Just for laffs

Vladimir Puta; need I say more?

 

 

Russian Politics

After the Captive Nations were liberated, I naively believed that the Russians rehabilitated themselves from communism, but according to Wiki, that was not the case.  While they seem to have abandoned their communist economic system, their system of government hasn't changed much.  Although they now have oligarchs instead of communists calling the shots, many of them are the same people, so all that is changed is the nomenclature.  I thought that Putin himself was a neo-communist, but it turns out he is just a regular old fashioned communist leftover from the old regime.  If past practices are any indication, the same oligarchs that are keeping him in power will turn against him if they determine that he is a liability to their interests.  The only question is, what will it take to convince them that he is a liability to their interests?

I'm pretty sure that it was just a few whistleblowers in the Russian Security Service that tipped the Ukrainians off about that assassination plot.  We surely would be hearing more about it if it was the whole department.

Speaking of assholes, I see that those Trumpy truckers are at it again.  What's the matter with those people, don't they realize there's a war going on?  On the bright side, maybe this war will drive another nail in Trump's political coffin, since he and Putin are alleged to be asshole buddies.

Too bad about that no-fly zone, I thought it was an idea whose time had come.  If things keep going the way they are, our guys are likely to be directly engaging the Russians eventually anyway.  Better in the Ukraine than in Michigan.  Those Polish jets might do some good, if they can get them to the Ukrainians in time.  

gimmers of hope

 This war has been obsessing me,  I tune into CNN every morning and leave it on.  If I go out I am thinking of how is the war going, and I am back to it first thing when I get back.  In the evenings I feel bad about viewing my Netflix, and before I turn in, I go back to CNN for five or ten minutes to catch up, then I go to sleep listening to the BBC on NPR, and when I wake up it's right back to CNN.

I looked it up and it's been eight days.  Everybody figured it would be over in a couple, so there is some glimmer of hope.  There have been considerable demonstrations in Russia, which is encouraging.  But polls say two thirds of Russkies are for the war, but the public soon loses interest in wars that go bad.  There have been some oligarchs coming out against the war, but none of them are in Putin's tight inner circle.  Come to think of it I wonder if there is anybody besides Putin in his inner circle?

I was surprised about members of the Russian Federal Security Service (which google tells me is the successor to the KGB), alerted the Ukrainians to that assassination attempt.  Was that the whole organization or just some whistle blowers like our man Vindman, who blew the whistle on Trump for holding up military aid that congress had voted for Ukraine unless they would smear Hunter Biden, and Trump fired him and his brother too over that.  That is what the second impeachment was about, a treasonous deed that only seven out of fifty republican senators found to be treasonous.  The same republicans, I might add who are now pissing about Biden's war efforts though none dare say a word against Trump even to this day.

Though I personally would be all for hoisting them all on their stinking petards Biden is basically ignoring them because this is no time to act divided.  This is to his credit, and may even help him in his sinking poll numbers.

But this is about more than political advantages as those scenes of the suffering Ukrainians which Beagles and I find so painful attest.

But now NPR has gone into pledge drive mode so I have switched to CNN and there is the map of Ukraine with those bloody red areas and those dark black arrows piercing inwards from Russia, Belarus, and the Black Sea. but there is a glimmer of hope in the words of the expert about the prowess of the Russian army, incompetent, untrained, clumsy, blundering, and there is your glimmer of hope.  

I still have a lot more to say, but it will have to wait until Monday morning.  Until then I will be watching and hoping.

A Strange Little War

 I have been too busy reading to write the last few days.  As a former military man, I am more interested in the tactics and logistics than I am in the human-interest stories, partly because I find it painful to dwell on the human-interest stories.  I have been searching for some glimmers of hope in all of this but haven't found anything I could hang my hat on.  The tenacity and resourcefulness of the Ukrainians continues to amaze me.  I wonder if my fellow Americans would acquit themselves so bravely in a similar situation. 

I find the foiling of the assassination plot against Zelenskyy particularly interesting.  It seems that the Ukrainians were tipped off by "members of the Russian Federal Security Service who do not support the war".  Could this be a crack in the wall?  One can only hope.

Then there's that 40-mile-long convoy that has been stalled on the road to Kyiv for days.  Are they out of gas or just awaiting further orders?  Rumor has it that some Russian soldiers have been sabotaging their own vehicles, but that has not been confirmed, at least not yet.  Some Russians who surrendered early on reported that they were deployed on short notice without being told where they were going or what they were supposed to do when they got there.  Also early on, Ukrainians were asked to take down street signs and remove their house numbers to make it harder for the invaders to find their way around.  Is it possible the convoy is just lost?  A strange little war indeed.

Tedovich

 Apparently my songbird, Sandy Denny, is not the cup of tea for either of the dawgs.  Well so be it.  And yes there was nothing that special in her early demise like Jimi, Janis, and Jim, or more recently Amy Winehouse, but the thing about Sandy was her star rose and fell and I knew nothing about her at all, and when I finally stumbled upon her her story was all done and wrapped up fifty years ago, who knows where the time goes.  That is all.

I wonder why the crowd twittered when Joni sang Both Sides Now.  I was on the other side of the continent in  Berkeley when Old Dog was in the Cellar Door.  There was a new thing going on on the radio at the time, album rock I think we called it.  FM radio stations would play the whole album instead of the the single and this was considered so much deeper than top forty.  

One of the stations was playing the Judy Collins and Dave Van Ronk versions of Clouds (I always called it Clouds) back to back and people were to call in to vote for one or the other, and it seemed like a big issue at the time but then it drifted off and I never heard who won or whatever.  Who knows where the time goes.

Things were looking not so bad yesterday.  The Russkies had supply chain problems and the Ukrainians were intrepid.  CNN showed one of those battlefield reporters walking down a road of abandoned vehicles and dead Russkies.  He bent down at one point and picked up a small scorched teddy bear.  The good luck charm of some soldier's girlfriend one assumed.  "Carry Tedovich and he will carry you safely back to me."  Maybe he was some poor schlub who got drafted and never even knew where he was going or why until the Ukrainian bullets shot him down.  Or maybe he was a big prick who bragged to his buddies about how many of those stupid Ukrainians he was going to kill.  But now it doesn't matter who he was.

Anyway that big convoy is way bigger now and way closer and likely Putin's strategy now is kill them all.  Bomb and shoot, and bomb and shoot until they are all gone.  There is a faint hope that the troops seeing they are just killing people without rhyme or reason might refuse.  Okay a very faint hope.  Maybe his generals who likely don't care about civilian deaths will be alarmed about the damage being done to Mother Russia and take over and put a bullet in his head.  The whole world (absent China) seems to be against this move and they have all kinds of financial instruments that I never heard of or understand but they can make Russia go broke, but that likely would not happen in time.

I don't know.

Putin is Nuts

 That seems to be the general consensus.  I'm not sure what kind of government they currently have in Russia.  I naively assumed that they would become more democratic after they renounced Communism, but it appears that is not the case.  I doubt that they have anything like our impeachment process, so the only way to neutralize this guy is to assassinate him.  Maybe his own people will do it eventually, but it would be nice if our guys could send in a hit squad like they did with Bin Laden, or maybe a drone attack.  It sounds cold hearted, but thousands of good people are dying with each passing day of Putin's existence, and I doubt that he can be rehabilitated.  

Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are doing a remarkable job, but they can't hold out forever.  I said in the beginning that the Russians will probably win, but it will be a costly victory.  Then I thought maybe it will become costly enough that the Russians will decide that it just isn't worth it.  That hasn't happened so far, but it still might eventually.  

I don't watch much TV, and it's old news by the time our local paper gets it, so most of my information is coming from my news app.  That article I linked to yesterday was a good catch up for me, nothing more. 

Sorry, but Sandy Denny is not my cup of tea, but it's fine if Uncle Ken likes her, nothing wrong with that.

End of February

I wonder if I could get some comment on Sandy Denny and her story.

Not my cup of tea.  It's okay, along with the other folkie-type stuff of Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins, but not the type of music I would seek out.  But I did see Joni Mitchell at the Cellar Door in Georgetown back in '68, army pal of mine had a couple of tickets and I figured, why not?  A nice, small club but the cover charge and drink minimum was a little steep for this low ranking GI.  And yes, the crowd tittered when she sang "Both Sides Now."

I don't see anything special about her story.  Musicians and artists were dropping like flies back in the day, as I recall.  Overdoses, suicides, and plain misadventure took their toll, too many to count, and all tragic losses.

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Where does the time go?  It went thataway, I think.  As I futz around my apartment, still in the process of bringing order to the chaos, I marvel at the time warp I keep falling into.  There is an astounding amount of stuff that I have that is over fifty years old and it all works like new; cameras, tripods, tools, and all sorts of stuff that just don't seem to wear out if you take decent care of it.  There are hidden treasures, too, books and albums that are bringing good prices on eBay should I ever want to really clean house.  Some people in their advanced years may look back and say, "I wish I didn't get rid of that."  I am not one of those people.

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Quite a week in the news, eh?  I thought that Putin was a better strategist than he's turning out to be unless he has unexpected tricks up his sleeve.  One thing I noticed, though: he's putting on weight and looking puffy, not the buff tyrant we were used to seeing.  Is he being medicated for some unknown reason?  I don't know how his popularity in the Motherland is holding up but there are some very unhappy people who are bound to do something about the way things are going.  Even the Swiss are starting to screw around with their assets from what I've read.  But things are moving so quickly that anything I think is moot, for entertainment purposes only.

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Computer glitches keep on coming.  One of the HDMI inputs on my TV died and when I used a different input it looked great, until I restarted and got a blue screen which sent me to the BIOS screen, something I've never seen before.  No big deal, just hit the "q" key and restart.  But now I have a problem with Firefox and I can't cut & paste text.  When I hit the CTRL key Firefox just up and closes.  This is quite baffling and forces me to use Chrome which seems to be working well.  So far.  And I still have a problem with the haunted keyboard on the laptop with repeating characters just showing up in text boxes, thousands of them.  Might be time for an upgrade.