; he comfortably won reelection last week, another sign that right wing autocrats have a future in Europe despite what’s happening in Ukraine.  On the other side of the chessboard, Pakistan’s Imran Khan, previously known for his cricket playing skills, was voted out of office this weekend, something to do with mismanagement of foreign policy and the economy. The anti-American Khan of course blames the US for his loss because why not.

Family Affair:  Speaking of elections, it turns out that the Former Guy’s elder son, Junior was, as expected, all in on overturning the results of the last presidential election, even before the votes were fully counted and the election was called. Junior texted then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on November 5, to tell him that "we have operational control" to ensure that the FG gets a second term because we have Republican majorities in the US Senate and swing state legislatures. He laid out ideas for keeping his father in power by subverting the Electoral College process:  "It's very simple," Junior texted to Meadows, "We have multiple paths We control them all." Junior’s attorney Alan Futerfas, doesn’t deny that Junior sent the incriminating text, rather he says that Junior may have just been forwarding something someone else had sent him, which is probably true given that no one believes that Junior has the brain power to have come up with any such strategy on his own.  Still the text is telling because it confirms what we already know, that the Former Guy and his kraken advisors knew that he had lost the election but were doing their best to reverse the election results.  Reports are that the January 6th committee has proof that the Former Guy committed criminal acts not that we should expect him to face any consequences.  Anyway, he’s been busy, fresh off endorsing Sarah Palin’s run for the House, the FG has now endorsed Mehmet Oz.  That endorsement is a major disappointment for Dina Powell, his one-time deputy National Security advisor/friend of Javanka who has made several trips to Mar a Lago in an attempt to secure an endorsement for her current husband former CEO of the Bridgewater hedge fund David McCormick who is also running to be Pennsylvania’s Republican candidate for the Senate. During one of her visits, she is said to have slammed Oz for being a Muslim, a low blow and unnecessary as there are lots of things wrong with Oz, but his religion should not be the issue. To the extent the polls are to believed, Oz and McCormick are neck and neck so the FG endorsement could push Oz over the top, at least over the Republican top.  It’s not clear that he’d do as well against the Democrat’s candidate, quite possibly current Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman who is leading the other Democratic candidates in an increasingly divisive party race.  Turning back to relative grift, despite their earlier misgivings and the advice of their experts not to toss funds Jared Kushner’s way, something about his total lack of investment skills,  Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund has committed $2 billion to Jared Kushner’s investment start-up.  Turns out that supporting bone choppers has its benefits.  Meantime back in the real world, Hunter Biden is still being investigated for his questionable business contacts and decisions and for profiting off of his name.   

Viral Musings:  More politicians in Washington and NYC and probably everywhere else are turning up COVID positive, especially those who attended the Grid Iron super spreader dinner.  In NYC it’s Mayor Adams who turned up positive, hardly a surprise given how he’s been out and about a lot.  As a NY resident he immediately qualified and started taking some of those anti-viral drugs available free to all New York City residents with a doctor’s prescription.  Keep that in mind if you are a vulnerable New Yorker with a positive test result.  President Biden continues to test negative despite the number of people in his orbit who’ve turned up with positive test results.  Perhaps in recognition of that the White House Communications office admitted it may be just a matter of time before he or the VP turn up positive. Clearly, we’ve moved into the COVID normalization part of the pandemic.

Bye-Bye Roe:  A woman in Texas was arrested late last week after she was reported by a local hospital for seeking medical attention for complications from a self-induced abortion.  After a huge public outcry and lots of press attention the local prosecutor dropped the charges against her, saying that the anti-abortion Texas bounty law doesn’t have a provision for charging women in her position. How likely is it that someone in Texas or one of the other restrictive abortion law copycat states is busy amending that law to make sure that next time around the charges will stick?  Be afraid, very afraid.